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.
After a year spent surveying brand and consumer response to the recession through our AnxietyIndex.com, we have released our top 10 brand lessons from the Great Recession.
“The Recession Handbook: Brand Lessons from the Great Recession” emerged out of the quantitative and qualitative research that we conducted during the downturn. Over the past year, we have tracked nearly 400 brand responses to consumers’ recession-related anxiety in 27 markets. At the same time, we have quantitatively measured the levels and drivers of consumer anxiety in 13 markets.
Our hope is that this will serve as a primer for future downturns, beyond simply making the case for maintaining or increasing brand spend during a recession. We believe our recommendations will hold up in recessions to come, helping brands better address the challenges that come with economic upheaval.
Our 10 brand lessons from the Great Recession:
1. Find your value voice.
2. Remove the risk from price.
3. Don’t shy away from tackling anxiety head on.
4. Leverage public sentiment.
5. Give consumers more control.
6. Provide a real service for consumers.
7. Inspire rather than empathize with consumers.
8. Return to the core value of hope.
9. Re-imagine how your products are sold.
10. Use the recession to achieve a higher goal.
BMW’s recent shift away from its longtime tagline “The ultimate driving machine” to “Joy is BMW” looks like a savvy way for the luxury brand to remain relevant to post-recession consumers. In a release, BMW marketing VP Jack Pitney explained: “All of our efforts in engineering, design and technology are about one thing, which is creating moments of joy” and said the campaign focuses on “sharing those moments in an upbeat, humanized and refreshing fashion.” In other words, a cool car isn’t an end in itself. The visuals reinforce this, with ads showing more people (real BMW owners) than vehicles.
The North American campaign, emphasizing that “what you make people feel is just as important as what you make,” is at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum from one focused on performance and engineering. Which is about right, considering that “People now want to lead a richer life, rather than a life of riches,” as Madelyn Hochstein of DYG, a market research firm working with BMW, told The Wall Street Journal. Still, consumers may see touchy-feely as too much of a stretch for BMW; “Germans? Joy? Hahahaha,” remarked one commenter on the auto blog Jalopnik.
One of the Super Bowl’s standout commercials was from Denny’s, with its recession-friendly “panicky poultry,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. The spots featured chickens— from Mount Rushmore to the Oval Office to outer space—screaming their heads off. Why all the screaming? Denny’s was announcing its second annual free Grand Slam breakfast this Tuesday. Since it includes two eggs, a whole lot of egg-laying would be necessary.
The ads declared, “Great day to be an American. Bad day to be a chicken.” It’s nice to hear that it’s good to be an American, especially in uncertain times like these. Denny’s message touches recession-minded viewers by lightheartedly suggesting, at least you’re not a screaming chicken.
The marketer that might have been most expected to at least tacitly address the recession was CareerBuilder, but its spot avoided serious undertones, portraying an office that takes casual Fridays too far, with employees running around in underwear. The site missed an opportunity to connect with job hunters and inspire them.
It’s well-known that consumers have been less loyal to name brands, switching over to private label in an effort to pinch pennies. They’ve been cutting corners anyplace they can, especially on items they’re going to throw away—like garbage bags.
When Hefty first came out with its Odor Block bags, it touted the bags’ ability to block the stink of garbage. Now, Hefty’s commercials have a twist: A woman wants her husband to throw out a trash bag that’s barely full because it stinks; her husband says, “That’s wasting money” and “Wasting money stinks.” So not only does garbage stink, but wasting money does too—and Hefty Odor Block protects against both! And does it with “new lower prices.”
This is smart thinking, killing two birds with one stone by adding value in consumers’ minds.
Louis Vuitton ads have long been synonymous with flash, featuring bold colors, images and celebrities like Madonna and Keith Richards. In what appears to be a step away from this tack, the luxury brand launched a campaign that is bold in its understated approach. At first glance, the print ad looks like a delicate Vermeer painting. It features a demure, angelic young woman in a darkened room, her hands and face lit in halos of light, hand-sewing a red leather wallet. Opposite the elegant image is copy that draws on the impeccable finesse that is executed by Louis Vuitton’s “craftsmen.” It goes on to say that details, like “five tiny folds,” make its products timeless and long-lasting.
In our trendletter last May on “The Recession and Its Impact on Luxury,” we wrote that, as consumers shy away from conspicuous consumption and ostentation, luxury marketers would play up “craftsmanship, heirloom appeal and the best materials.” This ad is an attempt to do just that, with its message of classic quality, attention to detail and long-lasting value.
However, luxury brands also need to take care in what they claim. As we talked about in Reading the Fine Print, one of our 10 Trends for 2010, consumers are now more than ever doing their homework before purchasing products, calling for transparency. In fact, according to BusinessWeek.com, Louis Vuitton does not make most products by hand, dismissing the aforementioned craftsmen. It may not suffice for consumers to read the concluding copy: “Let’s allow these mysteries to hang in the air. Time will provide the answers.”
