Charm, Honesty, and Humility

Ever since 9/11 and the Enron debacle, consumers in the United States have become increasingly wary of politicians and big business, and have quite clearly been retreating into their already conservative shells.

Now we hear about professional golfers such as US Masters winner Zach Jonson, cutting down on coaching sessions and turning to Bible study meetings before big games.

This is just one of many clear indicators giving US marketers direction on how to treat their customers. In short, the message they are getting is that US consumers are desperate for someone, something to trust.

While this consumer trend has not noticeably moved beyond the borders of the United States, there are other trends that indicate in a different way that consumers are changing the world over.

In France, for example, the run-up to the recent presidential elections showed some very definite changes in emphasis. Previously the French population made its choices on what appears to have been very strict political issues. Suddenly this has changed with the chief executive of a research company claiming categorically that France has moved into an era where voters are behaving increasingly like shoppers.

They were, he said, comparing personalities and promises in the same way that they would compare products in a supermarket.

The look and the packaging is important.

The conservatism that underscores consumer trends in the US is still not apparent in most other countries, but there is evidence that in many major global markets, including South Africa, consumers are changing as well.

In many countries and certainly in South Africa consumers increasingly seem to be sharing the French penchant for looking at personalities rather than political or social issues. Or, in a commercial sense, looking more at the hype than the product.

This may explain the popularity of Jacob Zuma. In spite of his being accused of serious misdemeanours, his supporters in their multitudes like his flamboyant manner. He is a colourful, vibrant personality who wittingly or unwittingly sticks rigidly to the very foundation of successful marketing. It’s not about what he has to say, but what his followers want to hear. The fact that he might be guilty of a crime becomes irrelevant.

Equally, when it comes to supporting products, South African consumers are prepared to pay high prices for items such as cellphones and cars, just to be seen to be owning them. As elsewhere, South African consumers also tend to be far more motivated by (sometimes single digit IQ) celebrities than their politicians or priests.

What will impact heavily on the way in which marketers communicate with their target markets in the future is whether the US consumer trend of looking for something to trust actually spreads beyond the US. It seems to me, marketers here have started to assume that South Africans are also looking for products and services they can trust not entirely for the same reason as their American counterparts, but also because of many years of lack of competition and shoddy service.

It now makes marketing sense to stop communicating shallow messages such as we care and change instead to offering some sort of definitive product quality promise and genuine service.

This trend towards a consumer search for someone to trust is something churches can work with. All it needs is for church leaders to couch their public utterances within the ambit of the new guidelines that commercial marketers are adopting more and more in South Africa.

Charm. Humility. Honesty. If incorporating these three elements into communications messages are going to be the key to selling products and services, they will work doubly well in a religious context, because they are the holy characteristics.

Yes, even charm as the late Pope John Paul II proved.