Editor’s Leader column: June 2009

It’s not easy for international brands and marketers to keep up with consumers and their seemingly insatiable desire for the very latest ways of monitoring always-on, real-time ‘ambient awareness’ (page 10).

I’m informed that Brits are now blogging less and ‘Tweeting’ more, perhaps because mobile chat is less time-consuming to maintain. But an Italian friend believes Twitter is already a fading fad around Milan, where café society is hooked on Friendfeed.com, a social media aggregator (page 22). Meanwhile, BRIC countries are taking to ever-updating technology with amazing alacrity, leaving the ‘more developed’ marketplaces trailing in their ’techy’ wake (page 28).

Social media users seem to be fickle friends, so quickly do they move on. But this is a microcosm of modern society, which constantly seeks news of the ‘next big thing’: I am already noticing that newspaper headlines about the recession are fewer . . . the ‘crisis’ hasn’t gone away but it’s become yesterday’s tiresome topic; like Day Three of a universal diet (still counting calories, but with one hand back in the cake tin).

After the excellent NextMarketing conference in Spain last month (review, page 36), I spotted a sign in a Madrid bar which read boldly: ‘No crisis here!’ Whether that referred to competitive prices, the fact that there was plenty of busy staff or just a wistful desire to forget the implosion of the world’s financial system remained unclear, despite the length of time I spent there trying to figure it out . . .

Weather forecasters predict the sun will shine in Europe this summer, after two years of drenchings, and financial forecasters like Nationwide and GfK NOP say this could have a domino effect on the economy as less gloomy skies lift consumer confidence.

But it rather depends which surveys you read or which news source you tap . . . the recession is waning or getting worse; adspend is up or down; swine flu is lethal or a terrible cold. I reckon Elvis is either dead or working in a chip shop.

Recent projections by the European Commission, for example, remain depressing – only very slight positive growth by late 2010. The Bank of England agrees recovery will be ‘slow and protracted’, but a global survey (page 4) has a more optimistic view. Meanwhile, the housing market, particularly in the US, is reported to be improving as construction spending rises and home sales creep up.

So, has ‘Armageddon’ truly been averted?

The last time a recession was this bad was around the time of the Second World War. Back then, a government poster campaign was prepared in the UK but never rolled out. Its stoic copy advised: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

We should print it, just in case.