JWT’s AnxietyIndex is designed as a place to discuss how brands and consumers are responding to the global recession. With daily content updates, AnxietyIndex.com includes contributions from around JWT’s network, offering a truly global perspective.
We’re all well aware of how demoralizing unrealistic depictions of beauty can be for women, since we’ll never be as flawless as the airbrushed and Photoshopped images we see everywhere. This is one reason behind some of the startling statistics about women and self-image—for example, one study (cited by Dove) found that only 4 percent of women feel they’re beautiful. Two new campaigns are encouraging women to take an active role in shifting the status quo.
Dove has been a longstanding opponent of unrealistic imagery, with its “Campaign for Real Beauty.” In the campaign’s latest iteration, the personal care brand undertakes an “Ad Makeover” on Facebook, aimed at eliminating negative marketing messages that play on women’s insecurities. A Dove app allows women to replace these taunting ads with feel-good messages such as “The perfect bum is the one you’re sitting on.” Dove is also offering the opportunity to be featured on a living billboard as part of its Show Us Your Skin promotion; women can upload photos that will be projected in bustling Times Square and on Dove’s websites.
Athletic brand Under Armour is also on a mission to showcase more positive images of womanhood, with its “What’s Beautiful” campaign. As an Under Armour marketing exec told Marketing Daily, “What we get really frustrated with is advertisers who talk about beauty in terms of how you look, not what you are made of.” In a manifesto spot that shows women athletes working hard, the voiceover proclaims that it’s time to take power back “from the marketers who want us to look Photoshopped, from the magazines who want us topless, from the people who think we should be happy just the way we are.”
These marketers, along with some others such as Thailand’s Oriental Princess, stand out in a category that has historically relied on generating anxiety in women. Taking the opposite approach, these messages give power back to women, helping them to feel more comfortable in their own skin and begin redefining what it means to feel beautiful and sexy.
Dating is fraught with anxiety, especially when someone seems to suddenly lose interest, leaving the spurned party wondering what they did wrong or what they might have done differently. To help daters gain closure, learn from their mistakes and adjust their behavior going forward, Australia-based WotWentWrong is a free Web app that sends a feedback request to a former date or partner on the user’s behalf. The recipient can select from multiple-choice answers and has the option to type in additional explanations as to how things went awry. To encourage people to respond, the app shares the requester’s own assessment of the ex on several key attributes, so there can be a mutual exchange.
While the answers may ultimately add anxiety to the dating process for some users, those who are open to frank criticism may be able to stop repeating bad habits and become more successful in the dating game. Online dating services have always focused on the perfect match rather than helping the user become better at dating or relating. This tool bolsters those services by adding a new value with the potential to alleviate consumer anxiety in a meaningful way. With today’s consumers seeking out more tangible forms of value from the brands they spend time with, watch for smart marketers to take inspiration from these sorts of offerings.
The recent start of the National Hockey League playoffs, caused a great deal of buzz around the Toronto Maple Leafs. Not on the ice—the Leafs missed the playoffs for the seventh straight year—but in the form of a full-page apology letter to the fans, taken out in all the Toronto papers on the same day. The chairman of the team’s board assures fans that their passion and loyalty are not taken for granted, acknowledges that the team’s performance was “unacceptable,” and says the organization makes no excuses for the disappointing results.
There’s great deal of anxiety around this team on all levels. It was a dreadful season, and fans are angry. But if consumer anxiety makes wallets tighten, somehow the Leafs have found a way to split the defense. Games are always sold out; TV revenue is through the rafters. High consumer anxiety = continued loyalty? A lot of businesses would love even a little bit of that Toronto Maple Leaf “magic touch.” While most businesses will never have it as good as the Leafs, there’s something to be said for adopting practices that allow for greater transparency and a sense of humility. They can bring a much-needed level of respect to customer relations—no matter what business you’re in.
Economic recovery in the U.S. has been slow going, and some brands are responding to unsettled consumer sentiment by playing up tried-and-true American values and the country’s enduring pioneer spirit. We’ve talked about Levi’s campaign centered on the struggling town of Braddock, Pa., and spotlighted Chrysler’s Jeep Grand Cherokee work, both of which exuded optimism and empowerment during a difficult time. Chrysler is sticking with that theme in four new spots—for the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram models—that build off the “Imported from Detroit” campaign launched during the 2011 Super Bowl and the epic “It’s Halftime in America” Clint Eastwood spot that followed in this year’s Super Bowl.
The latest spots continue with the theme of battling adversity, showing everyday Americans overcoming the odds and forging a new way despite persistently difficult economic conditions—all from the seat of a car in the Chrysler family. In particular, the Ram spot has a quiet simplicity and understated resonance. The VO is a wife leaving a supportive message for her husband, who has been hard at work to keep their little family afloat, yet she could be speaking to all of America, inspiring everyone who’s struggling. The end line, “This country can’t be knocked out with one punch,” reinforces this message, but for the nation rather than the individual.
The times still seem to warrant a “Fight against adversity” strategy. Recovery is said to be on the horizon, and a message infused with American values could be just the thing to help get consumers there.
Scion, the Millennial subculture car brand, has a new tagline in Canada: “Made by Toyota. Customized by you.” Really? It wasn’t that long ago that Toyota’s name was in the public opinion trash can, mired with quality control problems. You’d think that with Scion, they’d see an opportunity to distance this sub-brand from the parent company. In fact, when Scion launched here in 2010, a low point for Toyota, most people had no idea who made the car; on scion.ca, you have to dig really deep to find any relationship to Toyota. So for Scion Canada to leverage Toyota’s “street cred,” there’s only one logical conclusion: Consumer anxiety around Toyota has been kicked to the curb and left behind.
