Sidewalk Life

Experience Consumption

 

According to this Times article, people are dong more and buying less thanks to the recession. Or, as this Florida teenager figured out, you can have it both ways - pay to ride waves at the local mall.

Idiot's Guide to The Recession

For those wondering what to tell their clients about consumer behavior during the recession, Jezebel's Complete Idiot's Guide to The Recession might help.  The commentary is funnier than the headlines, so it's worth reading the whole thing.   But if you only have ten seconds before your meeting, bring along these bullet points: 

Buy Cheap Shit

Buy Old Shit

You Don't Need To Own Everything!

Don't Buy Stuff You Don't Need

Make Stuff

Do Less of Expensive Stuff

Get Crappy, Small Amounts of Expensive Stuff

Be Crafty

Pretend Being Broke Is Really Fun

Don't Be A Moron

Consumerism Is The Opposite of Success

According to research referred to in this editorial from the NY Times, the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life. 

That would suggest consumerism is the opposite of success.  Interesting, considering that this is the opposite message implied in almost every ad we make.

For some lighthearted mockery of the system, check out Consumerism, The Musical! below.

Platinum Luxury

A quick glance at the ads in the new AMEX Departures magalog reveals what Platinum cardholders are up to.  They're...

• wearing handmade shoes from Kiton, suits from Corneliani, Brooks Brothers, and Brioni, watches from Breitling, Rolex, Patek Philippe, Brequet, David Yurman, Bovet, and Chanel
• golfing in RLX Golf apparel
• driving the Infinity QX56 or Jaguar XJ, Acura MDX, Aston Martin's Vantage Roadster
• playing and partying in NoHo
• buying jewels from Bvgari, Harry Winston, Mont Blanc, Michael Beaudry, Verdura,
  
• investing with the Stanford Financial Group
• flying on-demand through Netjets, Flexjet, Marquisjet, Sentient, Hondajet, Delta Air Elite
• traveling to India, Australia, Tunisia, Turks & Caicos, Bermuda, Lisbon, Honduras, Barbados, Israel, and Panama,
• staying at The Arrabelle in Vail, Haymarket Hotel in London, The Peninsula in Tokyo, Shutters in LA, Bellagio in Vegas, Sofitel, and the Ritz Carlton anywhere,
• eating at the Lan Club in Beijing, Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Smith & Wollensky in New York
  
• cruising on Regent and the QM2
• yachting on Oceanco Yachts
• carrying luggage from Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Tumi, Tod's, Cole Haan,
• buying second homes at Vineyard Estates, Promontory in Park City, and other property through Sotheby's and luxuryportfolio.com and
• still cooking with Viking ranges.  Only now with the Designer Series
• furnishing their homes from Design Within Reach, Natuzzi, and Hastens beds
• indulging in Cacao Reserve chocolate by Hershey's?
• pampering themselves at the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel California
• supporting UNICEF, The Climate Project, Earth Share
  

Offline Channels Drive Customers to Search

Mass media is not dead. 
In fact, it may be more important to the way customers shop than we thought.  That is according to this Jupiter research study that reports that television more than any other channel drives people to search for information on a company or product.

It's especially interesting in contrast to this report form Alloy and Harris Interactive that seems to ignore that over 80% of students own televisions.  The story they chose to report was about the growth of mobile media devices over the staying power of the television as a dominant fixture of young people's lives.

Mark Earls Was Wrong

Last night I went to see Mark Earls talk about his new book, Herd.  That's him there on the left illustrating his point about how people don't make independent decisions, but do things because other people are doing them.  The example is the "Mexican Wave" phenomena at stadium sporting events.

But contrary to his assertion, this morning I exercised my own free will by waking up at 7:00 instead of the regular 5:00 and running by myself instead of with the team.  This is clear evidence that Mark is wrong. 

I'm obviously being sarcastic.  It sounds like a really interesting read and brings up a really good question about why we advertisers have been trying to communicate to individuals when people really make decisions on the basis of what the group is doing.  Somehow that explains our crappy record of influencing mass behavior. 

