Recession: New Talking Point

By M H Ahssan

Employees of IT firms now say “I have a job” to the routine “How are you” question. Health drinks coax people to cut calories like the way they are cost cutting, and real estate firms are doling out lessons in economics to grab not just eye balls but some elusive buyer. Well, recession is the new Hyderabadi lingo.

Sample this. New Year wishes this year were laced with the recession sentiment with people sincerely hoping for a more ‘prosperous’ 2009. Soon after the December 31 bashes were over, pubs are on a customer wooing spree, sending personal messages to patrons to be back for their theme nights. Add to that the sales that have suddenly surfaced in this non-festive season of January.

Managers of stores offering ‘Up to 50 per cent’ discounts say they hope to improve footfalls with such schemes. Not just that, a fitness centre is going to town with a 20 per cent discount offer for IT employees. A manager with the centre admits that the meltdown has served a huge blow to its profit. “Most of our customers were from the IT sector and due to recession we saw a sudden dip in business. In order to attract them, we decided to start this new scheme,” she said.

With the meltdown as the ‘flavour’ of the season, copywriters are now burning the midnight oil to woo customers through creative advertising. Ad man and theatre personality Alyque Padamsee says advertising is only “one step behind news” when it comes to snapping up anything that will make headlines. “If Sania Mirza wins a tournament today, they will use that as their punch line. If there is an Olympic happening, everything in the ad world will be related to that. So now, they are using recession as their peg to create ads and I do not think it is wrong,” he says, adding that a lot of ads are being made these days on the lines of recession, calling people to be more economyminded and assuring them of better deals in such times of crisis.

So, from a builder espousing logic on this being a ‘good time to buy property’ on a huge hoarding to families undertaking ‘recession special’ shopping sessions (doing away with malls and heading to local markets for cheaper and better deals) — the city seems to have just stopped short of selling ‘meltdown’ special biryani. Well, recession special hotdogs have incidentally arrived in the US.

According to Santha John, managing director, Mindset, people will talk about whatever is in the news, whether it is the Mumbai terror attacks or the LTTE situation. And right now (as it has been for a while) recession is the buzzword.

However, adman Prahlad Kakkar says that it is only a few products or services that seem to be using recession to their advantage and most generally shy away from using the big R word.