Marketing with the New Consumer

Spurred on by a heightened social consciousness and empowered by social media, the New Consumer's newly shaped attitudes about self, community, the environment, and business are changing the dynamics of the marketplace and the relationship between buyers and sellers. For many, the current economic turmoil has been cathartic. Coupled with the pessimism of the moment, the New Consumer has emerged.

New Consumers have re-evaluated their individual and societal roles, deciding to `reboot' or start over. No longer waiting for institutions to repair perceived shortcomings or failures in the system, New Consumers are personally taking charge of environmental and spiritual projects, while seeking value for their hard-earned dollars in new, imaginative ways. The New Consumer is capitalizing on the opportunity to eliminate artificial and manufactured needs -- rediscovering truth, value, and satisfaction in their lives, while exploring new experiences.

New Consumers are conspicuously green, and are consuming in different ways. They're looking for tangible ways to indulge on a dime instead of a dollar, to share and swap rather than buy, to reuse and exchange instead of dispose -- and they are not shy about letting people know they are doing it. They choose to do business with suppliers who authentically share their new found values of social and environmental responsibility, and they understand that the Internet has empowered them with an unprecedented voice, reach, and participatory avenue in product or service development. They are making their opinions known and they expect their suppliers to listen.

What Does This Mean For Marketers?

As with many things, the value of this information is revealed in its application. Marketers must engage their organizations to identify ways to capitalize on trends to reach the New Consumer. However, connecting with the New Consumer may require more than just a shift in messaging. Some marketers will need to redefine their entire approach to product and service development and aggressively innovate, to win both the mind and the heart of the New Consumer.

Some Guiding Principles

There are steps you can take to engage your organization and to identify and prioritize responses to New Consumer trends, whether that means simply shifting your communication or creating wholesale regenerations of your market processes. These responses have to be specific and actionable, relating to your organization's unique capabilities, strategies, and positioning. Therefore, it is impossible to create a set of implications relevant to a general audience. However, the trends do point to some guiding principles worthy of consideration, especially as you seek to align the trends to your own organization's position and messaging.

Sell Optimism

The New Consumer is pessimistic and worried, but does not want to remain in that state. Just as we avoid individuals who are negative and pessimistic, so too will the New Consumer avoid organizations that sell negatively. Success is being simple, fair, easy, nice, and good. Empathize with the New Consumer. Lend a hand and offer a way forward. Be reassuring. Be confident.

Innovate and Change

The New Consumer is open to change and is receptive to the idea of starting over. Create opportunities for you and your customer to connect, and if need be, bury the hatchet on past gaps. Start anew. Start fresh. But first take time to rethink and re-evaluate the customer experience so that you are able to deliver on the renewed (and revised) expectations. The New Consumer abhors deception. Do not be a phony.

Be Experiential

The New Consumer is experimenting with new lifestyles and improved levels of self sufficiency. Understand your customers' experiences and use that knowledge to offer new and exciting ways and opportunities for them to interact with you or other consumers. Enhance the shopping experience by building processes and experiences to help the New Consumer choose your products or services.

Nurture and Market to the `Tribe of the Responsible'

The recently dominant `Tribe of the Wealthy', whose emotional drivers for purchase focused on the grand, the big, the new and the visible, has been supplanted by the New Consumers' `Tribe of the Responsible'. Motivated by the need for change, the New Consumer is consuming in different ways, and wants to be seen to be doing it. Create symbols to allow the New Consumer to recognize others in their tribe and display their tribal colors proudly. Be the enabler for interaction, sharing, and communication within the tribal community.

Champion a Noble Cause

The bottom line and shareholder interests are important to your business, but are hardly motivating for the New Consumer. Great brands have always stood for a more noble cause than the bottom line, and this is more important to the New Consumer than before. Take charge of an issue no matter how big or small and make it your responsibility to be the catalyst for change. The specific cause should align with your core business values, but primarily, what counts is the authenticity and honesty of the effort. If it is truly genuine the New Consumer will love you for it.

Co-Create

Now is the time to innovate and change. But do not act on your own, in isolation. Devise ways to co-create with the New Consumer--what better solutions to bring forward than those they have helped to develop? The New Consumer wants to participate, expects to participate, and is willing to enthusiastically support a company that facilitates, encourages and listens to what they have to say. Use social media and the web to increase or solicit consumer engagement with your business. Create engaging and interactive marketing materials. Encourage your audience to touch, feel, think, smell, ask, and answer.

Status Quo Is Not an Option.

Trends can be easy to miss and hard to take advantage of. But for those who can successfully pinpoint and capitalize on trends with dedicated engagement, focus, and commitment, the rewards can be extremely high.

The recent economic turmoil and the incredibly rapid rise of social networking tools have shaped a generation of consumers unlike any that has come before. The global and local trends that are shaping -- and are being shaped by -- the New Consumer are causing fundamental shifts in the nature of the traditional consumer model and consumer markets as we know them. This presents untold opportunity for new business models, new distribution methods, new products and an opening to make something old new again.

Status quo is not an option.

Go for it!