Rolling with the times

As a marketer it is very important to have a pulse on the mood & sentiments of the market. A message becomes all the more powerful when it comes in context of some mood and hence is all the more powerful. A good example of this is when brands start associating themselves with the festive season. I'm not talking about consumer durables promoting special festive season offers, but of a more powerful variety of messaging such as say Cadburys and Diwali, Coca Cola and Christmas etc. The message is apt because it resonates with the audience completely.

When a product or brand adapts itself to the prevailing mood or sentiment the connection between the brand and the consumer is strengthened. Take for example, the special Date Frappuccino®, that starbucks introduced last Ramazan in the middle east. The date is the fruit of the season during Ramazan in the middle east and when a company comes out with a special edition coffee to commemorate a special festival, the market instantly connects to it and the association with the brand becomes all the more stronger. I mentioned in my last post about MacDonalds giving out Daandiyas with their combos during Navaratra last year. That was more than an instant hit. Acts such as these make the brand less global and more local and helps in building a local level loyalty

But these are annual seasonal trends- these festivities happen every year and one has ample time to incorporate it into the grand master plan for the year, but what unforseen trends? like the oil crisis? or inflation or the energy efficiency drive? all these are macro economic trends that happen suddenly but need to be incorporated into the messaging to reassure the consumer. I'm facing this particular dilemma at work. Thanks to the current macro economic trends ,I'm talking to my audience more in terms of asset utilization and energy efficiency.I didn't expect Oil to breach the $140 mark at the beginning of the year and so didn't plan for it. But inorder to keep up with the times and to send out a more reassuring message, the communication focuses on such aspects and strongly resonates with the current mood. And it works. People react to it more than they would to a more normal sort of messaging.

Take for example the topic of energy efficiency. If your product is remotely energy efficient, now is the time to shout about it from the mountain top because people will pay attention. As purse strings get tighter, the new buzz word is "cost saving". Having such words incorporated in the communication makes it more effective and current.

So anybody else having to restructure communication plans because of the economy?