The Darwinian Gale and the era of consequences
Walker Smith, in Chapel Hill, writes:
I’ve been thinking about the nature of the recession, and consumer responses to it, for The Darwinian Gale. a large report we’ve just published. The prevailing view of the Great Recession of 2008/2009 is that the recessionary experience of frugality has ushered in a new era of thrift. Another says that consumers will pick up spending right where they left off the minute they can. Our research suggests that both views are wrong.
Instead, we concluded that the defining dynamic of the recovery consumer marketplace will be an overhang of uncertainty about economic risk.
The Great Recession blew away the keen consumption and liberal globalization that drove the global economy for three decades. But consumers still have aspirations for a better life; although they will re-channel these ambitions, and perhaps redefine what they mean by ‘better’.
As a result, the most important question facing marketers is what sort of value will animate the connection between consumers and brands in a recovery consumer marketplace coming to terms with uncertainty. But it’s not about frugality. Where it happened (and not all markets contracted), it is best understood as a coping mechanism. The risk for marketers is that if they focus on the frugal, they will miss the bigger issue of the changing value equation.
Indulging in economic risk, as consumers did in the run-up to the recession, meant not worrying about consequences. Now, after the recession, every aspect of every decision is up for review, along with the the full range of consequences from those decisions. A considerable part of redefining value will involve focusing on the possible consequences.
This focus on consequences will be the hallmark of value in the recovery consumer marketplace to come. Our research suggests it will be guided by a potent ambition of responsibility that will entail a greater emphasis on vigilance and resourcefulness. Spending will be shaped by the necessity to prioritize as consumers orient their shopping in coordination with networks of interests that include but also go beyond their own selfish concerns.
The Futures Company has developed a white paper called A Darwinian Gale (available here) that explores the story of the overhang of uncertainty and examines the implications. The Futures Company’s “unlocking methodologies” enable clients to identify the new value equations in their markets.
Add comment 9 February 2010
A is for Apple, D is for Dieter
Jake Goretzki writes:
According to one of the so-called ‘ten commandments‘ of the German industrial designer Dieter Rams, “Good design is as little design as possible”, something that is clear from the retrospective running at the Design Museum in London (until 7th March). Rams has a cult following among design enthusiasts for his enduringly simple, elegant designs for Braun from the 1950s until the mid 1990s. For his fans, that exhibition space full of stereos, toasters and coffee grinders is, well: it’s what Heaven’s branch of Curry’s might look like, surely.
Two thoughts struck me as I left.
Firstly, if plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, is Dieter Rams the most flattered industrial designer alive today? Without his influence, it’s certain that much of modern product design would look very different – including Jonathan Ive’s celebrated work for Apple, up to and including this week’s iPad.
Secondly, how did it come to be that an iconic, widely emulated and now ‘cult’ brand today only really exists as a largely forgettable range of electric toothbrushes and vegetable steamers? In an age where brands hunger for authenticity and ‘cool’ credentials, the brand that ‘did Apple before Apple’ could surely be working harder and making more of its credentials.
As Rams’ fifth commandment says, good design is unobtrusive. But to my mind, Braun’s fate feels like unobtrusiveness to excess.
The picture at the top of the post comes from slamxhype blog, and is used with thanks. Slamxhype’s post on the exhibition has a fantastic collection of pictures of Rams’ work.
Add comment 29 January 2010
Data for all
Oliver Wright writes:
Last Thursday was something of a watershed for the UK government. Data.gov.uk was launched, becoming one of a growing number of government portals giving us access to reams of official government data. That might not sound terribly exciting, but for businesses and research organisations that use official and reliable information, the announcement may fundamentally change the way they operate.
Government data has traditionally been stored in departmental silos where it is difficult to access. Many aggregation sites, such as the ONS, are notoriously hard to navigate.
The Guardian has been campaigning for such an initiative for some time, although its progress could only be described as incremental. In one of a number of articles on the site (you can find them here), they trace the birth of data.gov.uk to a comment made by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the world wide web, to the Prime Minister at a dinner for recipients of the Order of Merit:
“Gordon Brown said to me, ‘How should the UK make the best use of the internet?’ and I replied that the government should just put all of its data on it,” Berners-Lee recalled. “And he said ‘OK, let’s do it’.”
The site has been open to developers since October, in which time – without wanting to rely too heavily on one newspaper – The Guardian has created a portal which allows you to search for data from other ‘open government’ sources. It’s rather ambitiously called World Government Data, although currently supports only Anglophone countries. It mimics other efforts to combine official data from around the globe in an accessible way.
