significance, our satisfaction with brands is more and more defined by immediacy rather than quality of service. In North America, in particular, retailers are discovering that customers aren’t willing to wait till the store reopens at 9 a.m. to buy milk. We want it now – and we’ll get it, whether via a competitor that stays open late or at a twenty-four-hour convenience store. The result is a burgeoning number of twenty-four-hour retail establishments, from bookstores and copy shops to doughnut shops.
More than that, consumers around the world are rejecting the notion that ‘one size fits all’. A popular T-shirt one sees today reads, ‘I ask only that you treat me no differently than you would the Queen.’ The T-shirt may be meant as a joke, but the attitude is pure reality. As new technologies have made it easier for companies to target individuals, consumers have grown accustomed to white-gloved treatment. Time magazine comes with a printout showing how the subscriber’s local representatives voted on critical issues. Levi Strauss lets us order computerized-fit jeans. Parents can buy personalized storybooks, videos and dolls for their children. And customer service centres around the world are scrambling to put a touch of 1:1 marketing in their responses. GTE Telesystems in the US, for example, rates each call coming into its customer service centre with three graphic devices (calendar pages to indicate customer longevity, sticks of dynamite to indicate past service problems and money bags to indicate volume). The system allows personnel to respond more appropriately to each caller’s problem.
As consumers, we’re being led to expect products that meet our specific needs. (Why should I sit through world forecasts on the Weather Channel when I can have my particular city’s weather report emailed to me each morning?) We want to access these products via distribution mechanisms that are convenient to us – whether through one-stop shopping, twenty-four-hour superstores, home delivery or some equally agreeable method. And we want an immediate and satisfactory customer service response when problems arise.
Our desire to remain in control in an uncertain world – combined with our insistence on having things when and how we want them – also translates into a demand for personalized marketing campaigns. The reality is that mass marketing is obsolete in high-tech cultures. Complex technology-based products, increased competition and additional channels of communication have a net result of declining advertising effectiveness.
In the near term, one can expect to see many more examples of increased interactivity between advertisers and targets in the form of consumer-data collection and 1:1 marketing campaigns. In addressing the Public Relations Society of America at New York’s Harvard Club, Larry Weber commented: ‘The information economy and the new communications channels are going to require a new kind of marketing communications … Here’s one small example of a new communications channel. Imagine that you’re at your local supermarket, buying a six-pack of Coca-Cola. The scanner that recognized the six-pack of Coke also triggers a software program, which spits out a 50-cents-off coupon for a six-pack of Pepsi. Automatically. Let’s say you ignore the coupon, or you take it home and lose it. The next time you buy Coke, the scanner recognizes the Coke and your debit card. The software looks up your record, knows you didn’t respond to the last coupon, and spits out a one-dollar-off coupon for Pepsi. Next time, it’s a dollar fifty. If you don’t switch in three tries, the software gives up on you for now. That’s an actual system now being tested. Retailing is not about merchandise anymore. It’s a war of information and communication.’
The reality is that developments such as customized products and 1:1 marketing initiatives are creating in consumers an expectation that they will be catered to. In some parts of the world, mail-order goods take weeks to arrive at their destination. In the US today – because we have grown accustomed to top-flight service – many of us get impatient if we can’t have a product delivered overnight or if we’re unable to have our customer service problem solved at 3 a.m. on a Sunday. This isn’t going to go away. As new technologies are developed and as production and distribution methods are improved, consumers will grow ever more demanding, not just in the US, but around the world. Any company that thinks the way it did business in 1970 is going to cut it with today’s consumer is going to be blown away.
Big Next: Seeking Security
Just twenty years ago, most of us worked in offices without PCs, fax machines and voicemail. Our homes were not equipped with VCRs; our phones were not equipped with Caller ID. Many of us would have scoffed at the notion that computer technology would fundamentally alter the way we live and work in just two decades’ time. And now, with the new millennium upon us, we are taking a peek into the future, imagining how our world will change in the next twenty years.
One of the terms that has emerged in the past couple of years is ‘premillennial tension’. In the Western world, the general population’s anticipation of the year 2000 (or 2001, in the case of sticklers for detail) is tempered with concern, even fear. James Baldwin wrote, ‘Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.’ We know there will be changes in the coming years, but we don’t know what exactly they’ll be – or how dramatic their impact. The result: an intensified search for security.
Trust No One
A key reason we’ve become so demanding as consumers is that we no longer trust businesses to look out for our best interests. This attitude has been honed by years of being lied to and misled – not just by ‘big business’, but by government leaders, celebrities and just about everyone else in the media spotlight. In our travels across Europe, we spoke with citizens who are no longer willing to tolerate corruption in any form. Whether the offence be tax evasion, money laundering, bribes, undue influence or any other such crime, Europeans are now demanding that justice be served. The result has been the toppling of such high-visibility people as NATO General Secretary Willy Claes, Norwegian Central Bank Governor Torstein Moland and Alcatel Alsthom CEO Pierre Suard. One of the forces contributing to this ‘shakedown’ is increased access to information. Whether from the Internet, cable or satellite television, or independent ’zines, today’s consumers simply have more access to breaking news than in the past, as well as an increased ability to pursue stories of interest.
Fear
One result of having weathered scandal after scandal is that we’ve grown more cynical. We’re wiser to the ploys of politicos, preachers, priests, teachers and, yes, advertisers and marketers. We’re bombarded with infinitely more messages than we were a dozen years ago. We’re worried about our futures, our countries, our jobs, our cities and villages, our schools and violence down the street and overseas. And we’re anxious about what the millennium holds.
Adding to the collective fears of new consumers in Europe is the uncertainty surrounding both the European Union and increased globalization. With regard to the EU, many citizens are disturbed by the realization that belonging to the EU will require their national governing bodies to relinquish a certain amount of control. Denmark, for instance, experienced such a situation first-hand when the EU required that the country adopt France’s less-stringent rules regarding the use of preservatives in baby food. Understandably, many Danes were distraught to see bureaucrats in faraway Brussels dictate what can be put into food for their children. Other small countries are similarly concerned that they will lose their autonomy and simply be swallowed by the big European crowd.
With the future uncertain, we don’t know where to turn to find answers to the big questions in our lives – like where we should bring up our kids – and to smaller questions – like which brand of soup we should choose. We’re looking for things we can hold on to. Things we can trust. We’re looking for relationships with brands, not just products to buy. To assuage these concerns, consumers are seeking long-term product/service ‘partners’ that will help them to survive and thrive both professionally and personally. Whether peddling instant breakfasts or computer software, the obvious challenge
