In many categories, if you wait too long to increase your prices, you’ll be hit with rising costs without a corresponding increase in your own prices.

While airlines are able to change prices dynamically, most producers of, say, consumer packaged goods are not. So if a company such as Kimberly-Clark wants to change the price of its Kleenex products, it could certainly do so—but it can easily be three months or six months before that price increase shows up at the shelf.

Brands and brand managers must learn to embrace the more inflationary environment.

Inflation gives you the flexibility to do a lot of things. 

It’s not particularly fun to brainstorm ways to cut back your marketing budget year after year. It’s far more invigorati...