By Diane Crispell

Have you ever had the experience that you were thinking about some great new product that would make your life better, and then it suddenly appeared on store shelves? It’s happened to me a number of times. My reaction has typically been one of delight that someone figured it out, tempered by the (totally unrealistic) regret that I wasn’t the one to do it and ‘make millions’.

As a Baby Boomer, I’ve always enjoyed the benefits of being part of the mass market that all businesses wanted to reach. So it’s not really surprising that my wants and needs have been anticipated through different life stages, from teen skin-care products to family-size frozen-food entrées. But we Boomers are getting older, and older has never been a very popular market, so I wonder whether I will see as many new products directed at my generation in the future. Maybe not.

The fact is that Boomers are not as entranced by novelty as they used to be or as much as younger people are. For example, 33% of Boomers strongly agree they “actively seek new ways to do things in everyday life,” compared with 44% of Gen Yers, according to a recent GfK Roper Reports^® US survey. Similar patterns hold for everything from technology to food.

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.

Reaction to awareness campaign underlines the controversial nature of this topic, says David Crosbie

Once upon a time – last October in fact – the UK government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) created a TV and poster campaign that highlighted the dangers of climate change in language that all consumers could understand. The series featured well known nursery rhymes, whose original lyrics were altered to take account of the effects that climate change has had on the environment. So for example, when “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water”, they found that, “[t]here was none, as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.”

The campaign, however, was the subject of nearly 1,000 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) from members of the public who varyingly claimed that it was misleading, scaremongering and frightening to children. In mid March, the ASA ruled that two of the print ads, ‘Jack and Jill’ and ‘Three Men in a Tub’, had breached its guidelines, noting that they “should have been phrased more tentatively.” In the wake of the judgement, some commentators have weighed in with further criticism of the campaign, going so far as to say that it set back public debate on the subject several years.

This incident serves to underline the contentious nature of the issue of climate change. The number of complaints received suggests that there is a body of UK consumers who, if not opposed to the idea of man-made climate change, are sceptical about it and alert to exaggerated or misleading claims made on the subject. The aim of the campaign seems to have been to cajole or even frighten consumers into action by reducing their carbon emissions, but what are the current levels of engagement (and cynicism) amongst Brits?    

Roper Reports Worldwide data from 2009 show that 59% of UK consumers agree that “we/I have to do something now to save the planet”, which falls somewhat short of the global average. On the other hand, 27% agree that, “global climate change/global warming is not as much of a threat as the media make it out to be”, again a lower proportion than globally. Rather than leading to increased agreement with the former statement, this latest campaign may have inadvertently led to increased agreement with the latter. The fallout has led some to ask what is the best approach to environmental communication.

While the answer to this query is by no means straightforward, what is not in doubt is the complexity of the debate on this topic. That is why GfK Roper Consulting is taking its consumer research on environmental attitudes one stage further in 2010 with Green Gauge Global, a new product that includes a worldwide green segmentation of consumers. You can now sign up to receive the latest news on this product as it is released, so that you can sleep safe in the knowledge that you won’t miss out… 

By Diane Crispell

Have you ever noticed that when people use the word “simple,” they often mean the opposite? The phrase “simple assembly” on product instructions is practically a synonym for “complicated beyond belief.” A while back, I came across a purportedly simple recipe for tomato soup that was based largely on using a can of tomato sauce, to which one needed to add a bunch of other ingredients.

I felt that the whole concept was flawed. It’s not that I object to using prepared ingredients in a homemade dish – it was the use of the word “simple” that threw me. If I wanted simple, I’d open a can of tomato soup and be done with it. If I wanted homemade, I’d start with fresh tomatoes, and simplicity wouldn’t enter the picture.

I understand that the intent was to make the reader feel as if they were doing something loving and healthy for their family without scaring them off. It’s a nice idea. There is something very appealing about the notion of simplicity, especially when people aren’t too happy with the way things are. No wonder it keeps cropping up. “In place of materialism, many Americans are embracing simpler pleasures and homier values. They’ve been thinking hard about what really matters in their lives, and they’ve decided to make some changes…. The pursuit of a simpler life with deeper meaning is a major shift in America’s private agenda.” Sounds like a mantra for today, doesn’t it? It’s from a 1991 TIME article.  

But frankly, to me, there is no “simple” about cooking from scratch or building a bookcase or sewing clothes, and it makes me feel inadequate when I don’t feel up to tackling these “simple” tasks.  

I finally figured out what the disconnect is. “Simple” has two key meanings – “easy” and “plain.” These are not the same thing by a long shot. Any designer can tell you that “simple,” as in unadorned or clean, is not easy to achieve. Any number of books and web sites dedicated to the so-called “simple life” make it clear that living in a down-to-earth and unpretentious way is a lot of work.  

It turns out that simplicity is not top of mind for consumers anyhow. It falls smack dab in the middle of Americans’ personal values spectrum, ranking 28 out of 54 “guiding principles” in their lives, according to the 2009 GfK Roper Reports®  Worldwide survey. (This is true globally, too.)  

