As we approach 2024, the marketing industry – and brands in particular – finds itself at a daunting intersection, created by three generation-defining dilemmas.
We are currently in the middle of the worst economic crisis in 15 years, which has naturally led to a global cooling in consumer spending and business investment. This comes hot on the heels of the biggest global pandemic in 100 years, which has irrevocably changed customer habits and the very foundations of the ways in which they interact with brands.
Thirdly, Gen Z is rapidly approaching economic maturity – with its older members pushing 26 – and brands need to adapt fast if they wish to tap into this highly fickle and unrelentingly savvy cohort.
So, what can brands possibly do to cope in times like these? While appetites might lean towards a tightening of the belt, time has proven that sustaining – or even increasing – investment at the darkest of times is what helps solidify and ultimately protect brands from these hardships.
Speaking to Marketing Beat at Frontify’s Paradigms brand experience summit in Lisbon last week, the agency’s global chief commercial officer Rebecca Rosborough believes that it’s all about “sustainable growth”.
“Brand building will ultimately weather the storm of recessions and pandemics because you’re building equity over a longer period of time. It’s a really important moment for businesses to think about long term investment,” she says, adding that she’s been in many meetings with founders and CEOs who want to see “immediate results”.
“That’s really important, but ultimately those results will only be short term if you don’t actually build a brand on the longer term, along with the halo effect that that brings.”
For brands actively seeking to invest, there is certainly still an appetite for consumer spending among the masses.
Naturally, the pandemic has dimmed certain excesses, but a broader general trend has been unlocked by the privations of the pandemic. Despite the recession, the public’s hunger for going out and experiencing the world has become insatiable – when they can afford it, of course.
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Brands and marketers are certainly catching on to this, with an unmistakable uptick in experience-based marketing, in which the consumers can have direct participation.
“If you look at Gen Z, experiences are what they buy into, they don’t care about ‘stuff’ and there’s a certain counterculture to it,” Rosborough says.
“So when you’re looking at that younger age group, building those experiences and finding ways they can experience them should actually be the top priority for consumer brands.”
Tying this desire to experience a brand and interact with it is at odds with the traditionally transactional relationship between business and consumer, but when viewed through the prism of a global pandemic, it makes perfect sense.
“I think that’s something that will continue to grow, especially because of the pandemic as we were stuck inside for so long,” Rosborough muses.
“Suddenly you realise how important it is to go to the restaurant, to just go out and live. That desire has expedited vacation sales massively over the last few years, for example.”
Within that potential spending surge should lie the key to a brand’s long-term strategy. No matter how hard the situation becomes, customers will always look for an escape from the mundane and be willing to spend their hard-earned money, if they deem it worth their while.
“I think it’s caused people to really take stock about what’s important, and it’s not necessarily about stuff, it’s about life and experiences,” Rosborough concludes.
This certainly reflects one of the key themes of the Paradigms summit: tapping into emotion through creativity. Brands must look to create emotional connections with their consumers – to make themselves simultaneously desirable and unavoidable.
Only solid investment and a focused, long-term strategy that taps in to the ever-changing needs of the consumer will ensure that brands stay afloat on this whirlwind of post-pandemic uncertainty.
