David Crosbie (29) never identified himself with a ‘generation’, until now. What could have brought about this revelation?

By David Crosbie

Generational marketing has a long history in the US, but is not so prevalent in the UK, or indeed many other markets around the world. Instead, over here people tend to talk about age bands and socio-economic groups, with phrases such as “25-34 year old ABC1s” being bandied around by media sellers and marketers.

One reason for this is that Britain is still a class-obsessed society. As a Russian colleague once said to me when discussing social classifications, “in Russia we do not have anything like your Cockneys.” Another might be that, on the whole, Brits tend not to think about themselves as part of a cohort group born around the same time. I myself might occasionally muse that I am a ‘child of the Eighties’, or one of ‘Thatcher’s children’, but even that is only to excuse my penchant for the Human League and Eurythmics.

All that changed the other week, however, when I picked up a Sunday supplement (The Observer Magazine, 31 January 2010) and was confronted by a contemporary of mine claiming that he (and by inference me) was part of ‘The Lost Generation’. He argued that it is today’s twentysomethings who are paying the price for the excesses of the baby boom generation, with its free higher education, affordable housing and abundance of cheap credit. We, by contrast, have to contend with thousands of pounds of student debt, saving for deposits on extortionately priced housing and the mess that ensued when the credit bubble burst.

I have to say this is a view that resonated with me. At a time in my life when I should be thinking about going forth and multiplying, I’m worrying about student loan repayments, how to get on the housing ladder and how best to care for elderly relatives. These are of course all concerns that are shared with many consumers around the globe. But is it just a case of sour grapes on the part of a generation that is in fact not that badly off but likes a good moan?

Well interestingly, it’s not just people in their late twenties who are coming to recognise this issue. A leading light in the UK Conservative Party, which is widely tipped to win the country’s imminent elections, has just written a book entitled The Pinch, which explains how, “the baby boomers took their children’s future.” As well as being a baby boomer himself, the author, David Willetts, is viewed as being such a great thinker that he has earned the soubriquet, “Two Brains”.

At GfK Roper Consulting, we examine closely how evolving consumer concerns and needs manifest themselves in changing attitudes and behaviours, and generational and cohort breakdowns by market are key filters for our analyses. A major client study on global baby boomers we carried out last year shed new light on how this generation will differ from today’s over 65s as they enter retirement. I for one will be examining this year’s data carefully to see how my contemporaries around the world are feeling about the challenges we face. If only my question on attitudes to Eighties synth pop had made the final questionnaire…

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Traditional rice harvesting

On the contrary, Japan’s latest green innovations are right on trend.

By David Crosbie

Suzuki san, an elderly Japanese gentleman of my acquaintance, used to recount the following anecdote. In years of poor harvest, the Japanese government has occasionally, and rather reluctantly, imported some rice from abroad. The country normally prides itself on being self-sufficient in this staple food, and domestic production is staunchly protected. During one such year my friend received a packet of rice from Thailand which, he was proud to say, he threw out uneaten. While some (particularly Thais!) might find this mildly offensive, he felt he was doing his patriotic duty by eschewing non-Japanese rice.

Consumer power is here to stay in 2010

By David Crosbie

Perhaps it’s a telling indictment of my general apathy and lack of moral fibre, but I was not one of the half million Britons who helped to strike a blow for creative diversity by buying a copy of an expletive-ridden 1990s rock song in the run up to Christmas.

Allow me to explain. As you may be aware, the race for the coveted ‘Christmas Number One’ in the UK music singles chart was enlivened this year by an online campaign run through Facebook. For the past four years, the Christmas Number One slot has been taken by the winner of the popular TV talent contest X Factor, which is similar in format to American Idol and shares a judge in the form of Simon Cowell.

Jon and Tracy Morter, a regular couple from just outside London, decided that they had seen enough of this dominance and therefore started a campaign on Facebook encouraging people to buy the 1992 track ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage Against the Machine instead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s cover of Miley Cirus’ ‘The Climb’. Their selection of this track may have had something to do with the recurring lyric, “I won’t do what you tell me” as well as the liberal sprinkling of offensive language. The campaign, begun on 13 December, was successful – particularly after Cowell branded it as “stupid” and “cynical” – and ‘Killing in the Name’ gained the top slot on 20 December.

Besides the schadenfreude to be gained from seeing a powerful media mogul being taken down a peg or two, this incident was just the latest and most striking example of consumers around the world using the power of online social networking to influence events. During 2009, this power was exercised in more serious circumstances by Iranian citizens, who kept the outside world informed via Twitter when traditional media were suppressed during a period of instability.

Another example from the UK was the reaction to a column by journalist Jan Moir in the right wing Daily Mail newspaper. In commenting on the death of singer Stephen Gately, who announced his homosexuality a few years previously, Moir made comments which were perceived to be homophobic. A campaign orchestrated via Twitter led to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission being inundated with over 25,000 complaints – a record number by some margin – in a very short space of time. One interesting aspect of this incident is that it gave rise to a new (if perhaps short-lived) verb, to be janmoired, which has been defined by media commentator Roy Greenslade as being, “condemned by a collective of tweeters demanding censorship.”

All of these examples underline the speed and ability of online campaigns to make a big difference very quickly. They relate to the Consumers in Control trend – the tendency of consumers to harness the power of the internet and word of mouth to inform their purchase decisions and brand choices – which GfK Roper Consulting has been tracking for a number of years. What these latest examples suggest is that the ability of individual consumers to influence many others is set only to grow during the new decade. While this force has been harnessed in many positive ways in the past few years through viral marketing campaigns, it is more important than ever to be careful not to incur the “rage” of an increasingly empowered and demanding global consumer. Particularly given that, according to annual global consumer study, Roper Reports® Worldwide, fully 64% of global consumers say they complain when products or services are not of expected quality. Happy New Year!

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