Hot Recession Marketing

 - 19th October

Some hot new research findings concerning attitudes to recession marketing have just been released by Adweek. Working with Harris Interactive, the surveyed over 2000 adults in the US at the end of September, looking to find you what consumers think about adverts that talk about the recession.

Convention means that marketers seek to empathise with their target audience and they use this empathy as the basis for their marketing communications. In tough financial times, a shortage of money will be a topic that is at the forefront of the minds of many consumers. Hence there is a strong draw to talk about the recession when marketing to people.

However it is difficult to know how people will react to an overt use of the "hard times" message. If you are comfortable with a subtle marketing approach, then you can change your mix to appeal to the fact the people are more cost and value conscious and that they will seek out more deals. However, if you are compelled to use a stronger and perhaps more differentiated marketing message, then this survey can give you some useful insights into how your marketing messages might be received.

In descending order,

 - 39% of people had no opinion about adverts mentioning the recession.

 - 27% say these adverts make the brand seem more manipulative if they mention economic troubles.

 - 23% say they make the brand seem more realistic.

 - 12% say the adverts are depressing and make them less likely to purchase

 Looking in more detail at how this data breaks down by types of consumer you can see big difference by sex, age, income bracket and educational backgrounds.

- men see these adverts as more manipulative than women(29% v 25%).

- women are more likely to see adverts as more realistic (27% v 18%).

- lower income responders see the adverts as more depressing and make them less likely to purchase the brand (16% v 8%).

- higher income responders are more likely to see the brand as manipulative.

- those from 3rd level education are more likely to have an opinion than those with 2nd level education.

Overall the message is that you must quote the recession in your marketing communications with caution because you risk being viewed as manipulative or depressing. There is some useful data in the study on how different audience types will react, but no matter what your marketing demographic, this does seem to be a high risk route to take, so our advice would be to avoid it.

This article is the property of Markmedia, a Level3 Consulting brand.

Tags:marketing recession market research economy consumer