by Lynne Gordon (@lynne_gordon) In our busy, running-from-here-to-there, juggling-all-the-balls, making-it-happen lives, I’m amazed by the businesses that arise in the ‘in-between’: I buy avos at the robot in between work and home. I get shoes shined in between an early breakfast and my morning flight. I get my car washed in between shopping and dashing to my next meeting.
Everywhere on the roadside of Mzanzi life are the masters of ‘in-between’ — small businesses that make our busy lives simpler, fast and better. And as our lives grow more manic, it’s brands which enable this seamless flexibility that will create new opportunities to win consumers’ love and loyalty.
Fluidity and flexibility
Modern life is no longer compartmentalised. Flexibility is the new black. Work and leisure time are blurring; the firm walls separating different spaces; places and modes of being are crumbling. Fluidity is embraced, and people expect the places they spend time — and the products they use — to adapt to enable the fluid interchange of different needs.
Powered by technology and fuelled by the increased pace of daily life, ordinary people are looking for brands and solutions that fulfil multiple roles, that fit ‘in between’, and that make the complex flurry of daily life simpler and more enjoyable.
From the roadside vendor to the creative entrepreneur, small businesses understand the gap this need for flexibility creates. The Coffice — @thecofficesa — is an on-the-go mobile barista serving coffee from a tuk-tuk in the Sandton business district. Daddy.O is one of the thriving new shared workspaces allowing members to rent a desk or office facilities in the Old Biscuit Mill in Cape Town by the hour, day or month, offering lifestyle-oriented work packages to businesses looking for flexible solutions. They’re thriving in a context where flexibility is prized as an enabler of our shifting needs and demands.
New paradigms
The consumer’s new need for flexibility requires brands and businesses to think differently, to cater for new needs, unconventional combinations and creative service solutions.
Consumers no longer access products and services during ‘normal’ office hours. As flexibility grows, we demand services that are able to be accessed whenever the need arises, working around all the shifting hours of our busy daily lives. McDonalds has opened 24-hour fast food to satisfy for your midnight milkshake craving, while Capitec has shaken up traditional banking paradigms by offering extended branch hours on weekends.
On-the-go solutions are thriving. Services and solutions that allow consumers to complete tasks on the go without hassle are disrupting the old-school, time-consuming ways of doing things that are rapidly eroding. Baker’s Good Morning Breakfast Biscuits are designed for busy snackers to grab breakfast out of the home, Fit Chef delivers instant meals and smoothies to health-seekers too busy to cook, and FitBit lets everyone track the exercise that happens in daily life, without ever entering the gym. Mobile banking means I never visit a bank branch, and allows for round-the-clock transacting. Wumdrop provides on-demand courier delivery services in Joburg and Cape Town, where you can send any parcel over a short distance at the click of a button.
Technology creates new possibilities. Mobile is the biggest enabler and accelerator of seamless flexibility. Not only does mobile allow access to new services 24/7 from anywhere, it also fuels the ability to shift seamlessly between different modes and moods. The Beats Music app promises to select the perfect song to match any occasion — just input your mood, context, company and genre, and Beats provides a soundtrack. From mobisites to easily accessible service applications, mobile powers our seamless flexibility.
Lessons for marketers
The opportunity is ripe for brands to embrace seamless flexibility. Look for ways for your brand can:
- Simplify complexity. Brands that make life simpler, or take the time and hassle out of everyday transactions, are the consumers’ new best friend. Saving time is worth gold. Eliminating hassle is the breeding ground of powerful innovation.
- Be accessible, whenever and wherever. Creating new ways to access, interact with and buy your brand simply extends buying opportunities for busy on-the-go consumers. It’s why we buy avos from the traffic light vendor, and it could be the reason that your brand is preferred over competition.
- Facilitate flexibility. The future belongs to brands that extend suitability for use in multiple contexts, and make it possible to change atmosphere and mood swiftly and easily, powering our search for balance.
So here’s to our manic existence — and to the brands that make life simpler, more flexible and more fun. Long may the madness endure!
Lynne Gordon (@lynne_gordon) is the managing director at strategic marketing consultancy Added Value. She learned marketing on-the-job and is fascinated by the streets of South Africa, where small entrepreneurs — untrained as marketers — apply the art and science of branding to their businesses.
Her monthly MarkLives column, “Homegrown”, explores everyday businesses and the lessons corporate marketers can learn from the streets of Mzansi. Share your own observations, photos and examples of marketing from SA’s roadside with @lynne_gordon on Twitter.
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