Americans: We
can handle this

Most say their lives will go on, crisis be damned

By Kevin Downey

    If one thing became clear after the attacks of Sept. 11, it was that reclaiming the normalcy of everyday life was perhaps the only way to deal with the overwhelming grief.
    It turns out that’s exactly what most people are doing, which is good news for advertisers.
    Normalcy means people are at least planning to spend money, travel, and do some holiday shopping.
    Two-thirds of people polled by Leo Burnett USA, in fact, said they are living their lives as they had before. For about half of those people, that simply means getting on with life. For the other half, it means forcing back lingering fears to reclaim their lives.
    Chalk that up to an act of defiance and old-fashioned patriotism.
    While no one’s expecting a surge in consumer spending, the Leo Burnett study suggests that the coming holiday season may not be as bad as many advertisers had feared in the weeks since the tragedies.
    "Right after Sept. 11, everybody was staying close to home," says Mary Beth Leisen, strategic planner at Leo Burnett USA.
     "But we’re finding that people are getting back to normal, even if they have the perception that life is not back to normal. They’re generally optimistic about the long-term future."
    One of the biggest changes since the attacks is that consumers’ attitudes, which help advertisers create messages to reach them, have splintered off into four distinct groups. They are attitudes that were there before but that have been heightened by the tragedies and people’s response to them.
    "There are many mega-trends going on in society that were already in place prior to Sept. 11," says Denise Fedewa, senior vice president and planning director at Leo Burnett USA.
    "What the terrorist attacks did was make the changes that were happening at a crawl suddenly take place very quickly.
    "For instance, re-prioritizing what is important in their lives by focusing on family and friends was already happening. Sept. 11 galvanized that trend."
    The study was conducted by interviewing over 500 people for more than a half-hour three weeks after the attacks.
    Based on those surveys, 33 percent of consumers were found to share the attitude of being optimistic that the country and economy would recover, despite being upset by the tragedies.
     Leo Burnett labeled those people the Forging Ahead group.
    Another 30 percent of consumers were put into the Business-as-Usual group. These are people who feel that their lives have not been changed by the terrorists.
    The next largest group is Close-to-Home, who are people who have changed their lives. The attitudes of this group, which account for 27 percent of the population, center on turning to family, friends, and things that are familiar since Sept. 11. They are also only buying necessities.
    The Different Drummer group is the smallest at 11 percent.
    This group feels that the U.S. government is somewhat to blame for the terrorists’ actions, with some believing that Osama bin Laden is representing the interests of all Muslims. They too have cut back on spending.
    Leo Burnett USA examined the groups to help advertisers develop more focused marketing strategies.
    Ever since the attacks, marketers have been trying to figure out if their advertising messages were appropriate and if the time was right to peddle their wares.
    "You can’t reinvent your brand overnight," says Fedewa. "It would be a huge mistake for a marketer to overhaul a brand just to be a good guy when that new image is not part of the brand’s DNA.
    "The people who believed in your brand will see right through that and see it as an inauthentic expression."
    What she recommends instead is that advertisers specifically target the groups with messages that match their attitudes.
     Another suggestion is to identify the attitudes that are common among a few of those groups and target those people.
    "The qualities of the brands that people are looking for, across all the groups, are those with good-guy, team-player, guardian aspects to their brand. If a brand was to try to appeal more broadly, that is the attitude that they would look at."

November 5, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.

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