Marketing in the grey zone: Finding agility amid tariff uncertainty

For global businesses—and by extension, their marketing teams—the potential of U.S. tariffs in 2025 doesn’t just signal a logistical reshuffle. It reshapes narratives, redefines margins, and remaps the emotional terrain of consumer behavior.

If this sounds like an overstatement, consider the marketer’s mandate: to build connection, drive growth, and respond—sometimes within hours—to seismic shifts that have nothing to do with a campaign calendar.

Tariffs are no longer abstract variables tucked into earnings reports. They are real-time, front-facing challenges that demand agility not as a virtue, but as a baseline.

So what does agile marketing look like in this era of economic grey zones? It’s less about pivoting reactively and more about designing systems that can flex without fracturing.

The challenge: Agility starts with planning, not rigid timelines, but scenarios. Marketing teams that once rolled out campaigns on tidy quarterly schedules must now map plans against political possibility. What if tariffs expand? What if a partner country retaliates? What if sourcing costs surge?

The opportunity: In this new normal, campaign creative must be modular, messaging adaptable, and media buys flexible enough to shift with short notice. It’s not about predicting the future; it’s about rehearsing it. 

Brands should consider switching from a static monthly campaign model to one built around modular assets, created in weekly sprints. This allows marketing to flex based on live stock levels, shifting margins, and evolving customer signals.
  
Media buying can follow the same logic. Spending adapts based on what’s available, not just who it’s aimed at. Creative and media people should talk daily, not because they are in crisis mode, but by design.  

This is also where AI becomes more than a dashboard. When tools can flag pattern shifts or anomalies, the real power lies in being able to act on that signal, without rebriefing three layers of teams or rewriting assets from scratch.

The challenge: There’s a quiet myth in corporate culture that marketing sits downstream from the “real” operational decisions. But in a tariff-challenged economy, effective marketing is entangled with the rest of the business. Is inventory tight due to supply snags? That affects promotion cadence. Is the finance team repricing SKUs weekly? That touches brand perception.

The opportunity: We’ve seen some clients cut campaign waste by double digits simply by ensuring media spend follows stock availability, not pre-set plans. Others have embedded dynamic pricing messages at the creative level, so a promotion updates in real time, not a week later. 

The marketers who thrive now aren’t just brand stewards—they’re liaisons, sitting at the center of logistics, legal, finance, and customer support. Agility requires proximity to the decisions that shape the customer experience long before an ad goes live.

The challenge: Data, long the marketer’s co-pilot, must now become a radar. Real-time analytics aren’t just helpful—they’re critical. 

The opportunity: Whether it’s search trends that hint at rising concern over product availability or engagement dips following a price adjustment, marketing needs to listen differently. This is less about dashboards and more about mindset: the willingness to pause, reroute, and act on live signals rather than quarterly KPIs.

For example, we worked with global home and office furniture brand MillerKnoll to build a new data platform as the “single source of truth” to support its three core data products. Custom dashboards gave them a picture of retail and contract sales across their suite of products, as well as all email and social media marketing activity and results. Our data science team also created a machine learning model that could predict what customers would be more or less likely to make additional purchases in the future. This analysis identified roughly 45,000 email addresses and $90 million cross-brand revenue potential for MillerKnoll.

Another client, who has many SKUs and a highly seasonal business, has identified the sales of core products—the ones that sell well in any season—as bellwether metrics for overall consumer sentiment. They’ll track these sales more closely as an indicator of potential volatility that could otherwise be masked by the many other variables in their business.

The challenge: When customers are caught in the ripple effects of geopolitics—delayed shipments, higher prices—they don’t just want resolution; they want to be treated like adults. 

The opportunity: Brands that communicate openly about why changes are happening and how they’re responding are better positioned to retain trust.

Despite posting a 7 percent rise in global revenue for the first quarter of 2025, French luxury brand Hermès, sensed a softening pulse in the American market. In response, the brand made a rare public pivot: it will raise prices across its U.S. offerings come May 1st, a move layered atop its usual annual adjustments.

The company chose transparency over discretion, articulating its rationale with clarity.

This isn’t a new idea, but it becomes urgent in times of ambiguity. Vagueness erodes brand equity. Clarity—tempered with humility—restores it.

The challenge: In the 2010s, optimization was king: squeeze every cent from a channel, every click from a creative, every conversion from a landing page. But as external shocks become more frequent, resilience now outpaces efficiency.

The opportunity: Diversification—of markets, suppliers, channels, and even audiences—is the marketer’s version of a pressure valve. Those who plan for multiple pathways, even if some are more expensive upfront, are better prepared for the next swerve.

For example, one of our clients is considering raising prices in North America and exploring whether focusing on other markets might be better. Some lower funnel campaigns have been canceled in the US, but the overall directive is still to drive business growth in North America as long as the numbers continue to perform well. They are aware that things may shift due to the uncertainty surrounding tariffs and will continue to adjust their strategy and marketing spend as needed.

Another global retail client, which had deeper investments in key regions as a long-term item on their roadmap, is now prioritizing their investment in these regions over the US. They’re turning what was their future opportunity into today’s priority as a way to create a better-balanced business.

Agility in marketing isn’t a feature. It’s fast becoming the foundation. 

Navigating the complexities of U.S. tariffs requires marketers to be proactive, collaborative, and adaptable. By embracing scenario planning, fostering cross-functional collaboration, leveraging real-time data, communicating transparently, and exploring diversification, marketing teams can maintain agility and drive success despite uncertainties.