SCARE Them

Fear is a very powerful motivator.  In an economic downturn, people are particularly vulnerable.  Preying upon those fears is a food way to sell your product (questions about ethical considerations aside, perhaps).  To use fear, you need to understand individual's fears and how your product can solve those:

• Will I lose my job?
• Will I be able to buy groceries?
• Can I keep my house?
• What if something happens to me?  What will happen to my kids?
• Can I afford to buy that car?
• Should I cut-back my cable service?

Robert Bruce Donald in his article "Buying the Dream" wrote about advertising in Life Magazine:
"Another reaction within the advertising community was to insinuate guilt for products such as insurance, which, when not purchased, put family in an unreasonable situation in "these times"."

Russell Johnston in his article "Opportunity Knocks" wrote: "Many agents turned to fear campaigns to sell their goods, admonishing consumers not to let themselves get yellow teeth, bad breath, unsightly clothing, or a host of other socially disagreeable ailments that might lead to lost opportunities. For instance, in 1934, Gillette ran a series of ads for its Blue Blade line suggesting that men who were careless about their appearance were more likely to lose their jobs."

Advertising Lesson #5 from the Great Depression - Fear Sells.

 

The sun will come out, tomorrow

When you are in the depth of a financial crisis it is hard to believe thing will ever get better.  You have to know that they will.  They always do.
 
How long is a recession?  The average length of the ten recessions since World War II has been 10.4 months, with a range of 6 months in the 1980 to 16 months in the 1981-82 recession.  Of course, the big Depression is the thing that everyone worries about.  The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1941.  US GDP contracted by 28% between 1930 and 1932 and hit the bottom in 1933.  The Great Depression featured global impacts of massive bank and business failures, and crazy unemployment.  Not a fun time.

When a recession hits, adjust your strategy to the future.  Robert Bruce Donald looked at advertising in Life Magazine between 1936 and 1939, in his article "Buying the Dream"

… In truth it seems that 30s consumers must have needed to have one foot in a "dream world" of aspiration while one foot remained firmly on the planet, with the pendulum swinging toward the dream as the duration of the hardship lengthened.

In summary about the Great Depression:

What was illusion and what was fact?

Advertising twisted the message to serve an admittedly self-serving, yet useful purpose. Many of the products advertised were just beyond the reach of the consumer who read Life. That was absolutely as it should be and Life along with its advertisers knew it. Striving toward a better grade of whiskey, a smoother smoke, and even down the road perhaps a new automobile, served a very useful purpose: it reinforced the cultural imperative that if you were not climbing the ladder of success, you were not buying into the American Dream.

If you were not buying into the American Dream, weren't you just fooling yourself?

Advertising Lesson #4 from the Great Depression ... Remember that the economy and prosperity will improve.  When it does, you want to be sure that your products are top-of-mind and something for which your prospects have a yearning.  Give them something to need.

They still need to buy things ... make sure they are your things

Over on Profy.com, back in 2008, Svetlana Gladkova wrote “Are We Sure About Pending Collapse of Ad-Supported Internet?” 

Svetlana wrote a great story about the impacts of the depression on companies and how they responded to it.  Svetlana found that advertising remained a relatively healthy industry through the depression.  Why?  Given the very bad economy, why would companies continue to advertise?

Simple answer really when you think about it.  People still need things.  Those things may be pretty basic.  Those things need to be really cheap.  Those things must be the things you are selling.

The first thing to keep in mind is that people will not stop buying products that are essential to them. True, people will hardly buy luxury products when they need to make decisions on what is really important and what they could live without given limited resources. But that does not mean people will not buy anything at all - it simply means the focus will change for them. So the first conclusion is that we will obviously see less luxury brands advertised. But it does not mean that manufacturers of those essential products will stop advertising as well. What’s more, they will have to compete with each other for those scarce money people will have in their disposal.

What’s more, in a bad environment consumers will be actively looking for better deals to spend those scarce money wisely. And if a company can offer a better deal to a consumer, it should advertise this opportunity because if no one knows you have something better to offer when compared to your competitor, how will you manage to make consumers make a choice in favor of your product.

