Brands, you have a problem. Smarter and world-weary consumers are growing increasingly cynical of your efforts to win them over, especially if you don’t mean what you say or help out when times are bad, as they have been for the last 15 months.
That’s the bottom-line finding of the 12th annual installment of Havas’ Meaningful Brands survey, which aimed to take the cultural and social temperature of consumers at the height of the pandemic. As might be expected, the findings represent a wake-up call of sorts for brands and indirectly, for the agencies that help them reach consumers.