Dean Graziosi reflects on post-2009 shifts in consumer mindset — from shock to complacency after the financial crash — and explains how he adjusted his marketing to ‘wake people up’ from a safety-first mindset, urging marketers to lead a rebound toward aspiration.
So what kept this longevity and kept us here today still out front, people went from excited to scared to, I'm safe now, I'm in the boat. They start accepting that maybe this is all life has. They kind of get flat. If you went to dinner with someone in 2006, you were with six couples. Someone at that table was going through foreclosure, bankruptcy. You go, oh, my God, I can't believe they're going through that. I feel so bad. By 2009, after the crash and foreclosures and bankruptcies, it was a common thing. If you were at dinner, there was six people. Three of them were going through foreclosure, bankruptcy. It's just what you do. They got complacent. It wasn't shocking anymore. And what I realized, now I can market for safety. And I did. I wrote the book. We were rocking it. But then I realized people were flat, and I realized my marketing had to wake them back up, stop settling. Just because we went through this and you got the safety net. It's time to come back. It's time to rebound. Most people are going to be waiting for it to get aspirational again, to get perfect again. You can lead the way.
