When consumers can’t consume

Have been pondering the marketing implications of this economic slowdown / downturn / recession / depression / end of days. Whatever you’d like to call it. Some worthwhile reading I’ve run across recently:

• Ed Cotton of Influx Insights makes several interesting predictions regarding opportunities and trends for the new normality.

• Grant McCracken explains consumer surging and dwelling and the rise of “homeyness”. Also references what he feels is a good example of leveraging homeyness here and a few less-good examples here.

• Adrian Ho of Zeus Jones connects lower consumer spending to the prospect of using social media to preserve consumer relationships.

• And Seth Godin wisely boils everything down to this.

All good thinking, though it’s the latter two points that really hit home for me. How you treat consumers when they’re not in a position to consume - that will distinguish marketers who sell from marketers who serve.