Excuse me while I go tear up the brief I've been writing now.

BBC's Definitive Guide to Man

I thought this is what Maxim magazine was all about, but it seems the BBC plans to do their own television series documenting mankind.   The Dictionary of Man will be an eight part series and a website.

Required viewing if you're a planner, or a person I suppose.

The Conscientious Consumer

When I was in business school I took a class in business ethics.  The assigned text was the shortest book in the curriculum and most of the students enjoyed the class because ethics was an easy target for young capitalists with bottom-line thinking.

Today, it seems, we've reached a tipping point in ethical commerce.  A point where conspicuous consumption  seems to be giving way to, or morphing into conscientious consumption.   At least there's enough supporting evidence of the trend to deserve a place in Time Magazine's "What's Next?" issue from a couple weeks ago.

The article cites some of the usual suspects in ethical consumerism:

• Angelina Jolie shopping at Whole Foods
• Leo DiCaprio driving a Toyota Prius
• Pangea Organics, a cosmetics company based out of Boulder CO.
• The rise of sustainable pre-fab home construction (think Dwell magazine)
• Tree, Edun, Rogan denim brands

Conspicuously absent were the (RED) campaign and LiveStrong, the Lance Armstrong/Nike fight against cancer, which are probably the most advanced experiments yet in conscientious consumption.  These were created explicitly as marketing ideas to see if people would be willing to buy for the cause.  And they did. 

But where I disagree with the article is when they explain their rationale for why this happening.  Their data set includes evidence like "...according to recent research, time means more than money...people want health and peace of mind...experiences and relationships matter more than gadgets."  From this, they appear to conclude "people want less, not more." 

The implication is that the conscientious consumer is anti-consumerist.  But that's really not true.   People bought the yellow bracelet and got the RED AMEX card and iPod.  Consumerism isn't going away, it's just taking on a new form. 

Conscientious Consumption is part altruism.  It is about thinking and buying differently.  It's about being aware of how something was made, not just who made the something.  It's about being for a more responsible kind of capitalism and against a wasteful one. 

And while this form of consumerism may be different than the binge-and-purge kind that created a nationwide storage shortage, it still may be conspicuous.  Conscientious consumption is also partly about status.  It's about showing everybody else that you care, you're smart and in the know about the long-term effects of your purchases on the wider world.

So why is this new form of consumerism happening now? 

Maslow would probably say that most of our basic needs are mainly satisfied, so we're able to think about things bigger than ourselves.  And I suspect that is partly true. 

But I also suspect it's that we've run out of ways to differentiate ourselves from the masses.  And being a person who cares just might be the latest trend that allows you to do it.

All The People Outside The Room

This is a great thought. 

"...until now the value of a piece of intellectual property has been defined by how few people possess it. In the future the value will be defined by how many people possess it."

In an article over the weekend, Time Magazine described how corporations, with some exceptions (e.g. YouTube and American Idol), have been slow to harness the power of the people.  Not that new or interesting.

But the interesting part, I  thought, came when they explained the slightly obvious idea that the people who used to control innovation and creativity were inside organizations and corporations and the masses were happy to buy what the corporations invented.  They went on to label the corporations and the people that worked for them as the small elite "inside the room" and that in the future, the people who will control creativity and innovation are the much larger elite "outside the room" - or all of us.

This "outside the room" vs. "inside the room" framework seems like a much more interesting way to describing collaboration and authorship than the terms the ad industry seems to favor like "co-creation" or "democracy." 

How Monopoly Explains US

James Poniewozik wrote an interesting piece in Time magazine about the board game Monopoly.  He suggests that Americans learn a warped sense of capitalism as children from playing the game.  Some of the things he says:

"a game whose object is to corner a market and beggar our neighbors."

"On the one hand it portrays business as Darwinian, random and vaguely criminal.  (You do occasional, unexplained stints in jail and can get out by paying somebody off.)  On the other hand, it makes real estate moguldom seem homey and attainable."

Sounds reasonably close to what you learn at business school.