BRAND COMMUNICATION: Marketers ‘are ignorant about dreams of the poor’
MOST brand marketers do not understand low-income black consumers and the aspirations that drive them, says Prof John Simpson, director of the University of Cape Town’s Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing. They assume these consumers have the same dreams as middle-class and wealthy people, whereas they are quite different. For someone struggling to keep a job and feed a family, core aspirations are likely to be financial stability and an education for the children — things taken for granted further up the economic chain. The same sense of reality applies to consumer goods, says Simpson. If their staple diet is basic maize meal, they aspire to one with extra vitamins and ingredients that will make them and their family healthy. Or they may desire a brand that they perceive to have more status. Yet many such brands are not available in the retail outlets that serve these communities. In a report, Aspirations 2016, published last week, the Unilever Institute says SA faces an "unp...
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