Optimists are predicting a V-shaped economic recovery after
the Covid-19 crisis. This is unlikely. Henceforth many people will hesitate
before visiting shopping malls, will think twice about eating in restaurants
and forego airline flights where possible. Not all economic sectors will be
equally constrained but on average the V-shaped recovery will not happen.
Compounding the improbability of a V-shaped recovery is the
fact that at an aggregate level we are all poorer now. Many people have lost
incomes, many more have increased debt levels, and still more are dealing with
business closures.
Despite the optimist’s claims, trends show that the loss of
affluence in SA is not new. This trend, even while “lumpy” at times, has been
underway for a couple of decades. Research shows that white-collar wages have
declined in real terms over the past 10 years* while middle class growth has stagnated**.
Personal debt levels have inched inexorably higher, the residential property
market has stagnated and the precariat (those living precariously from day to
day) has mushroomed with our perverse cheerleading for the new entrepreneurial
class, the wastepreneurs.
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| Image from New York Times |
In this environment of diminishing discretionary choice is
it wrong to suggest that we are the emergent nouveau hunter-gatherers? Are we
not the 99 percenters with an ever-narrowing economic horizon? Whether we are
able to plan one day ahead or one month ahead we face similar limitations on
what we buy.
Choice is a luxury that poverty does not tolerate. In the
branded arena it means avoiding experimentation and the disappointment of
underperformance. We use price points as proof of diligence while acknowledging
silently that our money might just get us to month end when the cycle starts
again, but not always. This is the modern interpretation of a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle which is true for nine tenths of our time on earth as bipeds. But
with a little advertising thrown in.
Our recent branded past was significantly different. The
1970’s and 1980’s witnessed the emergence of truly inspired creative
advertising and with the birth of the Cannes Lions Awards, the advertisement
became the celebrated objet d’art. If ads were liked the brand was bought. A
simple straight-line correlation was in play with massive investment
underpinning the creation of brilliant brand vignettes used in media channels
you could count on one hand.
The industry rewarded creativity almost to the
exclusion of any other measurable marketing gain while globalisation peaked and
cheaply made goods flooded the freshly built western suburbia.
Delayed-cost economics was embraced with fervour and
dictated advertising best practice where the words of the late actress Carri
Fischer ring abundantly true: “Instant gratification takes too long.”
This is changing very quickly now. Covid-19 brings new marketing
challenges into stark relief. The time-tested mantra instructing brands to
maintain a share of voice during the crisis is questioned. What about brand presence?
Does the fact that your brand is in the store staring back at you with
commensurate devotion not count for anything during this crisis? Professor Byron Sharpe at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for
Marketing Science has made it clear that brand presence is critical - “showing
up” as he calls it. Similarly, what is the role of clutter-busting creative adverts
at a time most people just want to get to the end of the month in one piece
with some joy in assured regular brand performance?
The answers are not clear. Advertisers have used and
dismissed many insights on why people buy and how they relate to brands. The importance
of factors such as humour, relevant news, and liking have all proven to be
essential in advertising at one time or another. Most of these, however, were
underscored by a period of excess, of overconsumption and the cult of
consumerism.
Covid-19 might bring us closer to our genetically imprinted
forager roots. Marketing goals have morphed into the pursuit of engagement
rather than exchange, story rather than instruction, empathy rather than aspiration.
The brand, as an abstraction, is now a conversation and wider brand investment
extends to CSI, CRM, CTA, SEO, B2C, and so on.
The search continues for the advertising holy grail – the
thing that works best. In this time of declining affluence and risk aversion
the actual moment of purchase, the instant of selection, still offers scope for
marketing encroachment. At the point you choose one brand, the seduction by
another is most likely. It’s an instant when, as the hunter-gatherer, you might
pause and switch to another fruit. “In the moment” marketing invades this
instant with increasingly powerful technology. It explains why SEO is
important, why pop-ups work, why digital connected billboards are appearing and
why the measurement of attribution is more important than before.
At this time, albeit of crisis, marketers have a wider range
of tools and new frontiers to explore and develop their craft. It seems
unlikely that what worked well 30 years ago will work equally now. While ad creativity
was a pre-eminent goal in the past, the frontier has moved to media and tech.
These are the creative playgrounds of today as the luxury of surplus and choice
escape most consumers.
* Broll Research
** Professor Murray Leibbrandt, Southern Africa Labour &
Development Research Unit (Saldru) at UCT.
By Andrew Barnes - andrew@noted.co.za
By Andrew Barnes - andrew@noted.co.za
