Excerpts
From “Global Consumer Insights & Social Media Tools for Harnessing What’s New!” presented to the Integrated Marketing Communications Program at New York University, June 2010: “Trendspotting is tracking people, social momentum, brands, economies and companies—like the world, all in constant motion. Trends are hard to figure, difficult to tease out, tough to share. But trends mean business. Earlier is better, and getting it right is even more important.”
From “Snapshots of the Near Future,” presented at Executive Forum, June 2010: “With diminishing returns from job and career, nobody wants to work long hours in the office anymore—all the action is, truly, at home.”
“Money will be top of mind, still—from microfinancing to changing the financial system for the next generation, all while demanding honesty in transactions.”
“Chindia—the rising superpowers China and India—will keep enchanting and puzzling the Western world. Growing markets, changing demographics. East remeets West.”
From “The Transformation of American Youth: From Teenager to Teenagent,” the opening keynote address at AdweekMedia’s 12th Annual “What Teens Want” marketing conference, May 2010: “It’s as if the core definition of teenhood in America can no longer be negotiated by age but rather—just like in those societies with rites-of-passage rituals—by the kind of actions and activities. No longer the inactive lumps who are characterized by passive hanging-around (be it at the mall or in the 7-Eleven parking lot), they are now agents of change, agents of communication, agents of innovation. This best defines the American teen today, not just against the rest of American society, but also against teens as they were once construed.”
From “The Bright Future of Retail Shopping,” presented at the Philips Fashion People Light workshop to specialty retailers, May 2010: “Store design isn’t all that will be customer-influenced. As we move into a world in which T-shirts are custom-designed online, where a customer can choose his or her Mini’s color and interior details on the brand’s website, and where even Nike, once a corporate monolith, lets customers modify their shoes online, stores will eventually be filled with custom content, too.”
From “New Attitudes, Hours, Tools and Tactics,” presented at the Bulldog Reporter Summit: Building Business and Leadership in the New Economy; PR’s Fastest-Growing Agencies Share Their New Business Strategies, April 2010: “Our now answer: Newsengine U will ensure the outside comes in—and goes out. Our now approach: The Sisterhood will ensure we have the intimacy with consumers that sisters share. Our now analytics: Prosumers are the ultimate influencers, and we’ve been tracking them since 2001. Our now acronym? YWC—yup, anything is possible in the age of can-do.”
From a live Q&A with Travel + Leisure Editor Nancy Novogrod at the American Express Publishing Luxury Summit, April 2010: About a luxury client’s desire to feel a sense of community while he or she travels: “Don’t be too folksy. Clients want a home-stay experience, but they don’t want to literally stay in a home. They may want a home-cooked meal, but they don’t want one that comes with the lack of oversight of cleanliness and nutrition.”
From “Ten Concepts That Are Changing the Future,” presented at Fundación Telefónica, April 2010: “Prosumers believe that everything is within reach and decide whether or not to pay for a service.… [They] are people who are trustworthy and exuberant, who are living a new kind of social life in which geography, time, politics and religion no longer exist.”
From “Welcome to the Age of the State of the Social Mind,” presented at the Institute for Career Advancement Needs’ 17th Annual Women’s Leadership Conference, April 2010: “This is the age of trialogues. Of square marketing. Of SoMe. Size doesn’t matter; breadth and depth of connections do. Demography and geography aren’t so relevant anymore; intimacy is. Think hyperlocal; people, brands and marketers are. But beware the virtual bully. Flip side: Causes, awareness, social responsibility, social action. Blending and blurring: Life meets work for the ultimate convergence. Feeling the need to unplug? Time is the ultimate luxury item and our most precious resource. Everyone is just a click away. Good? Bad? Both.”
From “Trends for 2010,” presented to the Texas Apartment Association, April 2010: “Watch as people look for communities to belong to, where they can feel at home, understand the issues and make a difference. And watch as more and more brands and marketers connect to them there, with hyperlocalization being the buzzword.”
From “Fashion Forward: Trends and Forecasts for Boomer Women,” presented to private investors in the retail sector, October 2009: “One thing is for certain: They aren’t dressing like their mothers. Or even like 40-somethings did 10 years ago. With generational blurring—40 is the new 20, and 50 is the new 30—women in their 40s still consider themselves young and are dressing the part.
What this means for brands: Ambience needs to be ageless and inviting—and communications need to be inclusive versus stodgy.”
From “The Magazine Industry on the Verge,” presented at the MPA Innovation Summit (panel discussion), October 2009: “The old model of marketing magazines is broken. Age is not a very important thing now. I would argue that parents of 6-year-olds have much more in common than do 35-year-olds, who may be at very different stages of life from each other.”
From “Prime Angst,” presented at Advertising Week D.C., September 2008: “In this era of subprime shenanigans, trans fats, and inconvenient truths, American consumers have woken up to confront a gross reality: We—and our natural resources—are overextended, overweight and overwhelmed. We are spent in more ways than one. And what we want now is not more, more, more. What we want is less, less, less. Americans are saying so long to splurging. Bye-bye to bling. Au revoir to overindulgence. Today it’s out with the disposable and in with items and engagements of meaning.”
From “Becoming the Gold Standard,” presented to Crowell & Moring, September 2008: “I think it’s obvious that the reputations of professional-service organizations are built over the course of years, not days or weeks. It’s not an instant gratification game. It’s about choosing a mission and finding ingenious ways to accomplish it. For the World Economic Forum, the secret was Klaus Schwab’s ever-increasing web of influence and eagerness to expand his mission. At Pricewaterhouse Coopers, it’s mining corporate knowledge, focusing it on high-profile subjects and packaging it with expert analysis and proprietary data. For the Tisch Brain Tumor Center, it’s a relentless focus on saving lives that leads to endowments and generates recommendations.”
From “Time: The New Currency,” presented to several audiences globally, 2005–2006: “Time may seem like an objective, measurable reality, and part of our brain certainly thinks of it that way. But to paraphrase Albert Einstein, ‘Time is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.’ ”
“I don’t mean to suggest that time doesn’t exist. What I’m saying is that there’s a difference between objectively measured time and people’s subjective perceptions and experiences of time.”
“Does it really matter how people perceive time? Well, yes, especially if you’re in the business of perception, which most of us are. If the notions of ‘30 seconds’ or ‘15 seconds’ or ‘time slots’ have ever meant anything to you, then you know that how people perceive time is a real business issue.”
From “Ads and the Cultural Zeitgeist,” presented to several audiences globally, 2005–2006: “Consumers now are vastly more choosy and demanding than they ever were. They’re getting adept at using the Internet to find the information they need about products, services and prices. They consult and indeed write blogs about products they’re thinking of buying.”
“All of this looks like the writing on the wall for the advertising industry. Of course there will still be many consumers who passively put up with being interrupted and ambushed by unsolicited advertising, and some of the branded messages will get through and they will go out and buy the products.”
“But for the canny, many of whom are used to have control and exercising it, it’s going to be a matter of either giving up on them or else crafting communication that they will deliberately seek out.”
