Attempting to arrange for a restoration within the midst of a disaster might look like a luxurious. Certainly 17% of the companies from the HBR examine didn’t survive the recession interval.

But because the Bain examine concludes, corporations that struggled post-recession had usually “switched to survival mode, making deep cuts and reacting defensively.” That “survival mode” meant “that they later must spend far more than they saved in order to recover from their prolonged absence from the media landscape.”

“If your first reaction is to cut all costs, all people, all marketing,” cautions Tim Stewart of trsdigital, “you have fewer tools available for your remaining choices.”