the home front - the effects of terrorism on advertising

American Demographics, Dec 1, 2001

Stephen Rosa, owner of a Providence, R.I., ad agency called Advertising Ventures, says that every business decision he makes these days is with his wife and 2-year-old daughter in mind. When deciding whether to attend a business dinner or charity event after hours, Rosa says, "I used to ask myself, 'Is going to this event important to my business?' Now I ask, 'Is going worth taking time away from my family?'" He's looking forward to his daughter's school years and says he expects to be very involved, chaperoning field trips or otherwise making sure someone he trusts is with her at all times, preferably with a cell phone. He has already become much more diligent about keeping his and his wife's cell phones charged and on. "I don't ever want to be in a situation where I can't at least say goodbye to them," he says. Goodbye kisses in the morning have a new poignancy.

The September attacks have caused many Americans to re-examine what really matters, and what seems to matter above all else is family. Eighty percent of adults say that the attacks have increased their appreciation for their families, and 69 percent say that family is a greater priority now than before Sept. 11, according to an exclusive American Demographics survey of 2,532 adults, conducted between Oct. 9 and 11 by Greenwich, Conn.-based research firm NFO WorldGroup. This sweeping reprioritization of home and family has reportedly manifested itself in a wave of Hallmark moments: people spending more "family time" with their children, reconnecting with long lost relatives, reconciling seemingly irreconcilable family differences, even throwing out divorce papers and giving love a second chance. Greeting card, cell phone, life insurance and home security system sales are all on the rise. Parents are becoming stricter, keeping closer tabs on their kids' whereabouts and on their media consumption.

Will it last? For the moment, it seems that a collective sense of normalcy has been fundamentally altered. What place has family and home begun to take in our new normal lives? Will "normal" parenting now mean issuing cell phones to 5-year-olds? Will the divorce rate plummet as couples draw closer together in response to a perception of greater outside menace? Or have the events of Sept. 11 and its aftermath had more subtle effects? Some marketing experts say, for example, that consumers are now more attracted to products that promise safety and quality. Branding experts observe an increasing trust in traditional brands, like Kraft and Coca-Cola, and a corresponding distrust for the new and unfamiliar. Advertising creative directors expect this holiday season to be filled with more family imagery than ever, with messages previously considered too sappy now being welcomed as sober reminders of what is truly important.

How consumers think about and behave toward their families will continue to change daily. But eventually, the reshuffling of priorities that has already started to take place since the catastrophe, both among individuals and as a country, will begin to settle in a new hierarchy, and our sense of normal will be redefined once again.

Catherine Lutz, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina who specializes in the impact of war on society, hypothesizes that the new normal is likely to resemble the Cold War era more than any other historical period. Over time, people will return to everyday routines, but with new fears. During the Cold War, it was the fear of nuclear holocaust, while today it's the fear of the next terrorist attack. "If you look at people who lived through the Cold War, they came to accept a certain level of risk as normal," says Lutz. "We don't think twice about giving our kids the car keys at age 16," she notes, pointing out that the number of Americans who die in car accidents each year (about 42,000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is far greater than the number who died on Sept. 11. "If we can normalize that, we can normalize anything."

But what will be normal for consumers may not be settled for some time, and, as such, marketers who must continue doing business may want to pay even closer attention. "With so much changing from day to day, there has never been a time when marketers needed to be closer to their customers," says Chuck Donofrio, CEO of Carton Donofrio Partners, a brand design firm in Baltimore whose subsidiary, Context-Based Research Group, fielded a worldwide ethnographic study in the weeks after the attacks. From 70 one-on-one interviews, conducted in eight cities in the U.S. and seven abroad, anthropologists found, above all else, an overwhelming emphasis on the home. Says Robbie Blinkoff, principal anthropologist at Context: "As people are reevaluating their own values, family and friends are becoming the primary filter through which many people are making major decisions about their lives, from the media they ingest, to what they spend their money on." Donofrio adds that it is this period, in the months following the attacks, when people's heightened attention to family may mean the most for marketers, as they attempt to create a style and message that resonates with their post-Sept. 11 consumers.