The dawning age of thrift

My partner and I are regular restaurant goers. We’ll often quite decadently travel a not insignificant distance to go to a great restaurant, like for instance Eschalot in Berrima (a one and a half hour drive south of Sydney). Recently we’ve started to pull our horns in a bit by spending less per head. I’ve also noticed a distinct reduction in the number of empty tables at restaurants. I take this as a clear sign that the global recession has arrived in Australia.

People who overconsumed during the past decade are rejecting extravagant lifestyles. Following 9/11 when, in particular in the US, it became patriotic to shop and spend, people are now spending less and more wisely. The penny pinching is showing up in the numbers with personal consumption falling, exacerbated by huge consumer debt ($2.6 trillion in the US).

Which brings us to what John Maynard Keynes called the paradox of thrift. What’s good for the individual, argued Keynes, can ignite or deepen a recession. But that won’t deter the newly thrifty. It isn’t hard to hear the millions of those in debt exclaim, “I can’t help the economy, I’ve got to help myself”. Thrift has gone in and out of style over the years often sparked by recessions. Indeed the Great Depression marked many and their siblings for life. In the 1930s, it was typical for son’s to see their fathers out of work for years, perpetually hungry, scraping together a living. Those sons today, many who are now in their 80s and wealthy, shop with coupons, drive a Ford and take the subway rather than throwing away money on a taxi. Their baby boomer children grew up without psychological scars from the Depression. And the boomers’ children have come of age in an era of abundance, easy credit and a taste for luxury. “We want to build a culture that’s more hospitable to thrift, so it’s not seen as odd but fostered and nudged along,” says Barbara Whitehead, co-author of For a New Thrift: Confronting the debt culture, a new report from The Institute for American Values, a think tank.

As joblessness creeps up, many more will receive their own crash course in thriftiness. Some will spend more up front to reap savings over the next few years, like installing expensive but energy sipping light bulbs or solar panels. Some will switch from shaving cream to shaving soap – a relatively small saving per year but a sizable psychological benefit. People are learning the difference between necessities and discretionary spending. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is as applicable now as it ever was.

People are eating in more, buying more second hand clothes and turning the lights off when they leave the room. In late 2008, Booz & Co conducted a survey of nearly 100 households and found that 43% of respondents said they are eating at home more and 25% said they cutting spending on hobbies and sports activities. In both cases, most said they’d continue doing so even when the economy improves. Much the way the inexorable rise in petrol price have prompted many to forsake SUVs for smaller cars, the likely fall in home values and the size of consumer debt, will make consumers think twice about hitting the mall and lead, I fear to say, to a more lengthy contraction than some commentators would have us believe.

All Hail Fragmentation

As the years pass and you begin to see more candles than cake, is it not part of the human condition to become more philosophical about life, the universe and everything?

The trouble is that these days its damn hard to find the time to do this kinda stuff when us marketers are making it increasingly difficult to know yourself physically, let alone philosophically.

Like millions of other humanoids, I trudge along, with forlorn face and tail between legs, to the local ballbusting supermarket to do the weekly shop. I decided, in advance of my latest shop, to turn the trudge into something positive; to engage in and soak up the Woolies experience, and see what I could learn about myself. And so there I stood in the shampoo aisle - auto pilot switched off, flying on manual. By the time I got to the end of the aisle all that I knew about myself was that I knew less.

Apparently, there are 20 types of hair. Which category did mine fall into? What is dull? How lifeless is lifeless, how unmanageable unmanageable? Is greasy oiler than oily or is oily oiler than greasy? Did it need revitalising, enriching or conditioning? Did it need body?

I gave up; inertia had set in. I finally grabbed a Head and Shoulders that I’d used - I suppose quite successfully - before. But I swear next time I’ll go for that one with the PH balance and guacamole protein.

I moved on to toothpaste. Did I have sensitive teeth? How would I know? Were my teeth cruel, brutal even? How discoloured should my teeth be before special care should be taken to whiten them? How tender do my gums have to be before I need to take some special gunk to fix them? Did I need a pump action? Did I need to defeat Tartar?

