Ben Hayman urges brands to acknowledge consumers’ needs for optimism, against the odds
As An avid football fan, I know something about the perils of optimism. At the time of writing, my team, Arsenal are still mathematically in with a chance of winning the Premier League, the most coveted domestic trophy. The truth is that Arsenal are on a terrible run, having lost and drawn their last three games while the competition streaks ahead.
Logically, I know that by the time this article goes to press my disappointment will have been confirmed. I am, however, desperately clinging on to the idea that the team will pull the rabbit from the hat. It is a football fan’s prerogative. It is desperate optimism. Desperate optimism is a running battle between heart and head. It is a conflict between hope and pragmatism, what we want and what we know to be true. It is a destructive tension that serves to undermine rather than encourage confidence. And it is not just the preserve of deluded football fans.
We at Promise believe that desperate optimism is an important idea for modern Britain. We first coined the notion of desperate optimism after a large-scale co-creation workshop in February 2011 when we invited 30 marketing and customer insight professionals and 20 consumers to spend three hours together discussing the future: hopes, fears, expectations.
We found that there was a huge contrast between what people wanted to happen and what people expected to happen in their lives over the next 12 months. The way people justified this was extremely emotional – put simply, they felt like they deserved a break. Asked to vote with their feet and answer the question ‘is 2011 going to be a good year or a bad year?’, 90% of our participants strode in to the ‘good year’ camp.
We spent time talking to them and rationalising their decisions. However, the truth was there was very little rationale. After two hard years of living with uncertainty, recession and cuts, people wanted to embrace hopefulness and were genuinely ‘desperate for good news’.
The problem for the desperate optimist is that they are covertly aware that their lives are unlikely to get much easier in the next 12 months. We split the group in to smaller teams and asked about factors affecting their lives. We heard about well founded worries and concerns including inflation, oil prices, global instability, job security.
As shown by recent consumer-confidence figures the desire to feel better about their situation does not necessarily translate into behaviour. The psychology of the optimist also means that these people will constantly feel let down, annoyed by their realities, angry that they have let their hearts get the better of their heads.
We believe that this will provoke extreme behaviours in consumers and will impact on their relationships with brands. Brands and businesses will need to work hard to understand the emotional and rational worlds of consumers.
What can we expect from the Desperate optimist in 2011?
People will embrace good news. Desperate for ‘proof’ to endorse their optimism, we expect to see ‘peaks of euphoria’ where people will try to channel their optimism. The Royal Wedding is a great example of the kind of euphoric event people will throw themselves into this year.
What does this mean for brands? Demonstrate that you understand – the way that Morrisons’ recent communications campaign and the T-Mobile Royal Wedding viral capitalised on a positive frame of mind. Oh, and check the weather. Expect surges in consumer confidence and engagement during periods of sustained good weather.
The desperate optimist mindset means that emotions are bubbling close to the surface. This challenges a British stereotype of austere and reserved citizens. We predict that this will change and that public displays of emotion – from love to rage – will become more common.
Our work revealed that emotive communications, particularly those with a whimsical or melancholic edge, seemed to resonate strongly. Strong emotional reactions also mean that people are more likely to make a stand against perceived bad service or brands that don’t live up to expectations. Our relationships with brands will become less passive.
The dilemma for desperate optimists is that they set themselves up for disappointment. When the evidence of experience challenges their optimism they feel let down and angry. Brands need to support people. Recognise that value-added offers and staying close to the needs of your customers (listening and responding) will be vital to success this year. Those brands that seem detached from the struggling pragmatist within the desperate optimist mindset will be rejected.
In his budget, the Chancellor talked of the ‘cautious optimists’. We uncovered a very different form of optimism, laced with desperation. Empathising with this mind-set will contribute to the success of brands, products and services.
Ben Hayman is managing director of Promise, [email protected]