This week, people all around the world will make very similar consumer decisions: buying a card, ordering flowers, getting chocolate, and booking a nice restaurant. With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, it seems that we are celebrating our feelings in a global village of love and romantic consumption. But is there more to the event than meets the commercial eye?
Chivalry may not be dead, but today’s “modern man” is much different from days of old: he applies moisturizer and even wears makeup. While you may accept this as the norm (or find it shocking that we are even calling attention to it), it’s important to acknowledge it hasn’t always been this way. Sure our fathers applied Brut and Brylcreem, but these were basic items, commodities of sorts. Today it’s much more complicated.
Do you remember when the best part of waking up was hearing the sound of the dripping and percolating Mr. Coffee coffeemaker preparing for the blissful moment of Folgers in your cup? For many coffee drinkers today, this is just a faint memory of their parents coffee habits in the 1980’s and 90’s. At that time, coffee was a bipolar product: regular or decaf.
From stories about Walmart as a corporate villain and pink slime at McDonald’s to jokes about Starbucks as “Starsucks” and Apple’s Bendgate. A brand’s meaning is not only created by the brand’s owner but rather by multiple stakeholders including journalists, celebrities, bloggers, activists, scientific experts, and consumers.
