The blind panic with which we greeted the current recession is slowly but steadily beginning to subside. Things are still tight, to be sure -- but for the most part, even the Chicken Littles among us have begun to acknowledge that this recession, like all others before it, will eventually end.
Such a realization, however, seems to come as little relief to some marketers. According to a recent article in Ad Age, some advertisers -- including the country's largest, Procter & Gamble -- are postulating that the current recession may have forever altered our consumer psychology. In other words, the fiscally responsible survival tactics we've adopted this past year might actually become permanently engrained in our spending habits.
I, for one, think P&G and others are giving our society's collective wisdom a little too much credit. For every consumer out there who's planning to continue using a generic laundry detergent even after the recession ends, I'll wager that there's someone else out there who just can't wait for the economy to give them permission to upgrade their facial cream to the one that contains trace amounts of real diamond dust.
So what do you think? Which of our belt-tightening measures are likely to stick, and which will go out the window as soon as a Wall Street Journal headline declares our economic crisis to be at an end?
