Our Influentials expert Jon Berry considers the implications of a new initiative by Pepsi

No more wishing you could buy the world a soda. With Pepsi’s announcement of the first “social vending machine,” it will be possible when you buy a soda to punch in a purchase for friends, family, colleagues, and even people you don’t know.

A touch-screen interface built into the new machine lets consumers tap in friends’ names, mobile numbers, and a personal message with a code redeemable for a free drink at any similarly equipped machine.

They can also record a short video to send the recipient. If the news is more evidence that social networking is the soul of the new machine, it’s also proof of an idea that we at GfK Roper are keenly interested in: The GfK Roper TrendKey trend of “We’re All Influencers Now.”

As technology creates new ever-more channels for consumers to connect, consumer influencing is poised to grow. Already consumers globally are actively engaged in word-of-mouth – probably more so than marketers realize. According to GfK Roper Reports® Worldwide, our global survey, 54% of consumers globally have recommended a product or service to someone beyond their nuclear family in the past year. And it’s not just developed markets: the Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, and Mexico are among the countries most likely to recommend.

As with all new inventions, there are questions to be answered about the new Pepsi machine. Will it be easy to operate? Or will it be like the office copier/scanner/fax that, if you happen to be out of the office on training day, is completely lost to you? At what point will it connect to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites? This would surely increase brand reach. And can it be pulled off in a way that doesn’t slow down the line.

Still, there’s something fun about taking the solitary experience of standing in front of a vending machine, and turning it into a social occasion. And who doesn’t like to get a gift? Or give one?

Consumers also will be able to commit “Random Acts of Refreshment,” says Pepsi, people buying sodas for strangers, such as “a symbol of encouragement to someone in a city experiencing challenging weather,” or “a congratulatory beverage” to a student at a university that’s just won a sporting event.

As the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) blog notes, this is just the beginning. What else at point of sale could be turned into a social experience? There must be something in the checkout line. Are there other machines in our day-to-day life that could get social-networking spins? The office coffee machine? Microwave? Newspaper boxes at the train station?

By Jon Berry

It’s never been harder to make money in the stock market. Millions of Americans need career help. The world is being tested environmentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s time to talk about food. 

By Jon Berry

What do you get for a car that’s gone the extra mile for you? How about a trip to the car wash and replacing its missing hub cap?

Last week our 1998 Toyota Camry turned 175,000 miles. Fittingly the milestone came on a trip to the grocery store. While this mild-mannered sedan no doubt has daydreamed of lighting out for the frontier for a Blue Highways adventure, its reality has been more George Bailey than William Least Heat Moon.

There have been a lot of trips to the store in this car. And commutes to work. Drives to school. And to the movies. The odometer may evoke adventure – 175,000 miles is equal to 60 drives across the country. But the furthest West this car has been is trips to my parents’ farm in Indiana.

This has been a family car. It’s been through two kids growing up and going off into the world; two dogs (note the chew marks on the rear-seat seatbelts); family vacations to the beach (sand in the trunk); Christmas trees (pine needles); and trips to college (amazing how much can be crammed into defined spaces).

We still have a ways to go to catch up with the Depression generation. I am reminded of this every time I travel out to Indiana to visit my Dad, go into my Dad’s barn, and see his two tractors – a shiny red 1940s International Harvester and his “newer” model, a shiny blue early-1960s Ford. Add one more reason to hang onto the 175,000-mile Camry – to see how its story turns out.

By Jon Berry

When I grow up, I want to be Cedar Walton, Jimmy Cobb, or Buster Williams. Not literally, of course. For one, I’m already a grown-up. Second, I don’t have their talent. And, if I did, it still would take six or seven decades to catch up with Walton, 76, Cobb, 81, and Williams, 67, three legends of American jazz.

I recently caught the first set of their five-night run in New York with saxophonist Javon Jackson (a mere stripling at age 44). Over 90 minutes, the group unspooled a vision of aging that was more real – and more appealing – than any that I see in contemporary media or marketing.

What could have been a nostalgic tour through time – Cobb and Walton played drums and piano, respectively, on two of the most influential jazz records of all time, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s Giant Steps – instead became a larger lesson.

Playing with force, wit, tenderness, and craft, ranging from hard bop to soft standards, all the while with the intuitive, group sixth-sense of great jazz musicians, they showed that it’s possible to grow into aging, and keep growing, no matter your age. 