So ... Lesson #3 from the Depression is ... be a value-product and make sure your target market knows about your value through clear and concise advertising.

The dirty 30s and advertising your way through 2011+

Back in April 2008, Russell Johnston wrote a great article on "Marketing". The article - Opportunity Knocks - tells a great story about the horrors of the Great Depression, and the actions of advertisers.

At its worst point, in 1933, more than one in four Canadians was out of work and the average farm income dropped to less than half its peak from the 1920s.

... radio experienced phenomenal growth despite the hard economic times. From 1928 to 1933-the year before the crash to the depth of the Depression-the number of licensed sets in Canada almost tripled to 763,000. ... the actual number of sets might have been closer to one million ... Radio offered one winning advantage during the depression: once a set was purchased, the programs were free. If you could build a crystal radio, the sets themselves were free.

... the trick of radio advertising lay not in the medium itself but in the careful pairing of product with program.

Fast forward a few years (okay about 80 years), and here we are with more new media in our hands.  The web is getting old, and it is being quickly eclipsed by the small-screen  (a.k.a. the third screen) mobile browsing.  Is this the radio of our generation?  It's a great place to be (and generally pretty cheap) in this economic time.  There is also plenty of opportunity to pair with a product with a "program" - also known as an "app".

Lesson #2 from the Great Depression - Look for opportunities and be relevant.

How to advertise in 2011, based on lessons from the Great Depression – Public Relations

To understand the Great Depression and how it affected people, it is important to understand some of the psyche at the time. Travis Scott Luther, President of Luther Media wrote a really good piece a few years ago which described the economic climate:

During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, a backlash against corporate America gained more traction than the bull of the 20’s market ever had. Citizens displaced and bankrupted by the financial fallout of the markets came to call on government for strict regulation and oversight. …

Understanding the increased challenges they faced in earning not only the populations’ business, but their trust, corporations were forced to find ways to bridge the widening gap between themselves and the consumers they so desperately needed to continue to operate. Deconstructing a world-view of large corporations as anti-person, evil teeth gnashing machines grew a new industry usually retained by government, “public relations.” One PR man told Standard Oil Company it would have to alter fundamentally the way it explained itself, saying “Identify yourself not with bondholders,…Wall Street, but with labor, with Americans.”

Public Relations is an element of marketing which is used to build relationships with customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders. Public Relations may be called corporate communications, media relations, investor relations, or community investment.

Community Investment is perhaps the most visible form of Public Relations. This includes financial sponsorship or active involvement in community programs.This typically works best when it is closely aligned with the corporation’s target market and their interests.

For instance – McDonald’s Restaurants involvement with the Ronald McDonald House has very close alignment with their target market (families) and their interests (their kid’s health).

Lesson #1 from the Great Depression … Public Relations is important.

Where's the economy going ... and what can you do about it

The current noise is that the economy is teetering on disaster once more.

What is the best marketing strategy when the economy is in the dumps? Cut back? Well, yes, in some areas of your business you should cut costs to the bare bones. But, history of “tough times” has shown that companies that invest in marketing and selling value will come out the other end of an economic slump as the champions.

I'll see what I can dig up as evidence over the next few days.

Ask the question

Are you a sales person? Do you spend your days in front of customers?

Next time you meet with a prospective customer, check out how much you talk versus how much you let them talk. Then decide if you are a Sales Professional or an order taker.

More than anything, your prospective customer wants to be heard. They want you to ask them questions that will help them describe the problems they are facing. They want to tell you how badly they need your help. They want to tell you their dreams and visions.

If you are an order taker, you can wait for nothing more than the chance to tell the customer all about what you are selling. You want and need to talk. You don't ask questions. You talk.

As a Sales Professional, your job is to ask the questions that will help the prospective customer tell you what they need. The who, what, when, where, why, and how questions from many angles are the ones that make the difference. Then when they are really done telling you what they need (and only then), you get the opportunity to describe how your solution will help the prospective customer see a clear and easy path to achieving that state.

Are you a sales person? Do you want to be an order taker or a Sales Professional. It is in your hands.