The situation is often the key to success
The final call will soon be sounding for many established companies. Their last chance to discover that the winds of change have been blowing in a new direction for far too long. Do yourself a service by looking at where you market your products, who your customers are, who your competitors are, and last but not least – why people do or don't buy your products. Seek and you will find that your market has changed, that your product may have far greater potential than you expected, or that you have simply not optimised your message.
The age of the situvidual
The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies points out that we now find ourselves in a post-industrial era, in a new society where we live in "life spheres" far more than we used to. This is because there are now many more such spheres, and because they overlap each other and us as individuals. Examples of life spheres are work, home, family, interests, friends and consumption.
With the strong convergence of so many different life spheres and the fact that we live in a high-tech world where we are influenced by the internet and mobile phones that connect us ever closer to one another, and over far greater distances than before, it is not surprising that modern humans are changing and evolving. Our self-perception is rapidly moving us away from established roles and functions towards more fluid and situation-based equivalents. A man today is not just a man. He may be divorced and head of a family, manager of a Danish sales office in a major US company, a member of the Conservatives, a Scandinavian, a European, a car owner, a home owner, a dog owner, a menopausal male, and a sports fan with a low golf handicap.
The individual has become fragmented into hundreds of personalities. Today you can be 45 and visit discotheques every Saturday night, or 18 and a bingo regular. It is therefore high time to abandon the concept of the individual and find ourselves a more appropriate framework: the situvidual.
Situvidual versus Individual
The individual's basic personality derives from a "self", a core inner being or soul. The individual's identity is based on internal/external opposites – for example, work versus leisure/home, public versus private sphere, strategic misrepresentation versus brutal honesty, norms and conventions versus personal feelings and opinions. The individual is governed by frameworks, planning and discipline. As individuals we are comfortable when our inner "self" mirrors the external ground rules, when the two coincide. But in a world characterised by change and new situations, a self-contained "self" can be both unhealthy and unpleasant.
The situvidual's basic personality derives from an "us", a context or a network. The situvidual's identity is based on blurred distinction between the internal and the external – for example, work is leisure and leisure is work, the home is the workplace and the workplace is the home. Dissimulation does not pay for the situvidual, he does not conceal his feelings. The situvidual is controlled by contexts, relationships, flexibility and choice – by situations.
The situvidual is a major consumer of (good) stories, but not in the same way as the individual. Where identity and lifestyle are crucial to the individual, for the situvidual the situation is paramount. The situvidual's shopping habits and consumption differ depending on the situation in which he finds himself. At work he may drive a hard bargain, buying what's cheapest. As the father of a family he is a child-friendly eco-shopper, and as a sportsman he may splash out on high-price designer wear.
Situated-based consumer communities
Today, people derive identity from the products and brands they buy. Consumption is in many ways the embodiment of lifestyle in our time, and often gives us a sense of belonging to a group of people.
At Christmas, for example, many people buy mince pies and mulled wine, and all they have in common with everyone else doing the same thing is the activity and the mentality. It is Christmas as an occasion and a tradition that is decisive.
Or maybe we take the train in the morning and read Urban and Metro Express, and the only thing we have in common is the location – ie. the transport situation.
Segmentation by situation
As we are no longer individuals with a fixed, defined self, but rather situviduals who constantly redefine our personalities and identities depending on the situation, advertisers can no longer compartmentalise us by common traits based on conventional groupings such as age, gender, lifestyle and income. However, an attempt can be made to define the situations and contexts the situvidual is part of. This is what the "new” role for marketing and communication is about – defining situations in the present and future and adjusting their messages accordingly. Situations that also create new consumption and shopping situations.
Where can situation-based communication be used?
Situation-based communication can be used to advantage in the vast majority of markets. It is not a phenomenon simply limited to the grocery trade (FMCG). For example, many educational institutions face a major challenge. Instead of marketing themselves with a monologue of static information, they must meet the needs of future students in an open two-way dialogue based on the students' situation. Students are not what they were. Many no longer come directly from high school or technical college, but have worked for several years or travelled. They bring more "baggage" with them to their studies, more life experience, stronger opinions, and maybe they have children and are married. Many educational institutions are just not geared to receiving such students.
Private-sector B2B companies can also benefit greatly by learning about situation-based communication and marketing. Organisations consist of people, and decision makers are also situviduals. A decision maker faces many different situations in the course of a day. Maybe the customer has to economise, maybe he is preparing to launch a massive marketing campaign and staking everything on one product. The course of negotiations depends often on situations. As a company, you can identify needs by situations, and market yourself accordingly with great success.
Food for thought
Maybe your company has experienced falling sales over the past few years. Or growing price competition as a result of globalisation. There may be a good reason for this: Your market advertising and communication are wrong. You should be thinking much more about meeting your customers’ needs based on their situations. Maybe you can't do this yourself. Maybe you need to team up with another company to do it. One example is the partnership between IKEA and 3x34. Situation-based consumption and situation-based communication have come to stay, and companies must therefore think in terms of bigger relationships. But these relationships may often mean the difference between failure and success.
Source: Gitte Larsen, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, "New Consumers and New Consumer Communities".
Summarised by Thomas Kruse, Communication Consultant, Kühl+co
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