SchmidPreissler is answering the ‚Handelsblatt’ regarding the article ‚Customers weary of consumption are refusing to buy’, published on December 30th, 2003:

Brands are no guarantors for what people are increasingly looking for, namely an identity.

The German business paper ‘Handelsblatt’, generally held in high esteem, published some time ago an article regarding the alleged refusal of consumers to buy brands. It was mentioned, that the customers are weary of consumption. ‚In this phase of dramatic weariness of consumption, the consumer is acting petulant and is refusing the learned marketing formulation’, a German futurologist is being quoted. A new round of hybrid business models and branch fusions is starting. Going on vacation is being turned into a ‘trans touristic feel good trip’. And at home, there is a totally new micro industry growing up. The article further discusses, that in the next few years heavy investments will occur into the self-constructed inner world. Fashion has to position itself anew as lifestyle personality consultant. Personality concepts are in demand. The niche is turning into a mass market. And, last but not least, they say, food is not only ingestion but ‘cultural technique’. According to the author, luxury brands currently have to get used to the fact that emotional fashion is taking place with no-labels or sub-labels.

Normally such a smorgasbord of neologisms, assumptions and assertions as they appear in this article, would not be commented on if it wasn’t for the fact, as previously mentioned, that this article was published in an esteemed German business paper and if we only had to chalk it up to a single person wanting to distinguish himself.

This article is asking for an answer due to being in a phase of marketing requiring re-orientation in order to be responsive to the changes in the consumer’s behavior. The brand is playing a decisive supporting role in this process. It does not lose significance but gains it. Indeed it builds the backbone for a new marketing thinking and action.

The consumer is not refusing consumption. He requires of the economy, industry and retail, a reform of marketing whereas this change has to be geared to the change in values, meaning to the changed attitude of the people to values, specifically to material values. And it has to take into account that we are now dealing with the enlightened consumer, which collectively compose a knowledge society and therefore act self-assuredly and independently.

Consumers do not need indoctrination or reeducation. Never before were they more self-assured as today. What they want is communication, dialogue and intelligent answers to their questions; they want genuine truth and clarity, dependability. And all this can only be offered by the brand. The true brand. The brand, whose background is formed by the 7-elements-definition (origin, history, profile, positioning, image, awareness and protection). That “labels” and names, pseudo brands and other terms do not have a chance in the new formation of relationships. It stands to reason that only the brand has access to the thinking and the action of people.

The change of values is a blessing for the economy. It offers perspectives, which makes a timely presentation of the range of products possible. Totally new possibilities of distribution evolve, let’s just think about people spending more and more money on education, as supplementation of schooling, that health and well being are getting more attention, that in order to secure consumption at a higher age, new requirements for acquisition of personal assets are being created and met through saving and a new thinking of asset formation. This is opening new possibilities for bank and insurance marketing and due to the change in values, we are moving further and further away from the throwaway society. We are not dealing with refusal of consumption or weariness of consumption, but with the results of the change of values which, all things considered, should be embraced.

The brand is the engine of the change. Only the brand can move markets and create new ones. If it were true that people are moving away from brands, we would not have any market successes, how they were made possible in the electronics world through Intel, yes, maybe the PC would not even be on the market, yet. What would the automotive market be without the brand with the three famous letters, the world of sports and recreational activities without brands such as Adidas and Puma? And could anybody seriously be thinking that “sub-labels” and “no-labels” could shape the Cola market, like “Coke” and “Pepsi” are doing? And we are convinced that Giorgio Armani does not have to be afraid of names who appoint themselves to be “lifestyle personality consultants”. Genuine luxury has long been perfected in its entireness and in detail, because otherwise it would not be considered luxury. And this is also what brands stand for.

Sectarians, publicized by the “Handelsblatt”, are disbursing nonsense, which emphasizes how important it is to effectively reform the essential functions of marketing and its basic principles as soon as possible and to give a new quality to communication with the people. That this is not a simple process, that you can’t turn things upside down and make the Porsche Cayenne the car for the homemaker and to turn niche markets into mass markets is a matter of course for any professional.

The human being as enlightened consumer, disengages from the dependence of material goods through Ludwig Erhard’s social market economy and through his explosively developing knowledge of groups of any kind, of political parties, trade unions and other patronizing groups, even from the conventional socio-demographic target groups and a marketing in need of reformation and is striving for a very personal position in the knowledge society, which is going to make his identity exclusive and distinctive in terms of Creation, which gave him everything essential for this purpose on his path of life. The brand is the dependable companion in this world of consumption.