Editor’s Leader

The news is all about the ongoing financial maelstrom and how to survive. Some people won’t survive, that’s a sad fact of life. But others panic themselves into a hole and just keep on digging.

   Companies which make staff redundant to cut costs might really believe there is no other choice; but at the risk of sounding trite, that’s rather like a woman saying she has nothing to wear. There is generally an alternative – the trick is to view things more carefully, from a different angle.
    
    On my recent trip to Las Vegas for the annual DM conference, my cab driver was a bit of an old sage and had determinedly adopted an optimistic stance:?“I can tell there’s a credit crunch because no-one’s been sick on my back seat for more than  three months.”
    
    Recently, my pessimistic orthodontist was balefully blaming the financial crisis for his clients’ apparent belt-tightening when he was interrupted by his assistant, who had her own ideas: “Actually, it’s the same every year in the run-up to Christmas; it’s called cash prioritisation.”Most decades see a period of particular hard times – my generation was brought up with a ‘mend and make do’ ethos instilled during and after WW2 – which is why we so enjoyed the last ‘decade of decadence’; it was such a refreshing change. This millennium began with a slump, a result of the dot com crash and 9/11, which saw everyone for himself in the survival stakes; the difference now is we’re all in it together.
    
    Being hard-up this time around is viewed by the gung-ho as fashionable. The headlines shout: ‘Beat the crunch’, ‘Compare prices’, ‘Claim your discount’. Top-priced brands and labels are out; bargains and money-savers are in. Recycling is no longer all about rubbish – it’s green but it’s cool to buy second-hand (aka: classic; vintage). For years, my mortified children wouldn’t enter a charity shop with me or be seen carrying an Oxfam bag, now they buy and sell on eBay. Everyone loves a deal; ‘twas ever thus. But now we’re being openly cash-canny: it’s posh to be parsimonious.It’s only a matter of time before teaching how to turn a hem, darn a sock and sew on a button is put back on the school curriculum.
    
    Direct marketers should view all of this not as a pot of gold, perhaps, but a silver lining for sure. DM is now de rigeur because it’s cheap and it works and that’s what everyone wants these days. When brands, feeling the pinch, call for measurability, direct marketing is actually what they mean.

   ‘Above-the-line’ may once have been sexier, but it’s too expensive to flirt with now. Adversity is singing a more modest song and direct marketers know all the words.
 

Sally Hooton is editor, DMI magazine