Mini: How Trump's Tariffs Are Reshaping Brand Marketing

What do Trump’s new tariffs have to do with your brand strategy? A lot.

In this Soul & Science mini-episode, Jason breaks down how the latest wave of tariffs is creating ripple effects across industries—and what it means for marketers trying to navigate a rapidly shifting economy.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Brands are reallocating budgets toward performance marketing as margins tighten.
✅ Expect a rise in “Made in America” messaging to appeal to patriotic sentiment.
✅ Companies will lean into transparency, explaining price hikes to consumers.

From autos to electronics, tariffs are impacting more than just supply chains—they’re changing how we connect with customers. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to a Soul and Science mini recording. I wanted
to talk today about how Trump's tariffs are reshaping the
marketing landscape that we all live in. And Trump has
been in office around sixty days, and I would say
that the thing that we're talking about the most, with
the most immediate impact both to projections of a possible

(00:35):
recession and the stock market, are the recent wave of
tariffs introduced by President Trump, which is creating a ripple
effect across different industries, and as it pertains to marketing,
it's forcing brands to rethink their marketing strategies, their marketing spend,
their marketing mix. So I'm really fascinated as a marketing

(00:55):
professional about these changes and how they might impact our industry.
And it does not seem to be impacting us in
a good way. I will say so. Overall, the industries
that will be impacted the most, and I know that
there's been a short reprieve on this, but ultimately the
automotive industry is going to be affected, and it will

(01:15):
affect both manufacturing of cars and suppliers that help build
those cars. That will impact earnings, and we'll see massive
price hikes on autos agriculture, anything imported like beef, pork, dairy, fruits,
and vegetables will be impacted. Anything metal, of course, because
you've heard all about the metal and still tariffs. Semiconductors,

(01:38):
anything with a chip, any device with a chip will
be impacted because that's mainly made overseas. And then consumer
goods electronics, peril, furniture, toys, et cetera. That will all
be impacted as well. So many more industries than this
will be impacted, but these are the ones that sort
of come to mind right off the bat. So I

(01:58):
think there's three ways that we're going to see marketing
change based on these tariffs. Number one is budget reallocation.
Just like we saw during COVID, when companies are under
pressure and stressed to deliver numbers, especially when things cost
more money, companies tend to move away from the upper

(02:20):
funnel brand building work and they start to shift their
spend to performance driven channels like retail media CTV. Those
will increase because you want to spend the least you
can to maximize your ROI. Because your margins are tighter,
it's more expensive to make this stuff. You might have
to charge a little more. You're worried about making your number,

(02:42):
so you shift to short term transactional spend and you
forego long term brand building. So that's one way I
think we're going to see these tariffs impact the industry.
Number two, I think you'll see more domestic messaging, so
brands affected, we'll start to emphasiz size if they're made
in America, for example, to justify, hey, we're made here.

(03:05):
We might be more expensive because we don't have cheaper
costs because we're not made out of the country, even
though those costs will be caught up by then. But
this made in America theme will be to connect with
consumers because we're under this period of bringing manufacturing back
to the US more about patriotism, So made in America

(03:28):
might be a message that we'll see on those products
and services that are created in the US. And the
final and third one is I think we'll see a
transparency message, so more dollars spent on educating the consumer
around why these price adjustments are needed and why everything
went up and why they're charging more, and that you

(03:51):
don't want to charge more, but you're forced too because
these tariffs are making it more expensive for you to
do business. So I think we're going to see a
reallocation much more more of a push to performance marketing.
We're going to see some proud brands focus on made
in America, made here, and number three, we're going to
see brands spend dollars on explaining to their consumers why

(04:15):
their prices had to go up. So I think this
is always evolving and we're going to see where this
ends up. But I think we're going to see the
marketing landscape change in those ways. I'm curious how your
organization might be responding to these tarif driven changes and
what you're seeing in the shift in the marketing landscape
which come fast and furious in the beginning of twenty

(04:37):
twenty five. All right, thanks for listening to this Soul
and Science mini podcast, and we'll see you next time.