TEN LOCKDOWN LESSONS FOR LIFE

Lockdown was horrendous but it also forced us to adapt and see things differently. So what are the key lessons we can take with us into the post Covid world?

10. Shopping

Hopefully, we now realise that shopping was never just about getting hold of more ‘stuff’. In fact, now that we’ve had a year-long Spring clean of our drawers and cupboards we are acutely aware that we don’t need any more stuff…ever again. And if you’ve given any of those over-entitled TikTokkers their daily fix of attention, you’ll surely need to hang out with a few civilised adults gently browsing and squeezing vegetables, instead of gyrating provocatively to a misogynist bass-line. The derisory term ‘shopping’ is too small a word for what is actually a nuanced dance of social validation. Consumption in a vacuum is kind of meaningless. 

9. Twinkling

Lockdown has proven how important eye contact is to our needy little species. With most of our face covered we’ve been forced to switch our eyes to full twinkle mode in order to maximise our social acceptance rating. When we’re finally allowed to lose the masks let’s not lose the twinkling.

8. School

One of the biggest lessons we learnt…was about lessons. Zoom-school was fun for a bit but without the peer pressure to either concentrate or take the piss we just switched off. Ask your kids to name three things they learnt in a Zoom class. 

Precisely.

7. Home

Amazing really, that after ten thousand years of civilisation it took 2020 to remind us that our home is where the heart is. A cliche, but nonetheless true. Our homes reminded us they are not just the places we kip in before commuting off to work. A luxury urban apartment that promises a contemporary lifestyle, whatever that is, is not a home. Homes are the real us. Our solace, our comfort, our security. Now go clean that filthy sink.

6. Work

Being forced off the train to be left disorientated on the platform we started to realise that being on the train wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be, after all. Our work/life dial definitely shifted a few notches. However, work ultimately gives us our status and it’s difficult to feel significant in rank whilst perched on the end of a divan with a Dell Inspiron warming our knees. Turns out all that inefficient time gossiping around the water cooler builds stronger bonds than anything gleaned from a zillion Zoom calls. Oh, and for the record, a Zoom drinks party is not a party.

5. John, my Butcher

Now that we’ve had to establish ourselves in our local community our priorities have drastically changed. Previously, we might have smugly asserted that we barely go into town, and certainly never on a Saturday. But post Covid we make a concerted effort, not just to shop at the local butcher but to drop his name into the conversation, because we have learnt that this is the most valuable local currency ever invented. If, by some miracle, John the butcher actually uses our name, well that’s like winning the bloody lottery. Forget Bitcoin. This currency is soaring in value and is accepted at any of your local high street shops. It’s a surefire investment, so if you’re interested in dabbling, it’s called Community Spirit.


4. Christmas (and Easter, birthdays, Shrove Tuesday etc etc)

Believe it or not, there once was a time when the elite would roll their high IQ eyeballs at annual celebrations as an irritant that gets in the way of the god given right to earn a living. With plenty of damning evidence they would accuse Christmas of being an over commercialised money grab that comes around way too often, and worse, for longer each time. Well, talk about a turnaround. Lockdown must have smuggled in the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, for even the Scroogiest of Scrooges can now see the joy of annual family gatherings. I for one plan to follow the gorgeous Mrs Silver in Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot, and ensure my tree’s up and fully dressed by the first of August.

3. The Fear Salesman

If I had titled this blog The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow, then you can be sure that only my mother, were she still alive, would bother to read it. (and then it would be only to check my grammar). My vain hope is that once the frenzy we’ve been whipped into subsides a little, once the fog of fear has lifted, we will realise just how much we are manipulated by the media. And that includes social media, with Facebook, Google and Youtube literally banning dissent or doubt from the mainstream narrative. This relentless catastrophisation is not just wrong, it’s wicked. Shame on the Doom-mongers, for we know now what your game is.

2. The Pub

Like this needed saying, but apparently it does. Pubs are not just dispensers of beer. Lockdown did not starve us of beer. (In fact, we’ve been drinking more of it than ever before.) No, lockdown starved us of the pub: the social levelling institution that is the foundation of British society. (I realise that substituting the word bar, for my international audience, doesn’t quite cut the mustard, but bear with me.) Few relationships, if any, whether family, sexual or business were ever nurtured without the assistance of a pub in the equation somewhere along the line. Pubs, literally and metaphorically, lubricate society and without them we have been grinding our collective gnashers for far too long. Enough said.

1. Other People

Our year in prison has taught us so much about other people. Firstly, they are stupid. They can’t follow instructions, can’t wear masks properly and refuse to stand two metres away. They gather in the park when they shouldn’t, hold illegal barbecues and tea parties in the garden and as soon as the sun comes out they rush in their multitudes to the beach like the very waves they crave. They are arrogant, cocky to the point of reckless, and downright dangerous. They are also timid, paranoid and so unbelievably jumpy that frankly they should never leave the house ever again. Some of them relish the opportunity to tell us off (see my piece on Mini Tyrants) while others can’t do enough to parade their complete and supine compliance. Our loved ones are beyond irritating, especially when you’ve listened to their stupid little sayings for 365 days on the trot. But however annoying, paranoid and cocky they may be we miss them all so very much. We are desperate to reconnect with the ugly, stupid, contradictory human race because…well, it’s where we belong.