From boosting local retail outlets with Cash Mobs to advocating for an entire national economy, the DIY ethos seems to be coming out in full force lately. Launched in February by a team of Greeks across the globe, Up Greek Tourism is a private grassroots campaign to help boost tourism to the economically ravaged nation. “Governments are trying to find solutions, but we as individuals should not wait. We need to help ourselves,” says one lead fundraiser in a YouTube plea for donations. In just 20 days, the team was able to raise $20,352 on Loudsauce.com from 333 people, surpassing the initial goal of $15,000.
The funds were used to secure an electronic billboard in New York City’s Times Square for 30 days. The ad, designed by Greek designer Charis Tsevis, displays a montage of iconic Greek tourist destinations to tempt passersby into booking a Greek holiday. Just as we saw during the Great Recession, anxiety is stimulating proactive responses among consumers and citizens who are feeling let down by big institutions. Rather than accept defeat, some are taking economic matters into their own hands with the mindset that change is possible and that many small efforts can combine to help turn things around, whether on a local or a global level.
Unless you’re under the age of 10, you probably don’t want the words “pink slime” describing something you’re about to eat. That’s why millions were outraged when they learned that this ammonia-treated beef filler is commonly found in meat at fast food joints and in many grocery outlets (no surprises here)—creating a PR nightmare for companies that have had dealings with this icky ingredient. Meanwhile, slime-free brands are reassuring customers that their beef products are safe.
Late last month, Wendy’s took out full-page newspaper ads across the U.S., clearly stating, “We’ve never used ‘pink slime’ and we never will,” placing the burger chain in a league apart from McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell (which all announced plans to discontinue pink slime earlier this year). In the grocery category, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market put out a similar message on its website (“At fresh&easy, we have never, would never, and will never use ‘pink slime’ in our ground beef”). The chain took the message a step further by hosting a “swap meat” on March 28, allowing shoppers to trade in up to two pounds of ground beef from another retailer for a package of Fresh & Easy brand meat.
As transparency becomes the expectation rather than the exception in the food category—and as consumers grow increasingly anxious about food quality—brands that can clearly illustrate safety and purity will continue to gain ground over those with suspect ingredients.
With local economies across the globe still in the gutter, civic-minded citizens are coming up with creative ways to inject some cash into small retailers. Back in 2009, the 3/50 project started asking Americans to pick three locally owned stores that they wanted to see survive the recession and spend $50 a month at them. Cash Mobs, the latest iteration of this idea, involves well-intentioned shoppers “mobbing” local retailers.
Consumers can nominate a small business in their town for a Cash Mob by contacting the owner. From there, Cash Mob organizers encourage their Facebook, Twitter and other networks to patronize the store en masse at the appointed date and time. Mobsters commit to spending at least $20, “to give the business owner a little bit of economic stimulus,” as the Cash Mob website puts it. Retailers report that the mobs can boost a day’s sales by two or three times, according to theInternational Business Times. After starting in the U.S., the movement is spreading—last Saturday was International Cash Mob Day, and nearly 200 mobs were reported around the world.
“There is no science to it, and there are also no hard and fast rules,” Cash Mob’s organizer told Reuters. Consumers are increasingly taking an improvised, DIY approach to improving the economy—frustrated by slow progress and losing faith in big institutions—and using the organizing power of social media to bring about community change on their own. Brands can help drive these efforts, as American Express is doing with Small Business Saturday, for example. Indeed, our research found that 79 percent of respondents in a survey we conducted wish a brand or company would make a substantial investment to improve their local community. At a time when CSR and more traditional marketing efforts are meshing, such projects present ways for big brands and corporations to show that they care and are tapped into the needs of the local communities in which the operate.
These days, consumers look at financial services and insurance companies with anxiety and hesitation. There’s a lingering mistrust, and the standard endorsement seen in financial advertising is no longer enough to win over the hearts and investments of consumers. What could resonate more?
We recently posted about Esurance’s socially driven approach, which encourages potential customers to check out feedback from the insurance provider’s policyholders on Facebook. Finnish insurance company If is taking this idea a step further, with a microsite, Kysy Vaikka! (Just Ask!) that makes available around 800 existing policyholders during business hours to talk with potential customers. As described by Springwise, the site also features video messages from 10 customers, recorded on home webcams, who describe the benefits of being an If policyholder.
Other types of marketers are also experimenting with “fan-sourcing,” and there’s a company, Needle, that specializes in setting up sales platforms that tap into a fan base. For example, one Needle client is headphone and apparel brand Skullcandy, which hires existing customers to answer shoppers’ questions online. Making customer opinions more direct, with the brand providing little more than a platform, lends much of the power of word-of-mouth to the recommendation. And if the feedback isn’t uniformly enthusiastic, it only reinforces how transparent the brand is being, which in turn can forge greater trust.
A sense of nostalgia and desire for simpler times may be prevalent on the big screen, as we noted recently, but it’s also very palpable on the small screen. As with many of this year’s Oscar nominees, this hints at Americans’ desire for escapism—but in this case, it’s escapism to a magical world rather than to the past. From NBC’s Grimm, a supernatural crime show, to ABC’s Once Upon a Time, a drama populated by characters from fairy tales, the current TV lineup is laced with the mythical, magical and surreal.
What’s most interesting is that these shows aren’t just pure fantasy; they combine the fantastical with the contemporary world, for more relatable scenarios. Also interesting is the underlying lessons on morals and values ingrained in the stories. Is this a way to reintroduce a core set of values to an audience that’s been looking for guidance during anxious times? A fairy-tale world where consumers can not only escape but also learn something valuable—lessons to be applied back in the real world to help them reset—could be just the answer. We’ll soon see whether the fairy-tale world proves successful on the big screen, with two Snow White-themed films, Julia Roberts’ Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsmen with Kristen Stewart.
