MM Goes Over The Rainbow

Welcome to day one of The Marketing Munchkin and her over the rainbow musings.

MM is a blue-chip schooled marketer of note, and likes to think she knows thing or two about how to get women whipped into a frenzy about achieving a goddess-like leg reality through better shaving technology or to get kids oohing and ahhing over a Ribena berry or two before throwing a toddler like tantrum in the middle of Waitroses 'cordial' aisle.

That is, if Waitrose still stocks such a mainstream brand as Ribena and hasn't toddled off to Belvoir farms to gain a mafia-like monopoly on their hand-picked, organic, free-range blueberries (whoop) which small pixies then stamp into recycled glass bottles necessitating a retail price that only recently made redundant investment bankers can afford.

However, recently MM has become increasingly interested in how brands are marketing to consumers in times of economic hardship, and equally in how consumers are responding.

Brands, MM muses, were an invention of this century, which took hold because of the uncertainties generated by recession, war, rationing and whether you would ever see your husband again. In times of trial and tribulation, people look for points of certainty and cling to them for dear life. Thus a tin of beans with a blue keystone on it became more than a commodity. It became a beacon of quality, reliability and homeliness in an otherwise shaky world. It became something with which to knit a family together. Quite literally, beanz MEANT Heinz. And Heinz Beanz MEANT safety, warmth, security and familiarity, not canneloni beans cooked in tomato sauce and put on a bit of heated bread.

However, we are living in a time when, despite recession and uncertainty, consumers are no longer clinging to brands as they have in times before. They are turning to community, they are turning to growing their own, sharing their resources, making do and mending and taking back the power that we once gave not only to brands, but to governments, to banks, to doctors.

The power of big brands is shrinking - polarising to premium offerings which chime with values of authenticity, homemade values and family run enterprise, and value offerings which are being perceived as the same quality, in many cases, as brands. The current, totally brilliant Aldi ads play to one end of this spectrum, the food porn Marks and Spencers ads to the other. 

When the pennies are tight, how do we respond and tighten our belts in response.......