Why 'Normal' Looks Further Away Than Ever For Marketers And Consumers

The “return to normal” is a destination that marketers have been dreaming of for years now – but what exactly is “normal” following a global pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, and a surprise war in the Middle East that has further weakened consumer confidence?

According to new research from DEPT and The Marketing Society, that arrival isn’t coming soon — while the ad industry’s collective denial is becoming a strategic liability.

Across 3,000 consumers and senior marketers in the US, UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, the study reveals a widening disconnect between what people say and what they do. On the surface, more than half of consumers (52.7 per cent) report feeling financially confident. Yet the same group is preparing to cut back on non‑essentials (55.5 per cent). Confidence, it turns out, is no longer a predictor of behaviour — and brands still treating it as one are building plans on sand.

The research also punctures another long‑held assumption: that declining loyalty is a values problem. 40 per cent of consumers have stopped buying from specific brands, but the primary driver isn’t ideology — it’s affordability. People are trading down because they have to, not because they’ve suddenly fallen out of love with the brands they once chose. And when companies do take public stances on geopolitical issues, the risk outweighs the reward: more consumers say it pushes them away than pulls them closer.

But perhaps the most consequential finding is that 70 per cent of consumers don’t believe “normal” is coming back any time soon. Only a small minority (14.7 per cent) see today’s instability as temporary. Most (70 per cent)expect it to last at least a year — and they’re already adjusting their spending accordingly, especially in categories like dining out, luxury, travel and fashion.

Some marketers have quietly accepted this and started making structural changes. Others are still waiting for the world to right itself.

DEPT’s global chief client and growth officer Andrew Dimitriou discusses what this means for leadership, planning, and the uncomfortable decisions brands can no longer postpone.

Creative Salon: What should CMOs now treat as the more reliable signals of consumer intent, and which traditional measures should they be more wary of?

Andrew Dimitriou: The confidence number has become a trap. The research DEPT conducted in partnership with The Marketing Society found that 52.7 per cent of consumers say they feel financially confident, but 55.5 per cent are actively planning to cut non-essential spending. Those two things can coexist because confidence is a self-assessment, not a spending signal. What we are seeing is a genuine decoupling between self-reported sentiment and actual wallet behaviour. People feel okay about themselves individually while being deeply worried about the world around them, and it's the worry, not the confidence, that's shaping purchasing decisions.

CMOs need to stop managing by confidence scores. They are lagging indicators. The data that actually tells you where the market is heading is behavioural: basket size changes, category switching, search patterns, dwell time, repeat purchase rate. These tell you what people are doing, not how they feel about doing it. The consumer who tells you they're fine is also the one quietly downgrading.

The measures to be most wary of are any that average across the population. Aggregated confidence scores mask the split between consumers who are genuinely stable and those managing real financial pressure. The brands navigating this best are the ones prioritising granular behavioural data over topline sentiment to track actual market shifts.

If "normal" isn't coming back, what does that mean for 2026 marketing planning? What assumptions still look actively dangerous?

The most dangerous assumption is that this is a pause. In the research we ran with The Marketing Society, only 14.7 per cent of consumers describe the current situation as a short-term disruption. Over 70 per cent expect it to last at least a year, and a significant portion describe it as a permanent structural shift. Consumers have already mentally restructured their loyalties. They are not waiting to go back to how things were.

That means any 2026 plan resting on 2024 category growth assumptions is structurally flawed and needs immediate stress-testing. The current environment is not the exception. It is the baseline. Dining out, luxury, travel, fashion: categories that brands and agencies have historically treated as stable growth engines are seeing significant planned cutbacks. If your strategy was built for a consumer who no longer exists in quite the same form, the plan needs to change, not the execution.

What the best marketers are doing is making structural decisions. Pricing architecture, portfolio mix, channel strategy, brand positioning all need to be rebuilt for a consumer who has fundamentally recalibrated what feels worth it. Tactical responses, a promotional push here, a campaign pivot there, will not close the gap if the underlying strategy has not moved with the consumer.

