Dr Pepper says that those who spend more on ads get out of the recession stronger

Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. is risking a different approach to the recession than other major advertisers: boosting its marketing budget, saying that's what worked best in the last big downturn.

 Company executives said they decided on the strategy after research firm Nielsen produced a study for them that detailed ad spending patterns during the early 1980s, the last prolonged advertising downturn. "We wanted to find out what were the brands that were successful in '83 and '84, coming out of the recession?" said Trebilcock. "What did they do differently than others during the middle of the recession? Uniformly, the thing that came back is they didn't retrench. They reinvested." Spending this year on everything from TV spots to print advertisements and more experimental Web campaigns will rise by up to 5 percent, the company's head of marketing, Jim Trebilcock, said in an interview. The company says its total marketing budget is about $300 million to $400 million. The upshot is "dollars this year from a marketing standpoint are actually increasing," he said. "We believe that if we invest now, then when we come out of this thing in a year or two we'll be in a much stronger position."