Please feel free to add your own lockdown lessons. Then follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily insights and wry musings.

  Howard Saunders   Apr 15, 2021   Future, me age, Retail, shopping   Comments Off on TEN LOCKDOWN LESSONS FOR LIFE   Read More

DEVO

For the best part of three decades the high street has been in a quandary. It didn’t know quite what it was, what it was for, nor what it wanted. Local stores dressed up like branded chains, while branded chain-stores disguised themselves as locals. Little mom and pop newsagents brandished oversized fascias emblazoned with multi national brands so huge they could be read at ease from low flying aircraft, while national chains lovingly placed the town’s name on their fascias, just in case you forgot where you live. Big brands tried to look small and local, while genuinely local stores employed slick designers to dress them up like prototypes poised for global domination.

Some multi-national brands tried to import the flavour of their flagships into the regions by shoehorning the best bits into tiny provincial shoeboxes that were once perfectly respectable local stores with proper shelves and a bell on the door. Our high streets were having an almighty identity crisis…when boom! Covid19 swept in and changed everything.

Literally overnight, everyone could be heard singing the praises of their local heroes: the little stores that kept the lifeblood of the town pumping through its narrow streets. A silent revolution so welcome in some quarters that they declare they saw it coming, that is was inevitable, that something had to change.

The crisis has resurrected the idea of proper service too. Our local heroes stood behind their big, wooden counters and fetched us the things we needed like we were in a Two Ronnies sketch. What’s more, we were happy to wait politely as a sign of our newfound respect for their role in the community. It was as if thousands of high streets, up and down the country, slipped back in time a century or so. Boxes of the things in greatest demand were piled high near the entrance for tap and goers in a hurry and there was no need for a planogram from head office. Staff thanked customers more loudly and with earnest eye contact. Some even grew long beards and wore aprons as if to get into character for their part in this crazy sci-fi movie we call 2020.

Would you believe it? We’re actually enjoying the rebirth of community spirit and relish the new civility the crisis ushered in. Smiles are often broader and more genuine behind the masks than they were without them. Reconnecting with our hometowns has created its own momentum. We hunt down local produce and get excited placing special orders for things at the baker and butcher as if it’s Christmas! We even brag about our love of seasonal produce and joke about our abstinence from imported, blister-packed avocados.

So, do you remember what it was like pre lockdown? Rich, clever brands were developing ways to encourage us to buy things we didn’t need by feeding us little tasters on social media and measuring how many microseconds we’d dwell on their shiny bait. This information was then fed into a giant computer so that they could helicopter in the most ‘liked’ products to the places that most ‘liked’ them. Supermarket chains were developing software to transport us virtually to the birthplace of every product on their shelves. Interspersed with ads, of course. In the tidal wave of consumerism up to the end of last year, this sounded rather exciting. Post Covid it feels irritating and insignificant.

We now know that the tipping point came in March 2020. The shockwaves from switching off the global economy have yet to be fully felt but it’s pretty clear we’ve now embarked on DEVO: A process of de-evolution of our high streets, of brands, the way we trade, and the way we think about retail. The intense heat of business has been burned off: the ridiculous rents, rising rates and the relentless rush for sales to pay them have slammed us hard into a brick wall. The over managed, over designed, over excited retail model that ultimately grew to bore us to death has run its course. How many three storey, back illuminated shoe walls can you see before you crave the simplicity of a pair in a simple cardboard box? How many interactive video screen towers do we install before they become invisible and meaningless? Even the glitziest flagships will switch to Devo mode. I dare say a few video walls are already being dismantled to make way for more reassuring communication like quality of manufacture, or simply creating the breathing space for proper one-to-one service. Simplification is back big time. Even the bizarre and baroque supply chains that over-evolved to bring us the stuff we didn’t need anyway, have strangled themselves lifeless.

Spectacle in retail will not die, of course. Gyrating Gen Alpha Tik-Tokkers will get the spaces they deserve, but big brand boardrooms will no longer echo to the demands for that ever elusive wow factor. Wows were so pre-Covid. We were heading here anyway, the coronavirus just hurried us along. Retail will mature very quickly in the coming months because our values have changed so dramatically. Smart retailers are sure to join us.

The advent of 5G was supposed to be the gateway to an instantly personalised future, so that even the mightiest of megastores would know our name, our cat’s name, and all our personal preferences. But in the post Covid climate who actually wants this sort of fake buddy-ism from the corporate world?

If we work together on this, DEVO can take us back to a gentler, more considered future with a stronger sense of moral purpose. So let’s not get too depressed as we watch our legacy brands in free-fall. They are clearing the way for fresh, young, agile entrepreneurs that will remind us just how beautifully simple retail should be.

