Some marketers are responding to the current economic downturn and consumer fear, by softening their marketing campaigns.
This isn’t anything new, of course. Whenever we’ve had tough times in the past, marketers have instinctively turned to reviving nostalgic advertising to reconnect consumers with happier days and associations. Or they’ve sought to comfort us with images of family, hearth and home. Translation: warmth, safety, the implied promise that everything’s going to be okay.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article: “Marketers Take a Softer Tack to Reach Uneasy Consumers,” a number of new marketing campaigns are being rolled out to comfort frazzled, retrenching consumers.
In one effort at soft marketing, Pillsbury has launched a new campaign dubbed: “Home is Calling.” Multi-media advertising depicts people of all ages clicking their heels and wishing to return home to eat with loved ones. Juliana Chugg, Pillsbury’s president: “This campaign is an opportunity for us to represent hope in a time when people are feeling scared. To be able to connect home and values like safety, security, warmth and love at home really resonates.”
Other campaigns noted in the article:
* MasterCard advertising depicting hugs, smiles and shared happiness as a family departs on a trip.
* Ragu depicting its value–the ability to help moms prepare meals on tight budgets–while emphasizing family.
* Ikea’s new tagline–”Home is the Most Important Place in the World”–emphasizes the joys of living in the home vs having possessions inside the home.
* Toys “R” Us has revived its ageless campaign–”I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys “R” Us kid.”
* Johnson & Johnson’s famous jingle–”I am stuck on Band-Aid brand cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me”–has likewise come back on the air.
Questions:
* Do you think consumers will respond to these marketing campaigns that trigger nostalgia or warm feelings with more than a smile? Do you think this will prompt consumers to go out and buy during what promises to be a slow holiday selling season?
* How does this make you react, personally speaking?
* What campaigns are especially emotive or nostalgic to you from the past and present?
I’d love to hear from you.
Hi Ted, just a thought, it’s a great idea to tie the past “presumably a more stable and better time period” with the present – to help calm and assuage our customers. That said, perhaps a more aspirational message of “better/brighter days ahead” might also be a good option for some messaging. After all, it sure worked for Obama!
Not a bad idea, Paul. Tying in a bit of nostalgia with a hopeful view of the future might be just what companies need right now. Thanks for weighing in. I appreciate it.
Agree wholeheartedly with you, Ted. My family loved the idea of sharing (and cooking together) our favorite childhood comfort foods over the Thanksgiving holidays. Remember this one? “There’s something about a train that’s magic!”
Angie,
There is something soft and comforting about these kinds of pitches, isn’t there? The quote you cited is vaguely familiar, but I can’t place the marketing campaign it emanated from. Could you fill us in? Thanks, Angie, for weighing in.
Hi Ted. Love your posts though I don’t always comment.
I have to say though, this time Paul’s comment was quite insightful. I’m a much bigger fan of talking about the brighter future than I am about the nostalgic past. I just wonder what my customers would respond to best. I suspect it’s based more on personality than demographic.
Thanks for the kind words, Alison. I appreciate it. I think Paul said something very good, too. It’s human nature for us to cling to the idea of a warm, secure past in a nostalgic way when things are unsettled as they are at present. Having said that, hope for a better future is something we all yearn for, too. As with so many things, balance is important, isn’t it? So maybe there’s a way for companies to refer to the past and point to the future with confidence. . .you know, here’s where we’ve been and here’s where we’re going. . .How do you feel about that idea, Alison?
You’re welcome, just speaking the truth.
I’ve included my website this time because if you click over, you’ll see why this is a particularly relevant discussion for me today. There’s a picture of our founder with his best friend from 1977 and a message about longevity. We’ve had comments recently from new and previous customers alike, worried that we’d go out of business before we delivered their furniture. With furniture companies dropping like flies, it’s a reasonable concern, but an unfounded one in our case.
So now I’m wondering if we ought to edit it to include something a bit more forward-looking. Might it give the message a more positive spin?
I think this is may be just what’s needed right now, as Paul said, and it does certainly tie in well with the whole message that Obama has ridden to victory on.
When times are tough, people have always historically turned inwards, towards home. In interior design and fashion, this is even reflected in people investing more in their homes than external activities, and in darker, warmer, more “homey” and comforting kinds of colors being used.
The image of the “nest” as a place of safety and refuge is instinctive, I think, and ad campaigns such as these tap into that in the same visceral way that colors such as “tomato” and “spruce” and cozy materials such as mohair and dark woods do.
Wendy Hoechstetter, Allied Member ASID
Alison,
As Wendy so nicely states below: some businesses naturally lend themselves to the “nesting instinct” for consumers. “Safety and refuge” is important right now. That’s something your furniture business can market. How about adding the marketing idea that things will get better, and that you help consumers build their family lives in their most important and nurturing environments now and into the future?
