2k3 Marketing Predictions

[nfotxn]

Ya see as much as any marketer, designer or other such scum cream their jeans over the concept, Branding™ has one central flaw: it's difficult to sell a lifestyle. As soon as a brand markets said lifestyle to someone it becomes hackneyed, trite and common place. I think the majority of people realize that those willing to be sold a lifestyle realistically live a different lifestyle. Those people are trendbots, sheep.. lemmings! As the 21st century starts to materialize into something more understandable... something seperate from the mania of the late 20th I'd like to see the following shifts in marketing:

• Customization over branding.
  
  If you're going to sell a lifestyle, why no sell one that's more individual? A good example of this is Threadless.com where a strong community of designers and hobbyists make design submissions for visitors of the site to moderate. The top moderated designs make their way into production. Theadless has no brand in the sense of a logo, it's lifestyle is it's method of commerce and the large groups of highly specific individuals.
  
  
• Highly specific groups of individuals.
  
  I'm sure some groovy term like "micro-branding" will develop, but whatever that's just spin used to sell books and magazines. This is part of customization, the development of groups usually thought too small to bother marketing to in the past. A by-product of the internet that could possibly cross-polinate into retail space, albeit with a lot of effort.
  
  
• Detailed consumer information on clothing goods.
  
  We're privy to content and nutritional information on food to help us make healthier choices about our diet, why not support good global business practice with our clothing purchases? The argument is often made that the majority of people don't care how goods are made as long as their cheap and available. A standard system for rating living condition, ecological impact of manufacturing and whether or not the labourers are unionized would be ideal although likely unrealistic. The point I'd like to stress however is that people desire the ability and freedom make these choices.
  
  
• Re-ignited interest in urbanization
  
  It's already happening, there's less giant department stores and more specialized Niche Warehouses in the suburbs. I frankly think the whole concept's environmental and social stance is deplorable, elitist and highly automobile centric. Public transit is often neglected to such remote locations and the result is the creation of a Consumer Suburb accessible mainly to the middle class and above.
  
  The Main St. metahpor of small, pedestrian accessible and specialized shops has been reduced to frou frou boutiques and cafés outside of already dense urban areas.
  
  Said Consumer Suburbs have popped up all over medium sized towns and suburbs in Canada and America. The way I see it people are gonna get pissed off at living in their cars whenever they need to go shopping for any item at all. Those who cannot afford cars are going to demand access. Oh, and the air will continue to suck as people drive around tiny buses to carry ther 128-packs of ass wipe, 64 can cases of Coke® and 31L of motor oil.

Comments

[dizzi-d.livejournal.com]

Those people are trendbots, sheep.. lemmings!

And there are LOTS of them... eminem/britney clones, athlete wannabees, and trend-of-the-moment mavens... and pretending otherwise - as much as you'd like it to be a world full of creative, thoughtful individuals - isn't that doing your clients a disservice if you're a "marketing scum" type?

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Hopefully if people are offered the ability to customize said trendiness there'd be the availability to creative about shopping-as-lifestyle. It's not about condemming a way of life, because that's what it is to many, it about enriching consumer culture with certain qualities that weren't there before.

I'm a big believer that lifestyle is a huge influence in the current clinical depression and obesity epidemics in Norther America. And I'm utterly optimistic that small changes in culture that favour the well being of the individual (not necessarily a company's bottom line) could have fantastic effects.

[mathan.livejournal.com]

"I'm a big believer that lifestyle is a huge influence in the current clinical depression and obesity epidemics in Norther America."

It was funny that you should say this. I was at GNC earlier today picking up some stuff that may or may not help my Choleterol issues. These two chicks walk into the store asking about silly crap like Metabolean - stuff that supposed increases metabolism, and who knows what else it does.

Now these women were younger - if not around my age, definitely in their 20s. The sales guy actually had a head on his shoulder! Explained what the product and pretty well said that there is no reason why these women should be taking the product. If they watched their diet, got rid of the crap food the media is trying to shove down our throats, and took some exercise, they'd be fine. Essentially he said, stop eating shit and get your ass off the chair it's stuck in, and you'll lose weight.

After when I paid for my purchases, we both agreed that it literally went over the head of the two women.

[dizzi-d.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see those sorts of changes as well... but I'm not sure how to weight just how much "leisure culture" has to do with the current continental malaise. True, customization gives people a feeling of control over their lives - something that's very much in jeopardy as of late. But is that a truel improvement, or just a balm to stave off bad feelings until people realize that their cool new look, hip gadget, feeling of belonging to a group, or pattern of behavior is just a temporary fix?