With the world aging, we need more such visions of authentic aging. According to the United Nations, the median age of the world’s population will rise from 27 years old in 2000 to 38 in 2050; in more developed countries, it will go from 37 to 46. By midcentury, 4 in 10 of the UK’s population will be over 60. In Spain, it will be close to half. The U.S. population over age 65 is expected to double to 87 million people (more than the combined population of the top 10 U.S. metro areas).

And yet, the language and imagery around aging is stuck in clichés of the past. We are to “age gracefully” ($5 to anyone who can convince me of what that really means) or “fight aging.” “Take a walk at the mall.” “Find a hobby.” “Get the early-bird specials.” “Update your estate plan.” Depressing.

There’s a richness out there that, with few exceptions (notably AARP and its publications), is not being captured. It’s not just that people are doing incredible things later in life – though there is that. Yohihisa Hosaka last year broke the 60-plus world marathon record, running the 26.2 mile course of the Beppu-Oit Mainichi Marathon in 2 hours 36 minutes. I don’t know what’s more eye-opening, his new record or the old one, which was only 2 minutes slower. Or Tao, my friend Alan’s yoga teacher, who is still teaching yoga in her mid-90s; she’s also a champion ballroom dancer.

More impressive than the feats, though, is their day-in, day-out immersion in life. Hosaka’s 18-mile training runs. Tao’s daily yoga practice. Cedar Walton sitting down to the piano, which “does everything but say, ‘please come and play me,’” he confided last year to the New York Times. Imagine all they’ve seen, stored, retained.

We’re not, as a society, good at unlocking that treasure. We can’t even agree on definitions – a recent Roper Reports U.S. study shows there’s almost a 20-year gap between where 18-29 year olds (61) and people 60 and older (80) say old age begins. Demographics will change that. The oldsters will become elders – venerated for their experience and insights, and affirmed for their humanness, including quirks and imperfections. Some smart marketer or media person will figure that out and point the way. Until then, check out Cedar Walton, Jimmy Cobb, Buster Williams – or any of the other great jazz musicians who are still growing into their craft, and showing us all how to grow into aging.

Leapfrogging the recession by going abroad

By Jon Berry

One friend’s child, a 2008 college graduate from California, is in his second year teaching English in Madrid, Spain’s, public-school system. Another friend’s child, a new grad from upstate New York, is coaching lacrosse at a private school in northern England. Two others chucked their entry-level jobs to travel, respectively, to Kenya and China. Another latched onto a puppetry workshop in Italy. Another went to Greece to build up her photography portfolio.

I’m not sure at what point one can declare a trend. But going abroad is becoming to this recession what graduate school was to past downturns – a strategy for leapfrogging the economic cycle with an experience that will make you more valuable for the long term. It’s not just young people. A parent at the school where my wife works is transferring to the Singapore office of an investment bank. But the young are a driving force. A major motivation for the parent was to give his kids the experience of living in Asia; it will good for their economic futures, he says.

Welcome to the next era of globalization. Global growth, as measured in economic data, may have slowed. But the idea of globalization is streaming forward. And it’s become more personal and generational. It’s as if a 21st-Century Horace Greeley has said, “Go West, young people. And East. And North. And South.”

Forget “Gen Y.” The true handle on this generation is globalization. Call them the New Globalists. Or New Frontierists. Or the Marco Polos. Or the Gaias (for their combination of globalism and environmentalism).

Three Cups of Tea

Reared on books, movies, and international campaigns expressing a passion for the world and the possibility that progress can come from connection – Three Cups of Tea, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Doctors without Borders, Partners in Health – at a time when falling trade barriers and a growing Internet are bringing the world closer together, New Globalists live in a fundamentally different world than their parents. They likely will teach their elders the tools of globalization the way previous generations taught their parents how to use the remote control.

I think the threat that people my age see in globalization – that way we robotically append “competition” to the word “global” – says more about our fears than reality. We react the way our parents reacted to the social and technological changes of their time.

Did you see Google’s Super Bowl ad that tells the charming story of a cross-Atlantic romance through a series of Google searches? (I’ve linked to it below.) It’s a great ad, and it’s great because it’s true. Many people have a version of the Google-changed-my-life story. Mine is about my daughter. As she was approaching graduation from college, her advisors told her she should find a writers colony. They suggested several in the U.S. But my daughter, thinking an expat-in-France experience would be more to her liking than Provincetown in winter, Google-searched writers colonies in France. She emailed applications, and voila, a few months later was at an artists colony in France, the only American among sculptors, painters, videographers, and writers from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia (and at a very low price).