This suggests that “simple” does not need to be slathered all over everything but used judiciously and clearly. If you mean easy, say easy. But if you mean doing things the old-fashioned way, having less stuff, saving time, or being more organized, just say so. If you say simple, you run the risk of irritating people whose definition doesn’t match yours.  

It’s also important to know your audience. A book titled Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple might sound like an oxymoron to most of us, but reader reviews on amazon.com suggest that for medical students, it lives up to its name.  

I like the way Back to Basics Toys puts it: “Committed to being your best and most-trusted source for classic and quality playthings with excellent craftsmanship and value.” Nothing about simplicity. We bought a balance board from them a few years ago, which my son uses while juggling – no simple task. Of course, there was our neighbor who, when he saw it, thought we were silly for paying for something that would be “simple” to make. For him maybe, but for us, it was a whole lot easier to buy.

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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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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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As Americans seek self-reliance, more is also required of them

By John Bishop

Perhaps this might sound a little like an insurance commercial, but so be it. When the unexpected happens, you never know who will be on hand to help. The odds are it will not be a trained professional, but maybe that is okay. The more willing we are to accept this notion, the more prepared we will be to react.

Inclement weather, medical emergencies, transportation accidents, natural disasters and even terrorist attacks all require the services and expertise of first responders to help those in need.  Yet, in most cases those first responders are often everyday citizens. Certainly, the frequency of the public being thrust into these situations seems to be increasing.
 
No doubt, when such situations arise, the professionals who would respond first are not typically on the scene at the moment of impact to provide their services immediately. As the effects of budget cuts across the US in state and local government take hold, the scope of these services has been reduced in many cases.
 
The following is an excerpt from a New York Times article on January 8th:
 
“In Kansas, state workers are no longer plowing for a perfectly clear path on weekends or after business hours, except on Interstate highways. “Our budgets have been cut, and people will notice it on the highways this year,” said Steve Swartz, a spokesman for the state’s Transportation Department. “In years past, we’d continue to pay our operators until we got down to bare pavement everywhere, at all times.””
 
Such problems are compounded by the shrinkage of emergency personnel in some police, EMT, and fire departments as they are forced to make difficult choices as to where cutbacks should take place in the face of local budget crises. In states facing harsh winter weather, clearing snow from public roads may be relegated to those private citizens with their personal vehicles. An altruistic deed to be sure, as citizens take matters into their own hands for the greater good of their communities. Yet, with fewer regulations and less experience, room for accidents and errors only increases.
 
That said, often the good Samaritans in the crowd have skills and experience that can help them pitch in, and even save lives. An elementary school classmate of mine, Dr. Tolani, teamed up with a police officer on a subway last year to essentially bring a fellow passenger back to life.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/fashion/08GENB.html
 
Since 9/11, citizens have always wondered how they can pitch in, yet there has been no real call to action. Many have taken the onus upon themselves to put their skills and empathy to work both here and abroad. Consider the lack of government help that was available to the people in Haiti during the aftermath of the recent earthquake. In many cases, the first external responders were foreign news reporters. Who can forget the images of Sanjay Gupta and Anderson Cooper pitching in to help those injured.
 
Domestically, we see that a growing numbers of Americans, 48% (12 points higher than 2007), feel they “don’t have control over government or business making changes to your community”. For all that, the myriad of challenges Americans have faced in the past two years has increased resilience and self-reliance.
 
In April, AP-GfK poll respondent, Dwight Hageman, a retiree from Newberg Oregon stated “I think people are beginning to realize that there’s not always going to be someone to catch them when things fall down.”
 
It seems that this role of pitching-in to help one’s self and one’s fellow citizens has partially come out of a sense of responsibility, but also a growing sense of necessity. As I entered the security checkpoint at Midwestern airport just 3 days after the failed Christmas day bombing of the Delta flight over Detroit, the TSA agent reminded me and my fellow passengers: “If you see someone trying to light anything, beat them up – if you’ve got it in you. Protect yourself.”
 
Consider that terrorist attacks on at least 5 different commercial flights have been thwarted by airline passengers. Says Amanda Ripley in a recent Time article:
 
“And yet our collective response to this legacy of ass-kicking is puzzling. Each time, we build a slapdash pedestal for the heroes. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public’s antiterrorism capability.”
 
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1950576,00.html#ixzz0cL0lSwk0
 
Could it be that the government is not asking enough of its citizens? Certainly the economic collapse has been a wake-up call for all individuals in this country as we have seen with the recent shift towards personal responsibility and self-reliance. Yet, those concepts seem to be in direct conflict with the system that has been established in this country over the past several decades.
 
We have come a long way since the ride of Paul Revere and the rallying of colonial militia Minutemen, but the fundamental ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ mentality is still alive and well, now more than ever. We now know well that there are threats, natural and manmade which are bound to lead to things going wrong – often unexpectedly. While preparation and self-reliance are just good sound individual practices, state and local governments may be sitting on great untapped potential if organized in an effective manner.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/

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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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