In late 2008, we wrote in our “10 Trends for 2009” report that “The reality or the risk of money running short is a real incentive for consumers to find new ways of enjoying what they have and what they can afford. Rather than splurging on extravagant treats and ‘retail therapy,’ consumers will be cultivating simple pleasures as a more suitable and satisfying way to feel good.”
Allstate has been leveraging the theme of small pleasures for a year now (we wrote about a back-to-basics-themed spot last February). In a recent commercial, the insurer addresses this silver lining of the recession—a reassessing of priorities—in a poetic way. “In the last year we’ve learned a lot of lessons,” actor Dennis Haysbert intones. “We learned that meat loaf and Jenga can be more fun than reservations and box seats. And we learned that who’s around your TV is more important than how big it is. That cars aren’t for showing us how far we’ve come, but for taking us where we want to go.”
Getting to insurance, he goes on to say: “We learned that the best things in life don’t cost much. And at Allstate they don’t cost much to protect. So protect them, put them in good hands.”
Allstate continues to make its subtle “Good Hands” pitch (protecting these small things) seem genuine.
In our spring AnxietyIndex Quarterly report “The Genericizing of Brands” (downloadable from our Trends and Research section), we argue that tactics must be approached in a branded way—that brands must find a unique value voice. A recent Wendy’s commercial for the Deluxe Value Meal is a good example of that.
The commercial, a part of the fast food chain’s “You Know When It’s Real” campaign, shows two guys eating a burger combo meal. But while one has only a tiny plastic burger, fries and soda, the other is eating a real and satisfying lunch from Wendy’s. The man with the miniature version notes that his meal cost just $2.99, only to hear that the other guy paid the same low price.
In a downturn, consumers tend to search for smaller, cheaper options, and in response, most brands target price-driven consumers with basic offers, usually inferior alternatives to the “real thing.” Using an absurdist comparative approach, Wendy’s assures consumers that it’s not among those promising “less for less” and that customers need not make sacrifices in order to save.
Migdal Ohr is an organization that provides education and “social guidance” for Israeli kids from underprivileged or troubled backgrounds. With competition for donations particularly stiff in this downturn, it has found a unique approach to attract attention: While most communications for nonprofits focus on the importance of the cause and how the donation will help the needy, this campaign is about how the donation will affect the giver.
Sending the message that anyone can be a philanthropist, a humorous series of newspaper ads titled “Find the fairy godmother in you” shows unlikely types—a mechanic, a biker and a soccer fan—with fairy wings and a magic wand. Instead of asking the public for help, Migdal Ohr is helping the public by empowering just about anybody to express their inner angel.
“It Has to be Heinz” represents the brand’s biggest umbrella campaign in five years in the U.K. The latest spot shows a range of lighthearted situations that “just have to be” (“Men just have to gather around the barbecue,” “Mum has to call at exactly the wrong time,” etc.), ending with the line “And always, it has to be Heinz.”
Like most supermarket brands, Heinz has been bruised by competition from private labels as consumers trade down and cut costs. In response, the company has hiked its global marketing spend this fiscal year by 15 percent, and CEO William Johnson recently said Heinz will continue to increase its marketing investment through April.
Heinz is coming at this recessionary challenge from a strong position: Its ketchup “consistently appears as the brand that British consumers least want to give up, followed by Heinz Beanz,” according to Marketing columnist Mark Ritson. So while many supermarket brands have been boldly asserting their value in response to the private-label threat (as we’ve noted), Heinz is doing something different: It smartly turns its ubiquity in the British kitchen into its own kind of value and implies that giving up the brand is akin to going against the natural order of things.
A new campaign from Godiva focuses on “the golden moment” of eating a delicious piece of gourmet chocolate. Whereas in better times the brand essence revolved around “luxurious celebration,” one new aim is to play up the “emotional appeal of giving, sharing, eating Godiva chocolate,” Godiva’s Lauri Kien Kotcher told The New York Times. The print and outdoor ads feature black-and-white fashion shots of young British socialites experiencing moments of joy that are easy to identify with (a romantic embrace, laughing with friends, etc.).
We’ve noted that candy sales have spiked during the recession and that this is one indication of the recession-era appeal of simple pleasures (one of 10 trends we forecast for 2009) and small treats. Godiva’s shift in focus to emotional indulgence is a smart move in tune with today’s definition of luxury. Anxious consumers are looking for ways to squeeze more enjoyment out of what they can afford. Godiva is effectively increasing the pleasure/price ratio by providing consumers a means of feeling good without a high price tag. Instead, Godiva is encouraging consumers to derive more satisfaction from moments of simple delight.
“The Recession Handbook: Brand Lessons from the Great Recession” emerged out of the quantitative and qualitative research that we conducted during the downturn. Over the past year, we have tracked nearly 400 brand responses to consumers’ recession-related anxiety in 27 markets. At the same time, we have quantitatively measured the levels and drivers of consumer anxiety in 13 markets.
It’s well-known that consumers have been less loyal to name brands, switching over to private label in an effort to pinch pennies. They’ve been cutting corners anyplace they can, especially on items they’re going to throw away—like garbage bags.
Louis Vuitton
Photo Credit: JWT Israel
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