Treat yo self!
What is treatonomics and how is it useful for marketing? Find out in today’s episode!
Remember to make it easy and stress free for your consumer. That’s what it is all about!
SOURCES:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/09/from-lipsticks-to-concerts-the-treatonomics-trend-is-booming.html https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/the-treatonomics-trend-explained-6494332/ https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/treatonomics-how-small-luxuries-became-america-s-big-coping-mechanism/ar-AA1KobCN
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
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Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
We’re out of the office for a couple of weeks, and so this week, we’ll ring in the New Year with five ways marketing may change in 2026. We’re going to cover big changes in influencer marketing, how audio in ads is tuning out, the rise of retail media networks, the powerful motivator of treatonomics and why optimizing AI platforms is going to be very important over the next year.
Today, we’re going to talk about treatonomics. And if you haven’t heard this term yet, you might have heard of an earlier phenomenon called “the lipstick effect,” which was coined in the 1930s and then had a resurgence in the post-9/11 era. The idea is this: life sucks, you’re poor, and your goals are out of reach. So you spend a little bit extra on something nice – in this case, lipstick, because this example was originally used to describe women’s spending habits – and then feel better about yourself. It doesn’t just apply to lipstick, though. It could be about buying a new tablecloth to cover up an old table or new throw cushions to spruce up an aging couch or some new rims to put on your crappy car.
There are other terms, like “pick me up” or “guilty pleasures” or “small indulgences,” but treatonomics differs in an important way:
It’s also about big indulgences that you pay for using credit cards or buy now pay later services. And this includes things like pricey concert tickets and spa days and breakup parties and dog birthdays. And there’s a whole subset of products geared at “kidulting,” which is a term for remarketing products traditionally positioned towards children to adults, like Lego sets or rubber ducks or those inexplicably popular Labubu dolls.
So, let’s first of all consider the downside of all of this. Treatonomics is mainly a phenomenon that occurs when people aren’t feeling too optimistic about the future and don’t have a lot of disposable income but still have access to credit. So it’s not exactly a sustainable trend you can build a business model around, and by the time you bring a product to market to address it, you might already be too late.
What I would encourage marketers to do instead is to think about the psychology of Treatonomics and how it fits into a brand strategy. If you’re selling home appliances or cars or high-end cookware, forget it – this trend isn’t for you. It’s also not very effective for everyday items and household goods where prices are driving consumption.
But if you offer any sort of experiential product or service – or can make that part of your promotional strategy – then you have a golden opportunity in 2026 with Treatonomics, especially if what you’re offering can be shared on social media.
So here’s how the strategy works.
You first need to figure out how you can position your product or service to be a treat. If you’re offering cakes or cookies or flowers or bath bombs or other indulgences, you’ll already have this figured out, but if you’re selling something less obviously exciting to customers, like office supplies or pet toys or portable fitness equipment, you’re going to have to do some research to understand exactly why customers might view your product or brand as desirable and what steps you need to get the public to see it that way.
Your next task is to work on your positioning. This is where you may want to engage a creative agency or strategy firm to help you think outside the box a little bit. For example, let’s say you sell hair ties and scrunchies, and you discover that people are using them as bracelets they can also have handy to put their hair up when needed. They like to show off their bracelet arrangements on Instagram and TikTok and get attention. In this case, you don’t need to change the product, but you may want to change your positioning to help consumers understand that these are now more than a fashion accessory for just hair, and you may even spotlight particular designs within your product line that look great when they’re worn as bracelets.
In services, you can play up the experience of doing something out of the ordinary. Perhaps your ordinary attraction can be turned into a Daycation type destination, or perhaps you can offer classes or live performances or something else a little special at your business.
As you develop your positioning, you should begin thinking about the tactics you want to use to help shape this new understanding of your product in the marketplace. Often, taking advantage of a trend is less about making a change to the actual product than trying to stimulate some discussion around how that product can be used, and this will probably mean communication tactics like working with content creators, rolling out social media messaging showcasing the product with some really sumptuous video and photography and other small-scale approaches intended to stimulate sharing and discovery.
Another tactic that can really associate a brand, product or service with being a treat is if you offer some experiential component with it, whether that’s a social media sharing campaign, events centered around indulging in the product or collaborations with other brands that are associated with indulgence.
The nice thing about this trend is that people tend not to be as price sensitive about the indulgences they choose. But it’s really important to keep in mind that this is not a diamond bracelet or luxury vacation new car kind of indulgence – Treatonomics is more about having a slice of a really nicely made cake, not about custom-ordering a cake just like it from the baker.
Once you have your positioning and tactics in place, following the G-STIC model of defining implementation through your rollout strategy and controls to measure your success are of course key, but since you’re working to capture a trend rather than completely reposition your brand to suit a changing market, keeping things focused and disciplined is recommended for starting out.
And remember that ultimately, Treatonomics is a coping mechanism for dealing with stress, so whatever you do, make it easy, make it relaxing and keep it fun. You may find that the customers you show a little bit of care to today become customers who really value you for that down the road so that when the next trend rolls around, they’re looking to you to provide that experience too.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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