Blue 

Monday 

- 

the 

power 

of 

illusion 

If you have been to the circus lately, it probably reminded yourself, the illusionist has two tricks : the first is the trick itself: the manipulations, the tools, the engineering he/she uses to create the illusion; while the second is the distraction, to make sure you don’t look too closely and you don’t pay attention to the details, so you don’t see the trick. Well, the Blue Monday uses the same principles: the engineering are the ads, the newsletters, and the sponsored content that brands push in front of our eyes, while the concept fo Blue Monday is the distraction. An excuse to tell us we're missing something, that we need to buy our way to happiness. One hand performs the sleight, while the other distracts you from seeing the truth.

Yes, we do miss the sun (especially in Belgium) during these long months of winter.
Yes, the food, the drinks, the parties, the noisy kids environment during Christmas break haven’t contributed positively to our current well-being and life balance.
Let’s be frank, as magic as Christmas break can be, what we would need at this period of the year is more outside walks, more nature, sports activities, more natural lights and less everything else.
But this temporary depressed mood and this seasonal blue is not a fatality, even if some brands would like us to believe it (so they can sell us what we artificially need).

We challenge brands to think differently.
What we expect from brands today, is to stop proposing artificial services and products to make us feel better during down time and blues periods. We expect brands to contribute to more positiveness in our daily life on the long term. Instead of proposing us a shitty pull-over as a quick-fix to feel better in January, we expect brands to propose us robust outside sportswears, that give us so much comfort that they drive us outside in the middle of the nature 365 days a year, regardless of weather conditions. Instead of luring us with discounts for fleeting city breaks, inspire us with tools to craft our own meaningful adventures, extending the joy of anticipation and planning beyond travel duration, decreasing the need of frequency. Instead of proposing us stuff that fix our short-term artificial needs, we expect brands to embark us in a long-term journey, and adhere to their societal project.

For societal, environmental and economic reasons, what we expect from brands today is an ability to fix our issues on the long-term. We're not just buyers; we're people seeking meaningful, long-lasting improvements in our lives. We don’t want brands to create artificial needs, we want them to address our real ones. This comes with a CSR positioning in terms of organisation, services and projects, that needs to be translated into meaningful communication that gets rid of illusional rendez-vous.

The time of illusion is over, it’s time to get real.