The Pursuit of UnHappiness
In a world of Endemic Unhappiness, making your customer truly happy is the only way to make your brand truly happy.
When, in 2019, my wife and I discovered that we were expecting a child, it was the happiest time in our lives.
Then we began to prepare for the arrival of a whole new person in our home. And ran into the baby industry.
Suddenly, we found ourselves being pressured to buy:
- All kinds of strollers with all kinds of bells and whistles. From coffee cup holders for those long mom-baby walks or enough storage space for a two-week holiday in Europe.
- Sleep solutions designed to help your baby sleep brilliantly. From self-rocking cribs to bassinets that expanded as our baby grew to high-tech cribs with all kinds of sensors and an overhead camera so we could stream our sleeping baby to our devices 24x7.
- Furniture and accessories for literally everything. From a feeding pillow to a diaper-changing stand.
- Toys that promised rapid brain development. Active toys that whirred and moved. Passive toys that encouraged baby to whir and move.
The common thread across all of these? The implicit message that not buying what they were selling would somehow negatively impact your child. Their health, their happiness, even their potential to become a billionaire when they grow up.
Tl;dr:
What should have been a time of nothing but joy was dampened by worry and stressed-out Internet window shopping.
In other words - unhappiness.
The 2023 Gallup World Happiness Report suggested that human beings are the unhappiest we’ve ever been. Happiness seems to have been declining since 2021, and negativity peaked in 2023. It’s easy to brush this off - “We just lived through a pandemic, duh!” - but there’s more to it than that.
2023 saw the world in they eye of the perfect storm. We were exiting the pandemic; war raged in Europe and the Middle-East; economic uncertainty loomed large.
The 2024 Report suggests that negative emotions are on the upswing globally. As is, unfortunately, inequality of happiness, driven by generational and geographic factors. One thing that’s clear is that this isn’t just about the perfect storm noted in 2023. Lack of social support, loneliness, perceived corruption, constraints on freedom and health challenges have all contributed to deepening unhappiness.
The results of last week’s US Presidential Elections aren’t helping. The outpouring of grief, fear and frustration on social media has been unprecedented - arguably even more than when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. To be fair, there would have been a similar reaction from the other side of the aisle had Kamala Harris been elected; polarisation runs deep. Given how these elections impact the world, it’s no surprise that these feelings are going viral, accelerated by algorithms…and contributing to greater unhappiness that we’ll probably see reflected in the 2025 poll.
It’s kind of obvious to say that Unhappiness is no longer a fleeting thing - it’s Endemic.
A panel I attended at SXSW delved deeper into unhappiness, and its causes. The panelists represented different industries - fashion, food and fintech. And each of them was brutally honest about the contribution of brands/companies to negative emotions - particularly stress and fear.
I scribbled furious notes through the talk, and here they are:
Food: What we eat is affecting how we feel. It’s no secret we’re eating more processed food than ever before, which is disrupting our natural, healthy gut microbiomes. Dysregulated microbiomes lead to lower stress regulation, contributing to unhappiness. There’s too much food available that undermines our happiness at a large scale.
Work: Dissatisfaction at work is unreal - we’re going through a cycle of slower growth. Financial stress is high, which impacts worker peformance - a vicious cyle. The gig and freelance economies are growing, as workers at all levels seek greater control. With that control comes uncertainty - there are no more guraranteed monthly paychecks - leading to yet another vicious cycle of stress. Even full-time jobs are becoming more and more gig-ified. In the US, 1 in 3 people leave their jobs in the first 6 months. Globally, we’re changing jobs faster, inducing more stress and fear.
Fashion: Fashion has evolved beyond the “work wardrobe” and the “personal wardrobe”. Gone are the days when it was just that simple. Today we have the sports wardrobe, the airport wardrobe, the tourist wardrobe…and so many more. All of this adds more decision-making to our lives, leading to higher stress as we juggle more and more. Fashion used to sell confidence. Today, fashion is selling no more than plain survival.
The panelists were unanimous: brands can and should do better. Happiness is good for business. We’re spending more money than ever before on things that give us even fleeting moments of joy: be it ephemeral experiences, wellness, food and just about anything else we can think of. So if we’re able to pivot our businesses to bring true happiness to our customers, we’ll do even better.
So how do we do this?
I wish I had all the answers. But I do have some thought starters.
First, and foremost, change must begin at the top. If C-suite leaders can adapt their company’s mission and values to address Endemic Unhappiness, the business would have to adapt. Starting with changes in product strategy. I can already see what a few determined people are able to do to influence this change in certain categories.
As Marketers, we’ll need to think harder about how we position and promote our products and services. We’ll need to think about how our categories contribute to Endemic Unhappiness - and then flip that on its head. We can only do this if our product truly can make the world slightly happier - so let’s beware of “happy-washing”.
System1 research suggests that “positive emotions link to the brand build mental availability and propensity to buy in the future.” Ending our ads on a happy note, or creating content that sparks positive emotions, is probably a good place to begin. It kinda makes sense now that purpose-based advertising is on its way out, and humour is resurgent - who couldn’t use an extra laugh these days?
On a related note, I wonder whether this marks the end of FOMO-based advertising. Marketers love this approach to spur growth - in fact, the first S in the STEPPS Framework that I’m such a fan of stands for “Social Currency”. However, FOMO also adds to unhappiness, by heightening the feeling of not fitting in, leading to more stress as a response.
So where did we end up when it came to preparing for parenthood?
From being overwhelmed by FOMO and fear-based marketing that pushed us to spend more, we shifted towards being simple, minimalist and waste-conscious. And ended up buying less versus more. A philosophy that continues to serve us well.
That is the insight.
Samit
As much as there was an outpour of unhappiness, there was an outpour of happiness on the other side. And both are super exaggerated by social media as you so correctly pointed out. The effect of politicians on our 'actual' day-to-day living is limited. But the politicians (or human nature, or the algorithms - don't know which one) make it seem like they are an external solution to problems you most likely don't have.
Reading your post made me see that you found one possible solution - buy less of the ideas that are beings sold out there. You figure out what works for you and do that. That's what an individual human can do.
What can a brand do? I would say - communicate openly and honestly and don't resort to fear mongering.