John Gerzema is the co-author of the book, The Brand Bubble and gave a great talk on TED, where he outlines a barrage of great points, not exclusive to the fact that 80% of the US population was born after WWII, so in effect this recession is our “Great depression”, and the ethics of the connected life are affecting our identities as consumers. One of his slides focuses on a shift of consumers to de-leverage themselves (just as banks and companies are de-leveraging), so they are finding ways to do that paying by debit vs. credit (as a recent VISA study had found). “Declasse consumption” essentially is the new strategy meaning a more thoughtful approach to what is purchased, focusing on high quality or high value goods as opposed to quantity / popularity of goods/services.
What does this mean for the average brand or business? Focus on marketing yourselves to provide value to your customers. Frito Lay is used as an example by John Gerzema in that they found that most of their customers had more money at the beginning of the month as opposed to the end of the month (paycheck cycles), so they staggared their products offering larger bags of chips at the beginning of the month on store endcaps to match their customers’ budgets. Interesting way of thinking about product placement strategy.
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