As global branding and retail
professionals, we are today
first-hand witnesses, and
beneficiaries, to the postmass consumerist age taking shape before us.
For our calm, icy-cool and god-like predecessors; the advent of mass production brought them the miraculous world
of plenty-and the absolute necessity of
mass branding and marketing to ward off
the threat of mass commodisation.
“TODAY YET AGAIN WE ARE CALLED
AS MARKETERS TO WARD OFF THE
THREAT OF COMMODISATION. “
But this time our tried-and-tested communication tools are failing us.
OUR ERA:
OURS TO
SOLVE
A CRY IN THE FLUX
OF SIMULATION
All this the result of our growing awareness that all information, as well as the
messages we send out, have become
regarded at best, cheap and at worst,
distrusted and unloved. Confidently
equipped with “genuine” opinions to
guide choice–consumer purchase judgements on what is considered “fair value”
has radically shifted.
Today, whether one fashions a pair of
shoes or a can of pasta--the average city
dwelling consumer will probably
be assessing our creations in terms of
design-technique, ingredient provenance
and the process of its production.
But what we are witnessing is not just
a call for greater transparency or just a
trend towards sustainability and naturalness, but also A GENUINE CRY FOR
HELP from our consumers.
It is a plea for relief from what the Economist calls “the tyranny of choice”. But
today what we face is the emergence of
the additional “TYRANNY OF OPINION”.
“
Simply put, what consumers want today is the assurance that the products
they are being offered are
genuinely good for them.
Not by more marketing nut from being able to GET
A SENSE OF THE REAL.
What some consumers are already waking up to is this FURTHER CONFUSION
BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE CONSTANT
STREAM OF MIND-BOGGLING CONFLICTING-GENUINE/UNREAL- SOCIAL
RECOMMENDATIONS on the social networks and reviewing systems that we can
no longer ignore or dismiss as electronic
spam. It is what the previous Pope--the
Vatican has been a keen social barometer--identified (as quoted by the New
York. Times, 2011) that in an age of digitized voices and personalities: “inevitably
poses questions not only of how to act
properly, but also about the AUTHENTICITY OF ONE’S OWN BEING.” And on ths
point, even the agnostic, left-wing intelligensia agree. Edward Docx, the associate editor of Prospect magazine, wrote in
2011 how because the online world had
become our social reality, there is today:
“a universal yearning for some kind of offline authenticity. (and that) we desire to
be redeemed from the grossness of our
consumption, the sham of our attitudinising, the teeming insecurities on which
social networking sites were founded
and now feed. We want to become reacquainted with the spellbinding narrative of
expertise.”
Ours is the era of the
ever-changing and fragmenting, trans-nationalhyper-local consumer
segmentation; that for a
fee some research consultancies today even
provide us access to as
“living” digital avatars.
The era of offshore
built-to-order manufacturing, 3D printing
and RFID-enabled
automated inventories
mechanically beating to
the throbbing 24-7 digital heartbeat of internet
commerce. An age of
seductive hyper-transparency that results in
data overload and informational nonsense.
Of entertaining, meaningful and helpful marketing communication
rather than ephemeral
slogans; Of savvy-cynical consumers-citizen
connoisseurs- cosmopolitans- social packleaders- demanding
more from brands.
And then some, more.
VOICE #1 p.3