Abstract:

The slow living movement originated in the 1980s in reaction to the fast-paced, high-stress, and consumer-driven culture that has become increasingly prevalent in modern society. Although the interest in slow living has been around for years, a renewed trend seems to be in course. With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, people have been compelled to slowdown and to simplify their lifestyle. We are in a new era of slow living and many consumers are choosing to embrace it, in tandem with adopting new sustainable technologies. According to the Google’s Culture and Trends Team, in 2020, a stunning four times increase in views of YouTube videos with “slow living” in the title was found, compared to 2019. The Google/YouTube Team believes that this fast-rising trend not only reflects consumers desires and needs, but also provides insights into their current state of mind. As the effects of advertising take place in consumers’ minds, it is not surprising that creative designers are recalibrating their marketing strategies to account for the post-pandemic mindset of slow living.

In this paper, focusing on the distinction between "desirability” (benefits or quality) and “feasibility" (attributes or price) of actions and events, and informed by the notion of psychological distance as postulated by the Construal-Level Theory (CLT), we ask what is it about the new trend of slow living that inspires advertisers to renovate their communication strategies? CLT predicts that, as psychological distance increases, desirability concerns should receive greater weight over feasibility concerns. Psychological distance is a subjective experience that something is close or far away of the self, here and now. Transcending the self in the here and now encompasses a mental construal, and the farther removed an object, action or event is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the level of construal. For example, moving from the level of representing an object as a “cellular phone” to the level of representing this object as a “communication device”, entails a high-level construal, while “iPhone” entails a low-level one. Similarly, the action of “planning a vacation” could be represented as “enjoying freedom from routine” (high-level) or “booking a hotel room” (low-level).

Methodologically, we examine five advertising video campaigns that clearly appeal, in different degrees, to desirability over feasibility. We frame our investigation as an exploratory case study on communication strategies, meaning that we do not seek to elaborate a conclusive thesis about the persuasiveness of the advertising messages, but to glimpse a potential contribution of construal-levels to video design. On the basis of CLT, a recommendation follows from our case analysis: when designing videos with the intention to engage viewers with slow living, try to associate objects, actions or events with a psychological abstract high-level construal, congruent with expectations about a sustainable future. We conclude discussing how this strategy configures a contribution to lifelong learning.

Keywords:

Slow living, construal-level theory (CLT), advertising video campaign, sustainability, lifelong learning.