Clicking

by Popcorn & Marigold

Scanning today’s culture for signs of the future.

Safe-Cracking the Future

Most of us are marooned in one phase of our lives—and unsure of what tomorrow will bring.

Clicking

"if you spend too much time worrying about how other people perceive you, you’ll never break the rules." (paradigm shift)

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – most Americans will probably have three careers in their lifetime.

"You have to be confident in what you have to contribute – and have faith that you can make a real contribution."

The Tao of Pooh

How can you get very far, If you don’t know Who You Are?

How can you do what you ought, If you don’t know What You’ve Got?

And if you don’t know Which To Do, Of all the things in front of you,

Then what you’ll have when you are through Is just a mess without a clue

Of all the best that can come true If you know What and Which and Who.

Why Follow the Trends

Practical Application of Trends

Current Trends

Cocooning

The stay-at-home trend, reflecting our strong desire to build soft and cozy nests in order to protect ourselves from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world.

Examples

Clanning

The inclination to join up, belong to, hang out with groups of like kinds, providing a secure feeling that our own belief systems will somehow be validated by consensus. Clanning hitches us up with those who share our interests, ideas, aspirations, and/or addictions. It is the flip side of Egonomics. Instead of insisting "I’m an individual", Clanning asserts, "I’m part of a group, and proud of it. I belong."

Examples

Fantasy Adventure

As a break from modern tensions, we actively seek excitement in basically risk-free adventures, whether it be via travel, food, or Virtual Reality. It allows us to escape the all-too-predictable.

Examples

Pleasure Revenge

Consumers, tired of all the rules and regulations want to cut loose and have a secret bacchanals with a bevy of forbidden fruits.

Examples

 

Small Indulgences

Stressed out from ever-increasing expenses, consumers are finding ways to reward themselves with affordable luxuries. We are driven by a deep sense of deprivation. The promise of a "better quality of life" has been broken. We feel "entitled" to small thrills and chills.

Examples

Anchoring

The recent phenomenon of reaching back to our spiritual roots, taking what was comforting from the past in order to be securely anchored in the future.

Examples

Egonomics

In a direct reaction to the sterile computer era, we are looking for new ways to make more personal statements. "Me" wants customization: "myself" is a name, not a number; and "I" demand personal service. Thus, businesses that market to the "I" and provide exceptional service should excel.

Examples

FemaleThink

A new set of business and societal values encouraging us to shift marketing consciousness from the traditional goal-oriented hierarchical models (male) to the more caring and sharing, familial ones (female). Women are different from men. Not inferior, not superior—just different. Women don’t think the same way, don’t communicate the same way, and don’t buy for the same reasons. Men use language to preserve their independence and maintain their position in a group…Women use language to create connections and intimacy.

Examples

Mancipation

A NewThink for men that goes beyond being "strictly business" and warmly embraces the freedom of being an individual who is released from always, always, having to be the strong shoulder to lean on. (An effort to feminize men?)

Examples

99 Lives

A new look at the modern motto "Too Fast a Pace, Too Little Time," which forces us all to assume multiple roles in order to cope with busy, high-tech lives. The idea that we have too little time, too many responsibilities, and not enough of ourselves to spread around is now a given. We are coping with "time-compressed lifestyles."

Examples

Cashing Out

Working women and men, questioning the intrinsic value of a high-powered career, are opting for more fulfillment in a simpler way of living. The quality of life is more important than the title on the door. Happiness in the long run comes from doing what we like—rather than do whey we’re doing just for the paycheck.

Examples

Being Alive

There’s a growing awareness that a new concept of "wellness" can add generous years of good health, giving us an overall better quality to our lives. The pursuit of more than mere longevity. Great interest in enhancing the current quality of life. Adding to the present value of our lives…right now.

Examples

Down-Aging

Nostalgia for a carefree childhood let’s us introduce a new sense of lightness into our often-too-serious adult lives. It’s all about throwing out the rules and constraints that dictate how we should behave by certain points in our lives. "Act your age, not your shoe size" is out. Acting our shoe size is more fun.

Examples

Vigilante Consumer

A scanning of the various ways the frustrated, often angry consumer can manipulate the marketplace through pressure, protest, and politics. Key theme: lack of trust. Vigilante consumers translate feelings into action and wallets into weapons. Shopping is war. The enemy is any entity that doesn’t meet our needs.

Examples

Icon Toppling

A new socioquake has transformed mainstream America and the work, forcing us to question and often reject our monuments of business/government, the long-accepted "pillars of society." Who or what can we trust if one loses trust in government, corporations, marriage, religion, education, medicine, advertising, retailing, heroes, one’s family? We’ve turned into a nation of cynics.

Examples

S.O.S. (Save Our Society)

In order to protect our endangered planet, we must rediscover a social conscience based on a necessary blend of ethics, passion, and compassion.

Examples

"…there are two kinds of failures:

Those who dream and never do.

And those who do and never dream."

Click on the Amazon.com logo to buy this book

Back to Leadership Bibliography Back to Book Summaries
Back to "Team Anderson" Home Page
1