Ad execs are now working as Trump tariff policy translators for advertisers

So Dept adapted. Less about campaigns, more about contingency. A team of Trump policy interpreters helping clients contort their way through the chaos. They’re working along two tracks: with marketers based in the U.S. and with those outside it looking to sell into the country — each facing a different set of questions and a shared sense of uncertainty.

“Really, it’s a think tank of strategists from across the business who we’re making available to clients with problems or questions they want advice on,” said Andrew Dimitriou, Dept’s global chief client and growth officer.

And the questions haven’t stopped. Clients want answers — and fast. Questions like: 

If they’re facing a 10% hike in logistics costs, for instance, can they pass that along to consumers — or just a portion of it? And if that means losing volume, can they make it back elsewhere? These trade-offs affect profitability, which in turn affect how much they’re willing to spend on advertising. That’s why media budgets for the second and third quarters remain in flux. No one’s quite sure how hard the disruption will hit shoppers — or how deep they’ll be willing to dig into their wallets. 

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The answers to these questions won’t be definitive — at least not yet. The crisis is evolving unevenly, too fluid to pin down. For now, marketers are in a holding pattern: recalibrating against the announcement, not yet reacting to the fallout.

“With some of our brands, we’ve started thinking through scenarios and are fine tuning plans going back two months, whereas for others we’re in a spot where we’re having alternative plans with no major shifts,” said Gene Turner, president, chief global client officer at Horizon Media. 

At times like this, marketers prioritize flexibility — and agencies are adjusting accordingly. They’re negotiating on clients’ behalf to build more flexibility into media deals: shorter cancellation windows, dynamic pacing and a shift toward platforms where spend can be dialed up or down in near real time. Understandably, few are eager to lock themselves into long-term deals they might regret.

“Marketers are spending less money in longer-term, upfront-type commitments, and more on shorter term, cancelable, biddable marketplaces,” said Dave Campanelli, president of global investment at Horizon Media. 

That shift was already underway but the pandemic helped crystallize it. Now, the tariffs are reinforcing just how precarious long-term planning can feel.

At the same time, the scale of the disruption is surfacing opportunities that may be too big for any single advertiser to capitalize on — which is why Horizon Media is leaning more heavily on principal-based deals, where the agency can step in, take advantage of the scale and pass that value back to clients. It’s another form of flexibility just at the opposite end of the spectrum. 

Because at the heart of the confusion is a familiar problem: marketers don’t even know what they don’t know. Despite being labelled “reciprocal”, the tariffs are based on trade deficits not actual trade barriers, leaving marketers unclear on whether this is really a negotiating tactic or a long-term policy shift. That ambiguity alone has been enough to stun marketing teams into a strategic pause as they come to terms with the fact that the president, it turns out, is not playing 4D chess.

“We had one client ask us what would happen if we paused all media for the rest of the year,” said a senior ad exec, who agreed to talk candidly about how their clients are responding to the tariff hikes in exchange for anonymity. “We’re like, whoa, OK, we’re in April.”

If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s because these are not normal times. As markets slide and uncertainty takes hold, companies are beginning to face a hard truth: they’re likely going to sell less stuff. And if they’re selling less stuff, will they really need to advertise as much? 

That’s one of countless questions Tyler Goldberg and his team are working through right now. As the head of Assembly’s in-house political strategy group, launched five years ago, he’s advising both political clients looking to make tariffs a campaign flashpoint and commercial advertisers trying to navigate the secondhand effects of policy decisions not built for them, but very much capable of reshaping their businesses.

“The tariffs are a political disruption — that’s what we’re telling clients in conversations and through our thought leadership program,” said Goldberg.

What he’s getting at is this: marketers today don’t have the luxury of treating politics as background noise. The disruption is hanging how brands interpret consumer behavior altogether. This is a world, after all, where economic sentiment doesn’t always line up with purchasing power. Where income no longer predicts how people feel about the economy — or what they’re willing to spend.

“If you’re a marketer whose primary demographic skews more liberal in the U.S. then maybe it’s time to start preparing for the fact that this population is going to be predisposed into thinking the economy is bad,” said Goldberg.

It was one of the defining lessons from the 2022 midterms. And this time around, Goldberg is telling clients: don’t forget it.

“Every advertiser says they want to be the most informed in their space but there’s no way they can do it today unless they’re taking into account potential political disruption,” said Goldberg. 

None of this means agencies are pivoting into economic forecasting or policy consulting. They’re not trying to predict President Trump’s next move. What they are doing is reading the signals. In this environment, it might be the only competitive edge left.