At the same time: your business has a history and longevity it can point to. You can also market your furniture company as a trusted friend in helping consumers turn their houses into homes to raise families for many years now. . .how’s that for nostalgia?
Thanks for giving us insights into your particular business’s needs, Alison. I know you will do a good job of reaching your customers with the right balance of marketing messages.
Good points, Wendy, and I thank you for weighing in. You’ve tapped into something important here: marketing messages have to be couched in comforting, soothing language, but customers’ senses besides sight must be stimulated as well. Warm color and music in advertising spots, for example, appeal to us at a visceral level. In your business, you understand that well. Empathy creation between customers and businesses lead to loyalty–none of us should ever forget that. Marketers are ultimately in the business of forging relationships with customers, aren’t we?
Hi Wendy. Thanks for your insight. I had been thinking along those lines, but you articulated so well what was barely a glimmer for me. And are birds still so in or do you think they’re overdone now? We do more print than anything else and I’m having fun visions.
Also, I tried to subscribe to your blog feed, but it doesn’t appear to be working? It could be Bloglines so I’ll check again, but I wanted to let you know.
Thanks Ted. This has been really fun. Nice to know we’re not all in this alone right now!
You’re welcome, Alison. I think marketers in all sectors would agree: “we’re not all in this alone right now!”
?f people are worried about their future. They choose to keep away everywhere, except their home
Right, Gulin. Home, as Wendy pointed out, signifies safety and a refuge no matter how crazy the world gets. Maybe companies in other sectors: retail, hospitality and service businesses among them, ought to consider marketing themselves as another warm, welcoming port in a storm right now–that might encourage customers to come back to them, and spend some of that hard-earned cash they’re so loath to part with.
Ted, I followed a twitter post here and perhaps I am out of my realm , but I am “Jane Consumer” and I have some opinions that I would like to share. Paul mentioned Obama’s “better/brighter days ahead” and you stated that “tying in a bit of nostalgia with a hopeful view of the future might be just what companies need right now.”. From my perspective, while Obama’s message was one of HOPE, it was also, or more so, about CHANGE. Better and brighter doesn’t magically happen from hope. It happens from change. I, as a consumer, would like to skip the appealing to my sense of nostalgia, and see things a company is doing to change the situation. I am what is referred to as a “Generation Jones” and I would like to point out that I relate to the statement that your either part of the problem, or part of the solution. Personally I will identify and buy from companies that can show me that they are part of the solution, and since history is what got us where we are today, nostalgia is not the mindset I am looking for. Thanks for the space to voice my opinion.
You’ve made an interesting point, Laura, and I thank you for opining. Effective messaging in marketing is about content and timing. Right now, the majority of consumers are not buying anything. A soft approach and the reassuring that comes from nostalgia has usually worked well during tough economic periods.
To your point about change, many companies have begun moving in a hopeful, more positive direction. For example, I recently posted about Clorox’s launch of a line of green cleaning products. This is a total departure for a chemical company, isn’t it? By using their strong distribution channels and marketing clout, Clorox has done very well with its Green Works line. It has brought safe, effective, natural cleaners to more consumers in the bargain. I can see effective messaging with a product line like this. A return to the simple goodness of nature and hope in a future that is safer for us, for our children and for our planet due to a change in our thinking. Now we can widely access green cleaning products on the market. This kind of messaging has broad-based appeal for consumers seeking the simplicity of the past and consumers seeking hope through change like you, Laura.
Thanks for the kind words, Ted and Alison. Sorry for the delay in my reply; I just discovered your responses.
I confess I don’t know whether birds are going to be in or out. I think that pets and animal-related schemes will always appeal to a certain segment of the population, and if you’re talking real birds, interior design is very much heading in the direction of incorporating the needs of the family pet into the overall design of homes as more and people regard our furry and feathery friends as integral parts of the family.
I’m not much for predicting the latest hot style or trend anyways; I’m all about helping people discover and manifest their own style and needs, and what makes their own hearts sing in their homes and working environments. There are millions of products on the market, and custom design opens endless other doors, so I don’t find myself limited by trends, and I don’t pay nearly as much attention to them as others do. I encourage people to follow their own muses to create spaces that are timeless, that they’ll love just as well in 20 years as they do right now, and that’s different for everyone.
Very few people can afford to redecorate every time the trends change anyways, so this is a much more logical and cost-effective approach as well – and doesn’t leave people feeling as if they’re somehow behind the times every time something hot and new is unveiled.
Alison, thanks for the heads up that the RSS feed on my blog doesn’t seem to be working. I wasn’t aware of that, and I’ll look into it ASAP. I’m learning how to do these things as I go.
Wendy