Please join me on Twitter @retailfuturist for rants and wry observations

  Howard Saunders   Jul 15, 2020   Future, Retail, shopping, technology   Comments Off on DEVO   Read More

THE WOKE OLYMPICS

The race for brands to parade their PC credentials is well underway! Gillette dashed to the front of the pack by showing us it was more interested in curing toxic masculinity than selling razorblades, but dropped back suddenly after it lost $8 billion in sales. Turns out blokes don’t like being called misogynists. A close shave indeed.  

Surprisingly, the enthusiasm for hopping on the outrage bandwagon has lost none of its momentum. Just like the way poor Taylor Swift was bullied to come out for one side or the other, brands must now decide if they are left or right, right on or stuck in the mud, Democrat or Republican. Brands, like the rest of us, have been dragged into the bear pit of the Twittersphere and the landscape in which they can express themselves, their Overton window if you like, has shrunk to a pinhole. You’re either with us, or against us.

Stuff we bought to shave with, or wash our knickers with, has grown a twenty first century conscience. In a world in which we have everything we need, a brand cannot simply offer us more stuff. In fact, this misunderstanding is largely responsible for the demise of our high streets and shopping centres. They were built on the premise that we needed to buy things to keep our mundane lives trundling along. They made the aisles wide and linear so that we could grab and go once we’d located what we were looking for. Product categories were announced in fonts bolder than motorway signs, as if we were all moving at seventy miles per hour. And in a sense we were. We dashed in and rushed back to the car before the ticket expired and our people carrier was towed away for ransom. How simple life was back then.

Where was I? Ah yes. Brands have realised they cannot carry on as if it were 1985, and so have evolved from being smiley, helpful and value-for-money, into fully grown, cynical adults with issues, consciences and axes to grind. In short: woke. In the rush of revelation some have joined the outrage hunters, pushing to the front of the melee in a desperate search for things to be shocked by. This then, is the new landscape for brands and we can expect it to intensify over the next few years. 

But you do know they’re faking it right? You do realise their pretend outrage and loud baying noises are for the purpose of deflection, lest the mob turn on them? An orchestrated distraction to avoid the laser beam of outrage homing in on their own transgressions, whether they be plastic packaging, pollution, landfill, low wages or waste. Like teenage bullies, woke brands are eager to elbow to the front of the mob in the name of progressivism. And who is against progressivism?

The problem is, in its rush to kick at the wicked establishment patriarchy, the mob is forced to edge forward, becoming ever more outraged and angry with the status quo. Egged on by a mainstream media exercising its last gasp for glory, too many of society’s strongest, deepest foundations are getting damaged along the way, sometimes irreparably. 

The frenzy of the mob, you see, can bring out the worst in us. All of a sudden, those quiet, conventional, harmless types see their opportunity to exert a little control. Very quickly, what considered itself a libertarian movement finds itself fuelled by an authoritarian impulse, one that wants to close down, ban, censor and admonish. The impulse that fights for women’s rights, for instance, swiftly morphs into something that’s distinctly anti-male. The push for racial equality, likewise, can so easily become discriminatory. Logic would suggest that the same libertarian instinct that campaigned for gay marriage and sexual equality would be against censorious regulation, but the reverse is true. Libertarianism and authoritarianism, once at opposite ends of the spectrum, have become fused in a kind of Alice in Wonderland nightmare. A new puritanism has infected the liberal mindset and its effects are serious.

And so, armed with this newfound pc superpower, the Advertising Standards Authority has waded into the mire to ban images it deems un-woke, things it doesn’t want you to see. We’ve all read about it: with the aim of discouraging gender stereotypes, the ASA banned a Volkswagen ad showing a young mother, sitting on a park bench alongside a pram. Once upon a time ‘motherhood and apple pie’ represented all that was good and wholesome with the world. Today, the ASA finds motherhood demeaning, something that might hamper a girl’s ambition and life chances. Shrug all this off as a slice of summer madness whipped up creamy by Daily Mailers by all means, but I believe it deserves a serious pause for thought: our regulatory bodies have decided that motherhood is wrongthink. It’s pretty obvious that a society that finds motherhood embarrassing or demeaning won’t last very long.

It’s important we don’t add to the hysteria, but at the same time, we cannot pretend everything is just fine. It’s blindingly obvious that brands are tip-toeing around convention, sweating over showing a heterosexual nuclear family with clearly gendered offspring, or a sexually attractive female for fear of being labelled regressive or bigoted. Humour that pokes fun at anything cultural, gender-based, racial or religious has been off-limits for so long that we’ve grown used to advertising’s mediocre glumness. But the prohibition of gender stereotypes promises to make life considerably more treacherous for brands wanting to stand out from the crowd. Expect to see a lot more of the Alice in Wonderland world in which heroes, adventurers, scientists and scholars are exclusively female, where families are made up from across the sexual ‘spectrum’ and where the image of a smiling, white, middle class family is deemed harmful to society.

I know. We’re already there.

So, Mr Futurist, how does all this end, I hear you cry?

That’s easy: a mighty financial crash, obviously.

In the meantime, have a great week!

 

Join me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily retail musings

  Howard Saunders   Sep 04, 2019   advertising, Brand, Future, overton, Retail, shopping   Comments Off on THE WOKE OLYMPICS   Read More