Advertising in a recession

19th Sep 2009 A passion and truth by Tom

Photo by re-ality

A particular movie genre has been in the news a lot recently…that of ‘Film Noir’.

I must admit that I’ve never reached for the popcorn and sat down to watch a movie of the ‘Film Noir’ genre, but a BBC Four documentary, as well as articles in the Telegraph and Mintel, has predicted its return as a response to the recession. Film Noir’s dark, mysterious and brooding theme first appeared from The Great Depression and WWII, so such a prediction may have some substance, considering our current plight. It’s already made some ripples in the world of advertising with high end fashion houses Chanel and Dior following such a theme recently.

As Mintel notes, this contrasts strongly to most of the other advertising themes to come out of the recession. Perhaps one of the more obvious ones has been escapism, shown by T-Mobile’s ‘life’s for sharing’ flash mobs, Coca-Cola’s ‘happiness factory’ and Aviva’s return of ‘Happy’.

There have been the obligatory price-led advertising campaigns, with supermarkets in particular embarking on price wars, with even Waitrose focusing much attention on their ‘essentials’ range.Whilst this is usually PC World’s territory, they went for a celebrity-endorsed brand campaign, using the slogan ‘Whatever your world’, and an attention on the consumer has again been a popular theme. Diet Coke’s ‘Hello you’ and Nike’s ‘Be the revolution of you’ put the consumer at the centre, and we have seen care from companies to consumers being important during the recession.

Film Noir is clearly not for everyone, but also consumers aren’t stupid…a more realistic approach could be effective, just not in the film noir style. I’m not suggesting Aviva introduce ‘Grumpy’ as a new campaign, but we have just flicked past the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and I’m of the opinion that consumers want companies to show a bit of realism and understanding, rather than pretending that everything is hunky dory through escapism. Nostalgia has been a major trend recently, but we could well be due a change as people become more and more frustrated with the recession.

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