Diana and Steve Jobs have more in common than you’d think

On the one hand, consumer behaviour is shaped by rational forces like time-cost equations. But on the other hand, we respond to emotion, perhaps even to allure.

Charles and Diana attend a gala evening event in London in 1981 a few weeks after announcing their engagement. Picture: Getty

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A few weeks after announcing their engagement in 1981, Charles and Diana attended a gala evening event in London in which the hitherto shy and demure Diana wore a daring off-the-shoulder black taffeta dress. She was a sensation. In a single moment, the 19-year-old switched the fashion agenda. Out with the bedraggled remnants of hippiedom, including bellbottom flares and tie-dye T-shirts. In with British elegance and sophistication.

Designer Elizabeth Emanuel stands with the racy black gown worn by Diana on one of her first official engagements.

Let’s not beat about the bush here. Diana killed off the hippie look with a single over-the-shoulder glance. And it was about time, too. Baby Boomers were moving into their thirties; it was time to start families. By the mid-’80s there was talk of dinks (double income, no kids) and yuppies (young upwardly mobile) when describing the new consumers.

Fast-forward to San Francisco in 2007 when tech CEO Steve Jobs – dressed in a black skivvy, jeans and sneakers – launched the Apple iPhone, which would transform consumer and workplace behaviour from that moment on. All of a sudden it was easy to send and receive emails, to browse the web and take photos, all from a phone. Work immediately jumped the confines of its 9-to-5 fence and started gobbling up idle minutes in an “I’ll just answer this email” rationale. Is there nothing that can sate work’s wilful appetite?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up an Apple iPhone in 2007. Picture: AP

Apps appeared. Banks, airlines, supermarkets and government services quickly discovered that customer engagement could be corralled by an app that carried information and pitched promotions. Customer engagement shifted from call centres to DIY via FAQ accessed by a QR code. (Businesses want you to download the app, to work it out for yourself, and to stop calling a call centre. I predict the call centre will fall into obsolescence in the 2030s.)

Now let’s move forward to the Covid experience of the early 2020s, which again transformed consumer behaviour. With lockdowns came the novelty of working from home, the absence of a daily commute, the need to learn new technology, the tragedy of losing loved ones. All of a sudden, the world as we knew it was being reimagined. I’m not sure if even now we fully understand how the Covid-19 virus emerged. But in any case, the pandemic changed the way we live.

Living in (or commuting to) the centre of big cities all seemed so important prior to Covid, when Millennials were young, hip, single, café-inclined and/or childless or, more accurately, toddler-less. Mobile toddlers and scattered Lego combine to form a powerful force that propels parents out of apartments and into spacious forever homes somewhere, anywhere, in suburbia and beyond.

Again, what perfect timing: a re-assessment of city life occurs just as Millennials move into the family stage of the life cycle.

On the one hand, consumer behaviour is shaped by rational forces like time-cost equations. But on the other hand, we respond to emotion, perhaps even to allure. And underpinning it all, I think, is a demographic predisposition. I’m not sure Diana would have had the same impact a decade or two earlier. And as for Steve Jobs, I was impressed by his tech vision and by his penchant for sneakers, both of which still shape everyday behaviour.

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