{"id":1365,"date":"2009-11-24T07:07:05","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T12:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BrandTwist.com\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2018-10-18T20:14:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T20:14:40","slug":"smarter-spending-and-the-joy-of-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/holidays-2\/smarter-spending-and-the-joy-of-less\/","title":{"rendered":"Smarter Spending and the Joy of Less"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a marketer so of course I want people to buy things.<\/p>\n

Like (Virgin) mobile phones and domestic and trans-Atlantic flights for example.<\/p>\n

But as we approach another “Black Friday” holiday shopping season kickoff…<\/p>\n

Part of me can’t help but think – do we really need all this stuff that’s being advertised?<\/p>\n

You may recall a very unfortunate incident when a Wal-Mart employee\u00a0was actually trampled to death at Wal-Mart during this day<\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n

What could have been so crucial to buy that worked people into such a mob frenzy?<\/p>\n

For the last year I’ve been taking a new approach to spending and loving it.<\/p>\n

I call it the Joy of Less<\/a>.<\/strong> I wrote about it last summer.<\/p>\n

It started with the onset of the Recession. Like many people, with uncertainty looming, I felt a need to save more and to be more careful with my spending.<\/p>\n

But what started as an act of deprivation soon turned in to a source of joy.
\n<\/p>\n

Instead of shopping for clothes, I started \u00a0shopping my own closet.<\/p>\n

I cleaned out and donated the clothes I never wore that were cluttering my view of what I really had.<\/p>\n

I set a sort of color “uniform” for any future purchases. They had to go with what I already owned or I wouldn’t consider them.<\/p>\n

And I looked for fewer more quality items.<\/p>\n

Now as a brand person, at first I felt a bit I guilty about this new philosophy.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t conspicuous consumption, the oil that greases the wheels of the economy?<\/p>\n

But I’ve come to realize that this joy of less approach doesn’t mean Ive stopped spending all together.<\/p>\n

It just means I have a new relationship with the things I do purchase.<\/p>\n

I value them more.<\/p>\n

Because they were the result of a thoughtful approach and not just a whim, I feel more attached to them.<\/p>\n

And In many cases I am actually spending more per item than I would have before.\u00a0 I’m just buying less things.<\/p>\n

I have other friends who have shifted their spending to experiences (vacations, classes, etc.) and away from objects because they believe they and their families get more out of them.<\/p>\n

This holiday I am heading to the mall (though not on Black Friday!).<\/p>\n

But it will be with a more considered list of what will really bring pleasure to people I love.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting (and no doubt somewhat frightening) to observe what happens with retail trends this year.<\/p>\n

Some people say we are beginning to tip toe out of the recession.<\/p>\n

And others are more skeptical.<\/p>\n

Either way, I think consumer behavior has probably been permanently changed in ways we are just beginning to grasp.<\/p>\n

And new behaviors will outlast this current economic crisis.<\/p>\n

I believe in these harder times with harder choices, we’ve all learned new lessons about the “value” of possessions.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your twist?
\nHow are you spending differently this Holiday?<\/p>\n

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I’m a marketer so of course I want people to buy things. Like (Virgin) mobile phones and domestic and trans-Atlantic flights for example. But as we approach another “Black Friday” holiday shopping season kickoff… Part of me can’t help but think – do we really need all this stuff that’s being advertised? You may recall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,93,106],"tags":[129,40,41,60,42,45,74,80,130,131,132,52,133,134,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-1365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-finding-balance","7":"category-holidays-2","8":"category-shopping","9":"tag-black-friday","10":"tag-brand","11":"tag-brand-building","12":"tag-brand-school","13":"tag-branding","14":"tag-brandtwist","15":"tag-business","16":"tag-business-building","17":"tag-holiday","18":"tag-holidays","19":"tag-joy","20":"tag-julie-cottineau","21":"tag-shopping-2","22":"tag-spending","23":"tag-virgin"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16595,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/16595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}