Complicated Lives Nicola Austin, Head of Marketing

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Complicated Lives Nicola Austin, Head of
Marketing Communications
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The proposition Life is more complicated!

• The rise of the individual
• Routeless society?
• The anxiety society
• The explosion of choice

• For Marketers
• Consumer dilemmas arise from complexity
• This is a challenge and opportunity to
  marketers
• Much marketing activity makes consumer lives
• more complicated

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Number of television channels available
Source nVision Base UK
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Television Viewing
Source BARB/nVision
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Attitudes towards future financial comfort, by age
Proportion who believe they will be better off a
year from now
Source British Household Panel
Study/nVision Base 10,000 aged 15, Britain
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Household disposable income growth
Total increase from 1980 in real terms -
nVision/Experian forecast
February 2006 - based projection
Source ONS/nVision Base UK
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Age structure of the UK population
Number of people in each one year age band
Source ONS/nVision
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New ways of looking at the old
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Three stages of life for women born in
Source Registrar General/'The Symmetrical
Family'/The Future Foundation Base England
Wales
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Proportion of spending in Shopping Centres
Source Shopping Centre Futures,
BCSC/Grosvenor/Future Foundation
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Why is life more complicated?
DIY life greater insecurity
More demanding we want it all
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The rise of the individual
Source 'Changing Lives', nVision/Taylor Nelson
Sofres Base 1000 adults 16, UK
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Wanting to fit in
Source nVision, The Future Foundation / Taylor
Nelson Sofres
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Knowing the world around us Those close to us
have the most influence.
Those who say they are influenced a lot about the
state of the economy by the following
Source Changing Lives, nVision Base 1001
adults 16, 2002
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Individualism a summary

• Who I am as well as what I have
• Desire for knowledge and cultural capital

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The routeless society new life courses
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A simple life
Birth
Life Was Simple .
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Now ... Life is Complex
Birth
Death
School
Job
Backpacking around Australia
Retirement
Job
Inheritance
Second Family
Marriage
Cohabitation
University?
Cohabitation
Job
Children return
Relocation
Children
Children leave
Remarriage
Self employment
Career change
Divorce
Redundancy
Unemployment
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Life Changes more Cumulative number of major
life changes
Age 40
Source British Household Panel Study,
nVision Base approx. 10,000 adults 16, UK
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The gender revolution
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Average hourly earnings in the UK
For full time employees (excluding overtime pay)
and women's earnings as a percentage of men's, by
age and gender
Source New Earnings Survey/ONS/nVision 2003
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Enrolments in further and higher education in the
UK
By gender
Source DfES/nVision
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Attitudes to employment and gender roles in the
family
Percentage who agree/strongly agree with various
statements, by gender
Source British Household Panel
Study/nVision Base 10000 adults, UK, 2002
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The time use of parents compared to the time use
of adults without children
Source ONS Time use study / nVision 2001 Base
254 childless adults aged 25-45 and 375 parents
of under-16s aged 25-45
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Impact of parenthoodOver 16 years

• Nights sleep lost Mums 246, Dads 77
• Extra days shopping Mums 89, Dads 20
• Days lost visiting friends/relatives Mums 36,
  Dads 229
• Days lost on home multimedia e.g.
  TV/radio/Internet/music Mums 73, Dads 157
• Full days of reading time lost Mums 50, Dads
  64

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The routeless society
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(No Transcript)
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Welcome to the anxiety society!
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Not just us Europeans
Why are so many fears in the air, and so many of
them unfounded? Why, as crime rates plunged
throughout the 1990s, did two-thirds of
Americans think they were soaring? How did it
come about that by mid-decade 62 of us described
ourselves as truly desperate about crime
almost twice as many in the late 1980s when
crime rates were higher? Give us a happy ending
and we write a new disaster story Barry
Glassner. The Culture of Fear
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Drowning in choice?
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The breakdown of cultural constraints
When I first came to live and work in Britain
There were strong norms on dress and behaviour.
Wear brown on Sundays, I was told, and never
telephone anyone after 10 oclock at night. I
envy the freedom of my children and their friends
who respect neither of those conventions nor many
others, but they can suffer from the burden of
too much space. There is too much choice of
career, too many varieties of life styles from
which to choose. Charles Handy, The Empty
Raincoat, 1994

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Would you have thought it possible? Airfare
to Barcelona 1 (Ryanair 06/11/03) Price
of Venti (Large) Cappuccino in Starbucks at
Stansted Airport 2.39 (06/11/03)
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Too many coffee choices?

