Rethink Home Chapitre 1 : The Great Indoor

HOME, THE NEW PLACE TO BE

What with lockdown, curfews, teleworking and the injunction “stay home and stay safe”, the home has become “the place to be”, both literally and figuratively. As a result, it has become the focus of attention for many business sectors and brands. So it’s goodbye great outdoors, hello great indoors! Consumers and brands alike are redirecting their ingenuity to address this new reality.

The correlation between self-care and home care is strengthening our tendency to identify with or even sacralize the home. The shift from “well-being” to “living well” is restoring the its central position in everyday life: home is now where we work and play as well as where we reconnect with, meet or congregate with others including by digital means.

HOME-SAFE-HOME: A REFUGE WHERE YOU CAN DROP YOUR GUARD

Once you step across your threshold to your home, i.e. the border between the outside world and your private space, you feel a sense of freedom. Having a sanctuary feels like a privilege in a society on high alert, when  every venture into public space is fraught with constraints and prohibitions. Today, the home is a private space where we can breathe, touch things, eat, interact and enjoy entertainment unhampered by masks, social distancing or regulations.

The external environment – where Covid-19 lurks and the economy is in crisis – makes us feel insecure and full of uncertainty. Our interior space is where most of our fundamental needs (e.g. to feel safe) and aspirations (to feel good and fulfilled) are being met.

Objective for reaching consumers: “There’s no place like home!” Represent the home as a sanctuary for engaging in chosen positive isolation, as a trustworthy safe place where one can leave the anxiogenic outside world behind and as a source of vital energy in our quest for a new balance and harmony between external and internal.

Objective for brands: Show benevolence and empathy while highlighting the importance of mental and physical well-being at home. Use a holistic approach to beauty and food, so that a person’s surroundings will elicit positive feelings. The mood should be soothing, temperate, even mesmerizing, not to mention multi-sensory, relying on color and aromatherapy. The rise of “comfy minimalism” design confirms this trend.

LIVING LIVE FROM AN AGILE, ADAPTABLE AND MODULABLE HOME

Now that many businesses are requiring employees to maintain a full home office until June 2021 (if not later) and teleworkers’ discovery of “zoom towns” has led to a boom in local housing markets), the boundaries between public and private activities are becoming increasingly blurred. Now that our freedom of movement is restricted, our home must often double as our office, fitness center, cinema, bar and restaurant. It must be multifunctional, which means rethinking the segmentation of our interior space.

Homes evolve in step with lifestyles, whether it is to accommodate new family configurations and reconfigurations, house several generations under the same roof or – in the age of Covid –  transform a dwelling into a place of work and/or leisure.

Objective for reaching consumers: Convey the message that the only limitation on how they arrange their interior is the ceiling or roof. Today’s interiors need to be as adaptable as consumers themselves, characterized by modulability, evolvability and flexibility of usage. Inhabitants should be able to optimize their space, time and budget. They should be able to do many things – congregate or self- isolate; work or play; get physical exercise or enjoy entertainment – all in the same space, especially if it is small.

Objective for brands: Think simplify. Become consumers’ invisible ally by making their daily life easier in an intelligent way. Advocate lifestyles that are free of constraint and friction. Project as being increasingly smart and solution-centric. Help make consumers’ multi-tasking lifestyle easier. While important, technology needs to take a back seat to service and the consumer experience. It needs to be “camouflaged” to effectively highlight the most optimized and optimal responses.

Prefer optimal solutions to disruptive concepts. They are integral to the agile home and convey both innovation and resolve. This being said, the importance of comprehensive functionality and eliminating friction should not obviate the need to introduce sensory elements and elicit emotion. The home-sanctuary must strike the right balance between friction and asperities, the need for introspection and the yearning for escape.

Don’t miss chapter 2 in the next issue of the NellyRodi Newsletter on December 8th! 

Consult our study (Re)-Thinking the Home 2020 for a more personalized look at the key strategic and operational levers to pull in order to meet these challenges, as well as detailed analysis of the future-forward home.