How can CMOs better diagnose whether consumers are walking away for affordability reasons versus values or politics?

This is one of the most consequential diagnostic failures we're seeing right now. The DEPT and Marketing Society research found that 40 per cent of consumers globally have stopped buying from specific brands. The dominant driver is economic: people can no longer afford the premium and are switching to cheaper alternatives. A smaller but vocal group is making values-driven or politically motivated decisions. Both show up identically as volume decline in your sales data, and most brands have no way to tell them apart.

The reason that distinction matters so much is that you cannot fix a pricing problem with a purpose campaign, and you cannot fix a values rejection with a discount. Getting it wrong doesn't just fail to solve the problem. It can actively make things worse: brand purpose investment directed at consumers who left because of price, or margin-eroding promotions aimed at consumers who have rejected the brand on principle.

The only way to diagnose the difference is to get beyond aggregate sales data. Segmenting lapsed and switching customers and pairing that with qualitative research is not optional right now. It is the difference between a strategy and an expensive guess.

For premium brands facing economic trade-down, what's the right response?

The first thing premium brands need to understand is that trade-down is rarely a permanent rejection. It is, in most cases, a temporary loss of access. Most consumers leaving are not saying your brand isn't worth it in principle. They are saying they cannot reach it right now. Treating it as rejection, and responding accordingly, is how brands lose customers they could have kept.

Deep discounting is the wrong answer. It erodes the premium positioning that made the brand valuable in the first place, and it attracts the wrong signals about where the brand sits. The more effective response is a portfolio one: an accessible entry point that keeps consumers within the brand ecosystem, a loyalty architecture that rewards staying even at lower spend levels, and messaging that holds the brand's distinctiveness while acknowledging the moment.

The goal is to remain the first choice when conditions improve. The consumer who downgraded to your entry product and felt respected is a far better re-upgrade prospect than the one you lost entirely. The brands that come out of this period strongest will be the ones that stayed in the relationship during the contraction.

How should CMOs think about when to speak on geopolitical issues, when to stay quiet, and how to protect brand trust either way?

The data from our research with The Marketing Society is unambiguous on this, and the asymmetry is stark. When brands take public positions on geopolitical issues, 23.5 per cent of consumers say it makes them less likely to buy, versus 16.9 per cent more likely. The downside outweighs the upside before you even account for the consumers who quietly disengage without registering a strong view either way.

The practical directive is this: unless a brand's core function is inextricably linked to an issue, the calculus does not currently favour speaking out. That is not a call for brands to be silent on everything. It is a call for the bar to be high, and for the question to be honest: is this genuinely connected to what we stand for and do, or are we speaking because we feel we should be seen to say something?

Trust, in this environment, is built through operational excellence, not reactive messaging. Showing up reliably, pricing fairly, treating customers well during a difficult period: these accumulate more durable equity than the right post at the right moment. Consistent, reliable service is the stronger long-term position.

Which categories and brands are most exposed, and what are the smartest marketers already doing?

The most exposed are the categories that have historically relied on aspirational positioning to justify a premium and on consumer credit and social reward to bridge the gap between desire and purchase. The Marketing Society research we partnered on puts dining out, luxury, travel, and fashion at the sharp end of planned cutbacks. Those supporting conditions, easy credit, spending as social currency, have shifted, and the categories built on them are feeling it most acutely.

The brands most at risk are the ones still running campaigns built for a consumer who has already moved on: aspirational messaging, stability assumptions, discretionary freedom as a given. The window to pivot is closing, and the brands waiting for a return to normal will face significant market share erosion in the meantime.

The smartest marketers have already stopped treating this as a holding pattern. They are getting close to real behavioural data, making structural changes to pricing and portfolio rather than layering tactical promotions on top of an outdated strategy, and showing up in the relationship with their customers now rather than waiting. The brands that move during the restructuring period will not just weather it. They will emerge with stronger customer relationships than the ones that held their breath and waited for conditions to change.