Advertisers changing their (stars and) stripes

In the new, more anxious America, airline ads are hard to come by and luxury hotel chains are rethinking how to get people into their gilded lobbies.

Gone are escape and opulence. The new message from at least one upscale hotel is comfort and the opportunity for family closeness. Other companies are also rethinking their ad approaches - trying to figure out if everything should be draped in flags and if humor is still OK.

Advertisers are aware of the obvious landmines - exploding buildings, pictures of the World Trade Center. It's the subtler changes - like a greater desire for comfort food and a drop in interest in cosmetics - that have them asking Americans almost hourly what's on their minds.

"We're working around the clock on this issue. Our clients are anxious to understand consumers," says Graceann Bennett, director of brand planning at Arnold Worldwide in Boston, which represents Volkswagen and McDonald's. "How do we talk to them? What do we say? This is the big question [advertisers have]," she says.

Before Sept. 11, little was off limits to advertisers, whose edgy fare included women being chased by serial killers and images of scantily clad young people. Opinions in the industry vary widely on how to adapt to today's more subdued environment - from redoing everything to changing nothing - which is part of what's driving the nonstop discussions with consumers.

One visible example of the level of concern occurred this week when Abercrombie & Fitch, known for its racy clothing marketing, announced that it had canceled the holiday issue of a quarterly catalog because the content and tone were deemed inappropriate for the current environment. It's the latest in a recent spate of changes that include companies dropping words and images from their advertising.

"This is really unusual. I can't think of another time when the industry was so impacted by an event," says Dick Lynch, director of account planning at Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis.

Figuring out what consumers need has taken on new urgency for advertisers, with the holidays just around the corner and the industry already contracted because of the economy. Now, companies are trying to make sure the money they are spending isn't on ads that are offensive.

Polls show that Americans are ready for ads to return from their post-Sept. 11 hiatus - recognizing they contribute both to the economy and the return to "normal." But some say current ads no longer fit with their lifestyle. As recently as last week, 50 percent of people surveyed by ad agency Mullen said they felt ads are irrelevant to the things they're thinking about or buying now. Usually that number is10 to 15 percent, the agency reports.

"Clearly things have changed," says Ted Nelson, a managing partner at Mullen in Wenham, Mass. He says Americans aren't going to stop spending, but they may spend differently - buying more electronic devices, for example, so they can have the ability to communicate instantly with loved ones.

Some observers suggest that Americans might already have been moving down a path toward embracing more traditional values before Sept. 11. But the events of last month have pushed both them and advertisers to think more about what matters. Already in response to research, ads are focusing more on comfort, simplicity, and family. And ad executives say such qualities as clarity, compassion, and sincerity will likely appear more than cynicism, smugness, and irreverence.

Working with focus groups, ad agencies are starting to look at everything from approaches that play on nostalgia (like reviving past campaigns), to those that highlight other aspects of a brand, such as the hotel chain offering comfort rather than opulence, or an automaker promoting a car for its safety rather than its sex appeal. Now is the time, they say, for building on relationships consumers have with products they know.

"The good news is that there are some very specific themes, [and] there are a lot of brands that fit those themes without changing a freckle on their face," says Janet Pines, worldwide director of strategy for Foote, Cone & Belding in New York.

FCB research indicates that many brands already fit into themes that Americans are saying are important, such as tradition (Coke), Americana (the Postal Service, Levi's jeans), routine (Lipton tea), and comfort foods (Campbell's soup). Given the way events are unfolding, these themes could continue for years, Ms. Pines says.

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