If marketers could make heroin chic in the Nineties, I suppose they can make the Great Depression seem Romantic in these destitute days, too. At any rate, some are trying, Robert Klara reports.
For example, The Order of St. Nick greeting-card company has a card featuring a Dust Bowl farmer and his wife cooking over an open kettle. The caption reads: "William took Martha out to
eat for Valentine's Day." Says company founder Andrew Shaffer: "As long as it's approached with humor, even the Great Depression works."
Gen-Y clothing chain Forever has several items
that could have been plucked from a 1933 Sears catalog, Klara writes, including a wool newsboy's hat, high-waist skirts and Mary Jane shoes. Upscale clothier Organic recently debuted a collection
called "American Gothic" with "rough-and-tumble cottons in earthy colors." And in Allstate's "Back to Basics" spot, actor Dennis Haysbert walks among a montage of photos of the Great Depression.
Ira Blumenthal, president of Atlanta-based branding consultancy Co-Opportunities, believes people are connecting with the values and credos connected with the Depression, not the misery
of being broke itself. "Our lifestyles, marketing and branding are being swept into the side of going back to find a simpler place in time," he says.
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