• Types (espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, latte
  etc) 7
• Toppings (none, cinnamon, vanilla etc) 5
• Milk (skimmed, semi-skimmed, full fat, extra
  cream) 4
• Sugar (none, white, brown, sweetner) 4
• Cup sizes 3
• Strength (extra shots, decaffinated) 3
• Syrups 8

Over 6,000 different combinations 17 years to try
them all if you try a different one each day
Source Complicated Lives, Abbey National/ Future
Foundation
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Mass customisation
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Attitudes to choiceProportion giving various
scores out of seven as to where they would put
themselves when buying selected products or
services where 1 is There is currently more
choice than I need and 7 is There is not enough
choice
There is not enough choice
There is currently more choice than I need
Source Changing Lives/nVision, 2003
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More time but not more choice
Source Changing Lives/nVision, 2002/2003
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Faced with too much choicewhat strategies do
consumers adopt?
?
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Changing Brand Elasticity
Source Future Foundation
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Choice strategies

• Individualism means people want individual
  solutions.
• Suggests growth in
• hand-made premium products providing authentic
  and unique offers
• mass customised products, providing an element of
  difference but at a price people can afford.
  Mass customisation can take the form of built to
  order
• or through increasing sub-branding and
  varietisation.

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Marketers think that consumers live are more
complicated
Source Marketing Forum/Future Foundation survey
of 168 Marketers/Consumer Insight specialists
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More innovative research needed the quest to
understand consumer needs
What we end up with isnt that much clearer
because they end up with just huge piles of data
and not much analysis. Weve got lots of data but
not much information. Jeff Scott, Head of
Customer Segments, Abbey
Source Marketing Forum/Future Foundation survey
of 168 Marketers/Consumer Insight specialists
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Innovation/npd required to meet consumer needs
and fragmenting markets but this adds to
complexity
We make it very complex I think we lose sight of
it because we dont live the lives of the
customerIf we got back to those basic things and
tried to understand what it is that is really
important to them in their lives then we would do
a much better job. Jeff Scott, Head of Customer
Segments, Abbey National
How much do you agree or disagree with the
following statements? Proportion agreeing.
There is a wonderful irony that the sheer amount
of choice, all of which is designed to make for
the perfect consumer life, might actually be
leading to a situation in which consumers are
alienated. Andrew Levy, Planning Partner Mustoe,
Merryman, Levy
There is a large degree of overkill in there, and
sometimes deliberate and cynical fancy consumer
marketing - confusion pricing for instance for
the tariff for mobile phones, insurance
contracts, etc. - where companies introduce
complexity in order to befuddle their
customers. Alan Mitchell, Marketing Journalist
Source Marketing Forum/Future Foundation survey
of 168 Marketers/Consumer Insight specialists
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What do marketers think?
No one can afford to use straightforward above
the line TV to get the kind of brand awareness
that they want, so everyone, instead of having a
few key tools is now looking at having a hundred
small tools to reach everyone now. Gareth Jones,
Marketing Manager, Allianz Cornhill Insurance PLC

• Marketers recognise that consumers lives are
  more complex
• The marketing response is more consumer research,
  but marketers feel what is really needed is more
  innovative research
• Marketers believe that innovation and npd are
  critical but
• This in itself is making life for consumers more
  complex (which marketers accept)
• Much of it is me too innovation rather than
  really addressing consumer needs
• Marketers are obsessed with media fragmentation
  but the key issue for consumers is not the media
  but their needs

What is happening is the fragmentation of life
and the fragmentation of the media . All of
which means that I cannot any longer reckon that
Mrs Jones has a stable set of views about life
and that I can reach her on ITV1. All those
assumptions about life just dont hold any
more. Andrew Levy, Planning Partner Mustoe,
Merryman, Levy
There is a conflict, or need to be cleverer with
media planning, between a one size fits all
communication strategy and the need to target
discrete groups. Budgets may only allow the
former. Online Survey Respondent
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Why is marketing more complicated?
Source Marketing Forum/Future Foundation survey
of 168 Marketers/Consumer Insight specialists
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What do marketers need to do?

• Truly understand consumers needs and the
  complexities of their lives this requires more
  innovative consumer research
• Concentrate on making communications clear,
  effective and simple through appropriate channels
• Consistent delivery and straightforward branding
  (to develop brand trust)
• Innovation that produces products and services
  that really solve the problems and dilemmas of
  consumers increasingly complicated lives