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

Hm. But it's not just North America--it's worldwide. Japan has had the weird trendy-custom fad for decades, yet they're severely depressed. Europe's roaming mobile-phone-enabled 20-somethings are simliarly clinically depressed--and getting fatter. (Both places have fantastic public transportation, too.)

How would you explain those?

And, I might also wonder how far you can take customization. Do you really need to spend another $10 on a custom coffee maker, or $25 on plastic inserts for you computer? I'd argue that it's more egalitarian to go back to basics, that function matters more than form (which is all customization is).

I think that will be the big marketing trend in 2003: a back to functionalism. Customization and making it your own will be eschewed in favor of products that elegantly perform their task, and purport to be no more. Products will be designed not to enable a sense of being 'owned', but rather to show off what their task is, and how efficiently they perform it.

Functionalism resonates more in these days of reduced expectation than customization--which will be perceived to be a luxury.

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Actually I was going to mention functionalism. I think you can make trade-offs with highly function-weighted designs that are lightly customized to great effect. I suppose I'm assuming the customization adds to the function, not the form. I've always been a function over form guy myself although I understand that one relies on the other. Harmony in design as it's called. A very rare thing.

[plaidninja.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that while the advertising world has a strong effect on social behaviour, social behaviour has a strong effect on the advertising world. Branded identity wouldn't be available to the public if the public didn't crave it.

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

I’ll take a contrarian view to your predictions—not to be antagonistic, but just to throw some thoughts out. In other words—don’t take offense!

Customization over branding. Isn’t that what the iMac is? You can customize it! Apple has built a big thing about being ‘for the rest of us’, and at the same time being anti-lemming with their ‘Think different’ campaign.

The problem I see here is marketing. How do you sell it? How do you let people know? How do you create demand? How do you do customization if the supply chain stretches to east Asia?

And branding continues to be very important, as brands and logo confer trust. Consumers like brands because they’re symbols of quality—for example, you can trust Apple to make easy-to-use software that’s well designed. Customization will still take a back seat—and be a aspect of—the overall brand.

Highly specific groups of individuals. Yes, but taking this a bit further: how do you identify them? Doesn’t this start butting into privacy considerations? Do you want companies knowing that you subscribe to The Quilting News, own a MP3 portable device, and like sushi? A lot of this has already happened through cable TV channels, specialty magazines, and special interest websites. Marketing companies are certainly building huge consumer preference databases to identify microdemographics, to more effective target their advertising, promotions, and goods.

Detailed info on clothing goods Sure, it’d work for aware consumers… but it’s a bit presumptuous to think and expect that everyone wants to think as you do when they make a clothing purchase. For many people, it’s the design, the durability, or (above all) the price of an article of clothing. Here’s a hypothetical: if it cost you $5 more to buy a shirt with this information on it, would you buy it over the same shirt without this info? How about $2? What price would you put on the information?

In some sense, it becomes a luxury, much as fair trade coffee is a luxury good, or hemp clothing, or anything at the Body Shop. In that sense, it's a specialized product... customized for the elitist is one way of looking at it. (sorry, couldn't resist. Really.)

Urbanization Yes, there isn’t that big romantic Christmastime In The City downtown anymore. Couldn’t some of this be the fault of the local government? They’re the ones that have been promoting separate (also known as Euclidian) zoning and Frank Lloyd Wright inspired Broadacre urban planning: every family has sunshine and a garden, all linked with highly efficient highways, with separate residential/commercial/industrial pods. No mixed used developments at all.

On another tack, I think one of the most overlooked aspect of suburbanization is the role of women, who since 1970 have felt free (and often been expected) to take on a job and work outside the home. Now, there’s not so much time to wait for the bus, or make daily trips to the butcher’s and greengrocers. This also means that many homes can only be bought with two incomes, however… so in some regards, women’s liberation (a quaint term!) can be said to lead to more couples living together.

Though one trend in urbanization has been the opposite: big box retailers moving in to urban areas. You see it across North America, where suddenly a Target appears in a blighted urban area, or a Best Buy takes up residence in the scummy 1960’s dirt mall.

And I’m confused as to why you say surbanization is elitist. Urbanization can be very elitist—gentrification is not generally used in a positive context. There are big problems for urbanization, especially for families who are concerned about schools and neighborhood safety. After all, where are the kids going to play? In front of the Starbucks, or that funky used bookstore in the street? They’d get hit by public transit!