"Eifel sunshine" as a brand

Can you imagine spending your three weeks of summer vacation in a hotel in the Eifel? Yes?! In a hotel in the Eifel that has no WLAN, mostly disturbed cell phone reception and in the whole village only a DSL connection that allows the display of the Google home page after five minutes of loading time? Yes?! A little digital detox can't hurt ... but not quite so radical?

Then you're like most of us. It's great to be unavailable for a change. For a few hours. Otherwise, however, we appreciate the many conveniences that "mobile-ization" brings to our everyday lives: quickly displaying the next train, checking the weather, comparing prices in the store, checking the swell or the opening hours of the swimming pool, and so on. In addition, voice and written notes are on the mobile, as well as the travel fund, the foreign language dictionary, the navigation system, the playlist, the vaccination certificate, the flight ticket - and it can also be used as a phone if you ever need one. It used to work without it. Really? That's why some people flee the Eifel as soon as they hear about the WLAN leak.

The world is changing at breakneck speed. So fast, in fact, that when you get up, you sometimes no longer recognize today and think you're already in the future. "What's important to us tomorrow - Values & Visions 2030" was therefore recorded by the Society for Innovative Market Research GIM in a representative study that it recently presented in Zurich. And they will laugh: What is important to us tomorrow is the same as today. Only in 2030, there will be different ways than today to live up to our values and satisfy our needs. And companies will have to respond to that, with their products, their services, their branding, their marketing and their communications.

The aim of the GIM study was to identify value statements that companies can use to tailor their brands, products and services precisely to the needs of tomorrow's target groups, more or less as instructions for action for the future. To this end, the 1,000 experts and citizens surveyed in Germany were asked to estimate how much individual values will change by 2030 and to indicate how much they would like to see this change. The statements of the study participants reveal a strong need for family, home, tradition, human closeness and justice - values that are estimated to change little; on the other hand, there is a great fear of security measures that restrict freedom, of losing control over personal data and technical developments, and of being forced to constantly prove one's individuality - areas of life in which strong changes are expected. Up to this point, the study is not very surprising, except perhaps for the fact that the assessment of the younger and older study participants hardly differs from one another in all points.

But the respondents also predict that enjoyment, participation, responsibility, simplicity, forms of community and creativity will change significantly. And they see these changes as desirable, because they open up new possibilities for living together and for shaping our individual and conscious existence. This is precisely where the opportunity lies for companies and their business models: they must use data and digital developments in such a way that customers perceive and accept new products and services as facilitation and support, that their need for simplicity, relief, security and anchoring is served. No consumer wants to find themselves in the clutches of a mean data octopus, but an unbeatable offer for those long-sought sneakers in the store around the corner or a deodorant automatically delivered to their home when the old one runs out - that would be an enrichment. Smart is the new big.

Our hotelier in the Eifel would therefore be well advised to modify his "offer", which consists of the non-existence of accessibility, so that it becomes a business model. Because it serves the already existing desire to switch off, to be in nature, to concentrate on oneself with a clearly defined target group. Data junkies would get the missing information from completely relaxed employees ... All that's missing is the right marketing strategy, and the perfect vacation is here: Eifel sunshine.

Speaking of which, this is the last printed advertising week before our summer break. The first one after that will be published on August 18. And our newsletter will be on break from July 17 to August 14. Have a good rest!