Business Monitor


Glass half empty or half full?


Marketing expert, Paul Clapham, takes a look at what effect coronavirus has had on the economy and the jobs market. Could there be opportunities to be had?


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here will always be nay sayers, people whose glass is not just half full but nearly empty. We are, I predict, about to get a bellyful of them. They just won’t be able to help themselves when the experts are all saying that the virus is about to be history. While the rest of us are whooping it up down the pub, they will be busy buying canned food and toilet rolls.


Boris and his chums who have done the TV coronavirus updates have stressed throughout that all their decisions have followed the science. Well, coming out of lockdown we should be giving due respect to the statistics. Yes, yes, I know about lies and damn lies but it’s close to a scientific approach and they are solid and convincing.


Unemployment


It starts with the rate of unemployment. Employers have upped their recruitment plans significantly and the jobs market has continued buoyant through the year of lockdowns. That’s pretty remarkable when you wouldn’t have needed to be a wowser to predict desperate things in employment. You would not have been alone either: forecasters are saying that unemployment will peak at 6.5% whereas predictions a year ago were at 12%. The current figure, as I write, is 4.9%, a figure countries like Spain would die for when their economies are banging along.


It isn’t just a good time to be employed, it’s a good time to get employed. Vacancies in March rose 16% on


| 22 | July 2021


February’s figure, which was OK. All of this promises well for the printwear industry. More employees in general doesn’t automatically mean that they are wearing corporate clothing, but it has to be the trend you’d prefer.


Marketing spend


Equally, as we come out of COVID hell, businesses are going to start spending on marketing. Past events tell us that this is essential rather than optional when you exit a recession. There is too a real wish for positive thinking and action. We’re all sick of sitting at home, not seeing friends and family, having to follow piffling rules (no matter that we may approve of their aim). We want new, different, funky and exciting. Risk? Bring it on, let’s try it! At the same time plenty of people are taking a cautious view of the immediate exit from lockdown. The government deserves applause for this. We have bought the message ‘don’t spoil it now; stay safe, be sensible’. It’s not a bad thing in principle but it can be overdone. I have read advice for those planning to holiday abroad and it might be summarised as ‘don’t go, stay here but if you do go, don’t do anything enjoyable and whatever you do don’t mix with or talk to any of those nasty foreigners’. Brexit meets COVID or what? Much the same applies to the happily reopened shops and pubs. According to Ipsos’s research footfall in non-food stores was running at 71% of 2019 figures. Not good. My own recent researches into pubs reopening were


more encouraging: in all the pubs I visited there was not a table to be had at 7.30 in the evening. Apparently, restaurant customers, not least those who had booked, were staying away. Ipsos say that this will continue until the second half of the year. But my experience says that whatever heavyweight researchers are finding it won’t be consistent round the country.


Opportunities


Is there any benefit to garment decorators in this? I can see some opportunities. Could publicans and restaurateurs sell ‘I’m eating/ drinking at the Old Bakery/ the Three Ferrets; the only thing missing is you’. A sale might seem like a big ask when they want customers for meals and beer not T shirts. However, don’t write this off entirely as people like a memento, even of tough times. As an alternative a pub could run a free draw giving away a shirt to an absentee customer the publican and others want to see again – a popularity contest! A really good piece of news about the economy carries its own impact. The head economist at the ONS says that a strong statistical rebound during the coming year is inevitable because the rise in GDP he predicts will be driven by a low base, i.e. say 30% of not much is not much, but it won’t read like that in newspaper headlines.


That’s the political equivalent of something for nothing. The prime minister will be pleased.


www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk


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