When we hear stories of a college student going to Scandinavia, striking up a relationship with a young business-school student whose concentration is business in China (a program started because so many Scandinavian companies have operations in China), then continuing that long-distance relationship (another true story), we tend to marvel, like with the Google ad. “Wow, isn’t that amazing.”
Be ready for more such stories. The New Globalists travel great distances, strike up relationships, and come back with new ideas and amazing stories with the ease that my Indiana farmer grandparents took Sunday drives to Cincinnati. I believe it cuts across class lines more than people suspect: a job on the factory floor in Indiana can lead to a promotion to a job in China (another person I know).

We’ve begun to see the shift in our research; for example, a recent GfK Roper Reports U.S. survey found that the #1 thing Gen Y (aka the New Globalists) would like to do at this stage of their life is “visit other parts of the world”; 84% agree. But this story is just beginning. Businesses should think about fashions, foods, objects, books, programs, and ideas you can introduce from other parts of the world – and about how you can facilitate this new generation’s adventuring.

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By Jon Berry

Passing through Grand Central Station on the way to work over the holidays, I stopped by the Transit Museum to check out its holiday-tradition model-train display. It was great, as always, a Manhattan fantasia of trains coursing under and around the Chrysler Building and other landmarks. But what really caught my eye was the unassuming little tray of buttons I saw when I turned around to leave, each bearing the simple message “optimism.” I immediately, without thinking, bought $20 worth (18 buttons, with tax) and popped one into my coat lapel. I’ve been passing them out ever since.

I’m not normally a rose-colored glasses type; “contrarian” would probably be a more apt accoutrement. But optimism is an idea I can buy into this year.

Yes, the jobs outlook is lousy as far as the eye can see.

Yes, Americans’ household net worth is still off 20%, since the housing/stock crash, an “epic” $12 trillion loss, as economist David Rosenberg recently wrote in Business Week.

Yes, as we found out over Christmas, we’re still living in a 9/11 world.

But trendwatchers who just preach pragmatism and prudence for 2010 are missing some big stories. A more complex – and optimistic – picture is emerging in our U.S. research.

Consumers’ mood is brightening. We see this most clearly in our long-running “good time to buy” gauge of consumer confidence. 26% of Americans 18 and older now feel it’s a good time to buy, according to our fall 2009 online survey, up 8 points from fall 2008.

For sure, we shouldn’t get carried away. A mid-20s “good time to buy” is nothing to write home about. Still, a shift has begun. Marketers will be pleased to find some folks they like to hang out with among those with the largest swings towards confidence – the leading-indicator INFLUENTIAL Americans®, the affluent, and – perhaps most important – moms with kids under 18 and working moms with kids under 18. If, as the old line says, “When mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy,” it bodes well for us all that moms are in the vanguard of feeling better.

Then there’s the marketplace. True to the prediction we made in our “Lessons from Past Recessions” client teleconference last February, creativity and innovation have not taken a holiday – providing more reasons to be optimistic.

Here’s my starter list of reasons for optimism today:

1. Apple’s “i”-posse (iPhone, iPod, the apps, and, soon, it seems, a tablet)
2. Streaming video on Netflix and Hulu
3. The real-food movement – farmers markets, Michael Pollen, organics, and regional food entrepreneurs like Dos Toros burritos (check them out the next time you’re in NYC) and Kakawa chocolate (http://www.kakawachocolates.com)
4. The Economist’s 12/19/09 issue – especially “the idea of progress” and “the art of abandonment” essays.
5. The greening of the auto and home industries (here’s to “cash for caulkers” in 2010)
6. Online learning (watch for it to be a seedbed for reinvention and entrepreneurism as the recovery moves forward)
7. Movies like Up, Up in the Air, and Avatar (storytelling lives!)
8. The 2010 World Cup
9. Charles Dickens novels (not new, but was he ever more timely?)
10. The “optimism” buttons (beyond the serendipity, they have a great story, see below).

What’s your list?

(The “optimism” buttons are part of graphic designer Reed Seifer’s Project Optimism. They wound up in the Train Museum as a result of a public-art project this fall that stamped “optimism” on the back of millions of New York subway passes. So go buy “optimism” buttons for yourself, clients, colleagues, and friends, see http://www.projectoptimism.com/about.htm. Let’s start something.)

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