Coolest Recession Ever!

Is anyone besides me starting to get the impression that this recession, aka ‘The Great Recession’, is rapidly becoming the latest ‘it’ thing? Everyone’s talking about it and blogging about it (guilty); it’s all you hear about when you turn on the news. And when the news takes a commercial break, most of the commercials will invariably reference the recession one way or another. Car companies are letting people drive off the lot with no money down and with the option of bringing the car back if they lose their job….or even if they just don’t want the car anymore. (Thanks for the loaner, GM. Sucks to be you.) Restaurants are offering discounts for folks who can prove they’re unemployed. Laundromats too. And have you people been shopping lately? I walked through an outlet mall in the DC area a couple weeks ago. Whereas it was a madhouse in prior visits, this time….very lonely. Again, sucks for those folks on the other side of the counter. But for the smart shopper, these are boom times. Apparently it’s even easier to get into certain oh-so exclusive clubs and bars that wouldn’t give us the time of day, pre-crisis. Is the Meatpacking District on the (velvet) ropes too? Horrors!

Again, there’s a certain pervasiveness to the recession zeitgeist. Being a victim of the recession has taken on a certain panache. It’s become an identifier of our time. Twenty years from now, if you can’t say that you weren’t personally affected by the recession, you’re going to feel left out. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. It is, however, at the very least, a thing to marvel at. And marketers have clued in. Identifying with one’s loss of a job and/or one’s loss of purchasing power and confidence in the economy has ironically become a potent marketing tool. It’s a buyers’ market out there. Everywhere. There’s never been a better time to be jobless and poor. Sure would be nice to have a little to take advantage of all those fire sales tho……..