The deodorants needed to know if I had mild or heavy perspiration. Well, I thought, it depends on the circumstances. Mmmm…I should go for the heavy to be on the safe side…but what if I have frivolous perspiration; will my pores snap shut and my impermeable body slowly swell with incarcerated sweat? Bath gel: if I go for the delicate version, what if the dirt refuses to budge?

Let us all rise and hail our new leader, Fragmentation, a term which loosely covers the seemingly inexorable disintegration and demise of mass market economics, social organisation, political stability and the nuclear family, the unified self, the nature and grounds of knowledge, and inevitably, the all-pervasive, disconnected arrays of vivid images generated by the increasingly hydra-headed media. As Walter (aka John Goodman) said in the movie, The Big Lebowski, am I wrong dude? Maybe, but you can’t argue that the fragmentation of markets into smaller and smaller segments, each with its compliment of carefully positioned products, is everywhere apparent. Even in the new car market you can have any colour, engine size, bodywork variant, trim level, sound system, safety features and optional extras you like. 20 years ago there were a few toothpaste brands, in Woolies I counted more than 30.

Paralleling the proliferation of products, and reinforcing the trend of micro-marketing, distribution channels and advertising media have multiplied. We’ve witnessed the rise of niche retailers that stock a narrow but in-depth assortment of specific product categories. We’ve also witnessed The Long Tail, a phrase first uttered by Chris Anderson to describe the niche strategy of businesses such as Amazon that sell a large number of items in relatively small quantities. In addition, the number of locational options has exploded with out-of-town outlet centres and retail parks, not to mention dedicated shopping channels and, of course, online shopping.

Advertising options have also burgeoned as a result of the proliferation of everything from local free-sheets and ‘lifestyle’ magazines targeted at specialist audiences to the web. Pay TV has contributed to the demise of broadcasting and the rise of narrowcasting, where highly focussed messages can be delivered to specific groups of people. There is more advertising space than ever before (think about your local hospital, airport or health club). Jameson’s predication, as set out in his 1985 work The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, of a ‘perceptual present’, a world of fleeting, fragmented images of hallucinogenic intensity, seems remarkably prescient. With proliferation come challenges for us marketers as it becomes ever more difficult to cut-through and get our brand messages across. There are some tricks you can employ, but I’ll leave that topic for another post.

Thx Herr Peemoeller

It may be un-eco-friendly, and I must say I don’t feel absolutely comfortable about this, but I like cars. My Dad is one of those practical-type Dads who given a few tools can repair just about anything. Just now he pulled the faulty driver’s seat out of his relatively new car and fixed it. I can remember many a time on a cold, winter’s morning begrudgingly handing him spanners and ratchets while he was under the hood graunching his knuckles.

I'm not interested in how cars work. I like to look at them and listen to them. I like to blow my hair back. And I like the thought that they are a means of escape; that they represent freedom and possibility. Thinking of cars as just a method to get from A to B is totally wrong.

My brothers also like cars. From Triumph Stags to Porsches, from Beemers to Jags. So it runs in the family – we like cars.

I thank the Lord then that Henry Ford ignored the “focus group” findings. As he put it, “If I had listened to my customers I would’ve invented a faster horse”.

But if there’s one thing I really dislike about cars then it’s car parks. Now I know they’ve come on a bit lately, but in the main they are piss-stinking, soulless, depressing, concrete-grey-ugly eye-sores. Not to mention the fact that they tend to bring out the worse in humanity, what with the parking space psychology swiftly leading to parking space fury.

And so it was with a more than a little pleasure that I come across this by designer Axel Peemoeller who has worked out the math to create, optically directional car park signage that appears to hang in the air. Found in the car park of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, there's no technowizardy here, just a man with a can of paint and a few severely skewed letters. The result: mindbending, v smart and surely a Eureka moment. Perhaps a car manufacturer that wishes to position itself as innovative could join up with Mr Pee to create these signs across all major car parks in Australia…Whatever, well done Mr Pee, and thx for making my car park experience just a little bit less painful.