Got Recession? Come on Down!
In a Pinch, Advertisers See A Marketing Opportunity

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

For months, advertisers seemed to ignore the R-word. Rhymes-with-shmecession? Heavens, no. The economy is just great, thanks. Now buy another iPhone. Charge it.

But then Bear Stearns happened. Then the Dow happened. Then the bailout happened. Then the average American consumer began to realize that something was seriously wrong. And then advertisers and marketers and publicists seemed to realize that they could not tap-dance any longer and began to acknowledge that which is rarely acknowledged in a profession built on optimism.

It's time to sell the recession.

"There are lots of ways to save, but only one way to savor," reads a current ad for Campbell's.

Recession soup!

(Campbell's was, incidentally, the only stock on the S&P 500 Index not to drop in the precipitous plummet of Sept. 29.)

"Looking for a way to lose 777 that won't tap out your IRA?" asks the press release for a new series of workout DVDs.

Recession at-home gym!

It's easy -- tack an economic rationale onto any noun or service, and you've created for your customer a whole new reason to buy. "Look younger to save your careers," e-mails the spokeswoman for some doctor in Los Angeles. "Plastic surgery is the hero of middle-aged bankers."

Recession facelifts!

It works as well for the commonplace as it does for the ridiculous. Take milk, which, in the course of its marketed life has been through enough reinventions to qualify as the Madonna of the food and beverage industry.

It's been touted as the perfect complement to the organic lifestyle, the busy lifestyle, the fitness-freak lifestyle. For the past five years, milk's target audience has been dieting women, a campaign that was still working until Wall Street suddenly wasn't, and the milk men decided it was time for a new plan:

Recession milk.

The only beverage that will keep your bones and your pocketbook strong.

Cow juice equals Dow juice.

One could riff on this until the cows come home.

The face of this push is financial empress Suze Orman, weirdly intense even with a milk mustache as she sells cost-effective calcium in a new ad. "Investing in your health always pays off," the Suze tells you via ad copy. "Even at today's prices an eight-ounce glass only costs about a quarter. So drink up. You can't afford not to."

"It was our Manhattan Project," Kurt Graetzer, chief executive of the Milk Processor Education Program, says of the new milk campaign. "At our last board meeting we realized: How can we not address the role of milk in a troubled economy? We hadn't even left the board meeting before we knew that Suze would be the face" of recession milk.

The latest in a time-honored tradition of recession products.

* * *

As a rule, we like to buy stuff. The economy's built on it, Americans are used to it. (Can the President-Bush-encouraging-shopping-after-9/11 example be trotted out yet again? It can.)

In recessions, our purchasing habits get screwy. We still buy sin: alcohol, chocolate -- goodies that won't break the bank but still let us feel decadent. (Gawker.com recently ran an article on "recession sex" -- those skeezy Craigslist postings popping up lately, which argue that sex is still free and fun, so let's hook up, baby.) But most other things -- clothing, dinners out -- we cut back on.

And so in a consumer economy where we don't need half of what we buy, where many purchases straddle the line between unnecessary and totally unnecessary, recession-wary folk must be encouraged to spend.

The trick for advertisers, during these times, is to acknowledge the rough spot customers are in without sending them into a panic. Not only does it still make sense to buy the panini press, but such a purchase will ultimately save your retirement funds.

"Advertising is long on personal insecurity but short on existential fear," says Bob Garfield, the ad critic for Advertising Age. "They want you to believe that prosperity is just around the corner."

Which means?

"They are perfectly willing to tell you that your breath stinks, but they are loath to tell you that you are poor."

Instead they tell you that you are discerning. Campbell's is still M'm M'm Good, says the ad; it's just also really, really cheap.

Instead they tell you that you are thrifty by choice. Look, if multimillionaire Suze Orman still drinks milk . . .

It's a recession tightrope that advertisers have been walking since the Great Depression.

Just curl up with a few rolls of microfilm.

In early 1929, the Frigidaire's main selling point was its high-tech freezing technology. By August of 1932, it was all about the money. "It costs less to have a Frigidaire than be without it," an ad insisted, citing reduction in spoiled food. Be a smart consumer.

Around that same time, the seven-course meal at the Hamilton Hotel at 14th and K streets NW was marked down from $1.50 to $1. "We are doing our bit to aid the reconstruction program and bring back prosperity," the text said. Now do yours. While enjoying a fine meal!

Two-for deals got big, and so did anything that made it seem like you were getting something for nothing -- or that spending would actually help you save.

Listerine's big Depression campaign talked about the things consumers could afford after buying Listerine rather than a more expensive brand -- a sad little list that included shoes, milk and underwear. Buy this . . . and you can buy even MORE stuff!

Though not, it seems, an at-home gym.

* * *

We still like our two-for deals. Can't get enough of two-for-$10 items, even when the gizmo is one-for-$5. We still like the ads that make us feel like we're smart guys, or that we're doing our part. Ads that "make buyers feel like they are responsive to a historic event," says Stuart Vyse who studies consumer psychology at Connecticut College. It's one of the most successful ad ploys out there: buy for your country.

But the truest examples of recession advertising are the ones that we don't even realize are related to the economy, says Juliann Sivulka, author of "Soap, Sex and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising."

She points to a 1932 advertisement for Scott toilet paper, in which a nurse bends over a sick child. The copy reads: "Two-thirds of the so-called 'brands' of toilet tissue . . . contain impurities which are an actual menace to health. Strong acids, mercury, sand, chlorine -- and even arsenic were found."

How's that for nasty bathroom un-humor?

"It was a hard sell during a hard time," Sivulka says. Ad budgets were down, but companies still needed to sell, so they resorted to alarmist messages or pseudoscience. "They tapped into emotions like guilt, fear, shame and blame" -- emotions that run high in poor economies.

The hard sell repeats itself in various recessions throughout the century, says Sivulka. In the economic downturn of the 1970s, the creative advertising that had ruled the two previous decades was replaced by science. Tylenol marketed itself as a safe alternative "for the millions who should not take aspirin."

It's selling the recession without ever mentioning the recession.

It's a strategy that works even now. The best recession campaigns "don't mention the economy," says Jon Bond, co-founder of Kirshenbaum Bond, a New York ad agency with clients including Wendy's and Panasonic. "That's like, 'Pardon me, your strategy is showing.' People realize they're being manipulated."

Which is the last thing the currently wigged-out consumer needs right now.

"What's different about this [recession] is that everyone is saying, 'It's the worst time since the Depression,' " Bond says. Since most of us can't personally recall the Depression, "we're all out of our comfort zone for what to do," and we'll respond well to advertising that makes us feel empowered, normal, not freaked out.

Bond once worked on what he describes as a particularly successful ad for a retail chain during an earlier period of economic instability. In it, a guy bought a ton of toilet paper, then used it to insulate his apartment so he could rock out on guitar.

"The ad wasn't just about buying toilet paper," says Bond. "It was about being resourceful."

It was about one guy taking the recession by the horns, being the hero of his own hardship story.

That's a nice way to look at things.

Bond even offers a way to give this entire mess a positive spin: "You could just say, 'Stocks are on sale.' "