Small is the new big
There are 75 new microtrends that are taking the world by storm. That is from the vantage point of Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne, author and co-author respectively of the international bestseller Microtrends (the small forces behind tomorrow’s big changes). Millions of fans believe their charming, enthralling and fast-paced premises on a range of issues and a number of niche groups that can have a profound impact on our lives today and in the future. From health and wellness to work-life balance, from looks and fashion to love, sex and relationships, or from technology to religion and politics, Microtrends brings us deep into the worlds of research, target-market identification, psychographic examination, and evaluation using engaging and meaningful analysis.
Penn, dubbed by The Washington Post as “the most powerful man in Washington you’ve never heard of,” is the worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a leading PR consultancy firm worldwide. He has been an adviser to former Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, a number of corporations, and foreign heads of government. Zalesne has served former US Attorney General Janet Reno and a few national social-change organizations.
Microtrends (as opposed to megatrends) are small but growing groups of similarly minded individuals who share a strong position on anything they choose to support or go against. Their members manifest a choice or preference — individually or collectively, often counterintuitive and may have been missed or undercounted by other groups. Penn elaborated that by US standards, microtrends can be as small as three million people, and even if that cluster never grows, it can still have an intense influence on humanity.
For over three decades, Penn has been a pollster constantly and consistently searching all over the world for political, corporate, and social inclinations. In his explorations he discovered that the key to success is finding small, under-the-radar tribes whose members think differently. The process brought him face-to-face with the realization that the use of unconventional wisdom can indeed tip an election, build or destroy an enterprise, or start a social movement.
Since microtrends are seen to be the power behind the new social order and what lies ahead for people, organizations and countries, we are encouraged to seriously take care of them, with the keen understanding that they can create new markets, new interest groups and new movements. We are also pushed to look around and see the growing role of religious sects, to witness how the elites are becoming so much more impressionable, to observe how modern-day leaders are put into office, to notice how people have become more and more dependent on technology, or to catch sight of how caffeine-crazy we have become. People are always looking to capture a wave; in this tome Penn confidently revealed that there are literally thousands of new, smaller waves to grasp, if only we look for them.
Penn used the magnifying glass as a visual representation of his non-stop hunt for new knowledge that hopefully leads to eureka moments. Events in the recent past, he underscored, illustrate the importance of some of the trends found in his collection. For example, just by looking at the numbers, “educated terrorists” were identified in London. Or the dangers posed by the five million new middle-class buyers of second homes in the USA resulted in a credit crunch. Microtrends have become a force to reckon with in determining the impact and politics of what happens.
“We are seeing an explosion of tolerance for differences, which is an important pre-condition for the growth of microtrends,” Penn pointed out. “People have to feel comfortable expressing themselves and so society is opening up in many new ways.” Indeed microtrends represent the triumph of personal choice, and with the rise of choice comes not only greater personal satisfaction, but also greater freedom for individual and minority rights.
Penn and Zalesne’s Microtrends presents substantive lists of possibilities that have moved into realities and govern the way we plan, implement and review. Here are my personal favorites:
Working Retired. America has an aging population and many are retiring in record numbers. But the truth is, many are choosing to remain in the workplace longer than ever. This, Pen asserted, has implications not just for our retiring generation but also for younger workers expecting promotions, politicians grappling with social security reform, and the healthcare industry.
Impressionable Elites. Moneyed, highly educated people who are more interested in personality profiles than issues when it comes to electing a president, while the unwashed groups are watching the issue and care more about them. “The eggheads have become jugheads, and the jugheads have become eggheads,” Penn quipped.
Office Romancers. A large percentage of US employees have had an office romance, as recent studies reveal. The office is the new singles bar. This, as Penn described, has huge implications not only for people’s social lives, but also for workplace policies and the evolution of work and family. Locally, this phenomenon may be true in call center operations where a new culture has developed and a new relationship pattern has emerged.
Southpaws Unbound. The number of left-handed people in America has doubled in two generations. Penn observed that this certainly means new business opportunities for the makers of everything from BlackBerrys to can openers or any handheld products, but it also says something philosophical about the new liberal trend in American parenting.
Permissive Parents. Today’s parents now believe that that they are the stern ones and that everyone else is soft and accommodating when it comes to discipline. Of course, as Penn averred, that’s not possible since they are part of a trend in which people have redefined what it means to be a strict parent and the kinds of punishments that are permissible.
Modern Mary Poppinses. Of late, there has been an explosion in the childcare industry given that more and more moms are working. The demand for nannies has doubled, resulting in increased competition and heightened demand for better wages. It wouldn’t be a surprise if many of these modern-day Mary Poppinses are Filipinas.
Tech Fatales. They debunk that high-tech, gadget-freak computer types are antisocial. Research shows that unlike in earlier times, tech geeks are among the most social people in the world. In fact, there is now a growing number of tech fatales — women who don’t just use technology but also drive shape, and decide the majority of consumer electronics purchases in many markets.
Video Game Grownups. Moms over 45 are one of the fastest-growing groups of computer game players. Video game creators must be in step with this occurrence. They ought to know whom they’re dealing with. Otherwise, they might just be wasting time and resources. This observable fact is beginning to take shape in this country, as we see telecommunication companies introducing programs on how to engage the elderly in newfangled technologies. Remember Lola Techie? She is now spearheading the advocacy to encourage the young and tech-savvy to teach the elderly how to poke, blog and Twitter.
Penn’s dissertation is that change in today’s world is driven by teeny-weeny trends that are started below the radar and slowly but surely crept stealthily up on people without warning. He opined that the era of John Naisbit’s megatrends belonged to the Ford economy, which offered mass-produced cars and limited choices, and that today’s world is characterized by Starbucks, which offers hundreds of potential combinations to its finicky customers.
Is small the new big?
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Microtrends is available at all National Book Stores.
