Accustomed to a context of continuous ups and downs, uncertainty and changing scenarios, we Argentines are careful to try to decode the situation.
We’re experts at nimbly reacting to hit the swerve and adapt. But what is the definition of conjuncture?
In the social sciences it is defined as “the transitory context through which a society passes”. That is to say that the cyclical becomes the ephemeral, which disappears after a short period of time.
Now, how much of this repetitive and cyclical economic reality we are exposed to is circumstantial and ephemeral? Isn’t it time we began to assume that there are realities that are beginning to be permanent?
We have always been a socio-economically fragmented country; however, there was a common imaginary in which all social classes projected themselves, and this translated into values, aesthetics, customs and expectations that challenged us all equally.
Mar del Plata was the paradigm of holidays even when the upper class summered in Punta del Este and the lower class could not access it. But the brand’s summer ads weren’t defined as summer ads without images of the Bristol and the sea lion. Multi-target brand strategies were easy: position and evoke mass messages and common cultural patterns.
However, the crises of the last 20 years are beginning to break with the illusion of homogeneity and “bourgeois” Argentina. When 93% of the upper class is immobile and 92% of the D2 segment is chronic, cultural class behaviors are no longer circumstantial to become structural.
And what do we mean by structural? Because they are not part of a transitory and ephemeral situation, but are permanent and distinctive characteristics that organize the social group. We are facing the consolidation of a fragmentation that is not only economic, but is also beginning to be cultural, and which crystallizes in very dissimilar realities:
* the upper class look at the world and project into the future, desire is the engine. Their “biggest” concern is achieving a better work-life balance. 41% say having “more free time” It is what would make your daily life happier.
* middle class he looks more at the local situation and is afraid of the future. Your aspirations and desires are limited. He negotiates all the time what he takes and what he lets go, and every “let go” implies a loss. 42% indicated that what would make their day the happiest is “consuming leisure activities without restrictions”.
* Low class plans day by day, because what is at stake is its subsistence. Its appearance is neighborhood. Eating every day is a challenge which, as the traditional proverb says, implies “earning your daily bread”. 44% responded that what would make their daily life happier is “not having to look at the price of food.”
Desire, on this level, is absent from his discourse because its reality does not allow him to connect with the possibility of something more than the everyday.
This scenario should rethink the architecture of mass enterprises. Today, two multi-target brand logics predominate.
Those who continue to position themselves from middle-class values, hoping that this also calls into question the high and low, but sell only to ABC123, i.e. 50% of the population. And the famous B brands (second brands), which from accessibility try to reach the lower classes and rebound for convenience towards the upper classes.
But having broken the common imagination, and assuming the differentiation of classes, with a single message or proposal they question only D1 and D2, ie the other 50% of the country. One or the other of the two logics today is only sufficient half of the marketconsequently leaving a niche business, but not in volume.
In trimodal Argentina, the massive is no longer obtained with the mean. This phenomenon is so strong that massive companies, brands and businesses are starting to appear that speak to the 3 realities from their positioning and the first indicators are very positive.
The Argentina we work for has changed and this change does not seem to be transitory. For brands and also for consumers.
Source: Clarin
