The. Just Not. Generation. The Personal. Information. Economy. The. Tomorrow.
Store. The. Wisdom. Age. -. Trend Briefing. Autumn / Winter 2011.
The Wisdom Age -
The Just Not Generation
Trend Briefing Autumn / Winter 2011 -
The Personal Information Economy
The Tomorrow Store
The Wisdom Age It has been a decade of bling and bust, turbulence and transition, austerity and anger. It has also been one of unprecedented change, challenge, localisation and extreme personalization, as our 10th Anniversary LS:N Global in-house Trend Briefing suggests. And this push towards the local, the bespoke and the personal is set to continue. Choice algorithms, snoopware, spyware, beacons – super-cookies that record everything from your keystrokes – and search cascades will reveal everything about you, from your income and fertility status, to your political, social and sexual orientation. All of these changes require new ways to engage with consumers, and new wisdom and insights in order to manage our personal data, or target a generation of customers born digital but increasingly hankering after the experiential and sensorial. Against this background, as chief insight officers and wisdom officers come into their own, we look at:
: Personal Information Economy – online there are few places we can hide.
From Facebook to Google, from Foursquare to Bing, our thoughts, words and product purchases are anticipated, regulated and controlled. Search engines offer results based on our previous tastes, while hidden cookies, algorithms and embedded spyware dig further into our personal lives to anticipate our tastes and drive our choices.
Used wisely, brands and consumers can benefit technology that cuts back the clutter and alters the range of lifestyle products that target us. But used covertly, these hidden persuaders can curtail choice, limit thinking and invade our privacy in ways we have only just begun to understand and fight against. We look at the pros and cons of the Personal Information Economy, including our Self-Quants Tribe, a typology of global consumers who are spearheading a new generation of self-diagnostic, health and wellbeing tools that many of us will be using tomorrow.
: The Tomorrow Store
– as the age of intimacy continues apace, we look at how bricks-and-mortar retailers are challenging the immediacy and increased personalisation of the online offer, with a new battery of techniques designed to put the theatre back into retail. We profile and explore second-generation gametailing, do-tailing and edu-tailing, the rise of maker’s theatre, ExtraOrdinary marketing, pop-around (instead of pop-up), and the push towards experiential branding in which consumers become actors, sales teams, producers, directors and fellow performers. As this section indicates, when the going gets tough, the tough get creative, collaborative and counter-intuitive.
: The Just Not Generation – as the
world becomes more personal, bespoke and plugged in, the Just Nots continue to lose out. They are just not making it on the housing ladder, just not making it with their salaries, just not getting their kids into the right schools, just not able to afford the right car or to kit out their homes in the way they would like. But they are not poor, and now make up one of Britain’s – and Europe’s – biggest battler income groups, earning between £15k and £23k per household. We look at who they are, their influences, what they spend their money on and how brands can more effectively cater for their low-income, high-frustration needs. We also identify the trends they are kick-starting, from RIY Culture (repair-it-yourself) and Vasstige (value-added prestige), to Village Brands and no-label shopping. ‘In the past a brand’s profits came from targeting the top (they still do) and the fat middle (no longer so),’ says The Future Laboratory co-founder Martin Raymond. ‘But now it is about targeting consumers at the top and at the bottom of the value chain – and this is where our Just Nots sit.’ Occupying 10–12m households in the UK alone, and divided into three groups – Battlers, Strugglers and Strivers – they are one of the biggest, yet most ignored, consumer groups – and this briefing tells you why you should be speaking to them.
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