Why is this good news? Firstly, it seems only fair that taxpayers have access to information whose collection they have financed. Secondly, releasing such a vast body of data to the public enables a greater pool of talent to find ways to use it, in building new applications or finding new insight.
Ito World, for example, created some great visualisations using transport data . They were also responsible for this amazing video showing the edits made to OpenStreetMap over the course of 2008:
Greater access to data like this can have profound consequences. Members of the online mapping community scrambled together data from various sources to create an OpenStreetMap of Port-au-Prince that aid workers could use to help co-ordinate their efforts. Whilst their work was undoubtedly appreciated, it would have been made far easier with greater access. Here’s to Open Data.
The image above is used with kind permission of Jason Hawkes.
Add comment 27 January 2010
A history through objects in a post-material world
Eleanor Cooksey writes:
I have been enjoying the current BBC Radio 4 series ‘A History of the World in a 100 objects’ in which Neil McGregor, the Director of the British Museum, tells a history of humanity using objects from the museum’s collection. As I listened to his intricate description of the pestle, it made me realise that objects, things, ‘stuff’ – or however we like to call them – still have a very important role to play in our lives.
It is often easy to assume we live in a ‘post material’ world, but in a post credit crunch recovery marketplace, should we re-evaluate how we think about ‘stuff’? Looking at data from our 2009 Global Monitor Survey suggests that it is perhaps worth reviewing our hypotheses. Consumers are less likely to agree that they have all the material things they need: in the UK, this dropped from 60% in 2008 to 56% in 2009. In fact, the only market surveyed where feelings of material satisfaction have increased is Australia. Moreover, though we may not have everything we need, we are also less likely to buy more as spending without consequences is no longer in favour. Again, all markets – bar China – are showing a greater reluctance to take on debt. This suggests we are more likely to value what we have now.
Our research also suggests that people are still as interested in spending on experiences as accumulating possessions, but this is less about extreme experiences, and more about the enjoyment of simpler pleasures. Such pleasures, in fact, could consist of listening to something interesting on the radio, or going to a museum.
The image above is from the BBC’s ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects‘ website, and is used with thanks. For more information about accessing Global Monitor, please contact our UK Marketing and PR Manager, Jennifer Childs.
Add comment 26 January 2010
A cake for ‘blue Monday’
Sophie Stringer writes:
The papers have been talking about ‘Blue Monday’ today – apparently the third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year. While the methods used to divine the gloomiest day on the calendar might be suspect to the point of dodginess, some brightening up of a Monday afternoon can never go amiss.
So this Monday, we were lucky to have cake to distract us. Cake Club is becoming a weekly ritual in the London office; at 4pm tools are downed, tea is served and homemade cake is shared in the kitchen.
This week’s particularly fine offering was the plum and almond tart baked by Gus (yes, that’s the actual cake in the picture at the top of this post), but over the past few months we’ve seen everything from pumpkin bread to rocky road. The idea is simple – each week someone different makes a cake at the weekend, and brings it in on Monday. Everyone is invited, the only rules of Cake Club are that participants have at least a mild intention to bake, and cake should be consumed seated while chatting (and not about work).
I could say something apposite at this point about Cake Club being indicative of our desire to embrace the authentic and relearn past skills, or evidence of the changing nature of our expectations of the workplace. But it should be enough just to be about cake.
Add comment 18 January 2010
Making Britain think
Andrew Curry writes:
We’ve been sharing some of the puzzlement about the ‘Britainthinks’ posters which have appeared since the New Year. The claim on the website is that “Britainthinks is an independent space where the opinions of the British public can be publicly expressed.” But it turns out that they’re actually a cunning plan by the ad industry to promote the value of outdoor as an advertising platform. So, obviously it’s worked, since we’ve been exchanging emails and I’ve been moved to write a blog post about it.
But the slogans they’ve chosen to provoke Britain to thought seem carelessly unimaginative. The ‘Career Women Make Bad Mothers‘ posters had to be pulled after a howl of disapproval on Mumsnet (more than a thousand posts at time of writing) , which I suppose goes to prove the point of the Outdoor Advertising Association’s chief executive that outdoor can drive online traffic. Be careful what you wish for.
And as for ‘Educashun isn’t working‘ (see what they did there?), for people of my generation it inevitably recalls – no doubt deliberately – the Saatchi campaign which elected Margaret Thatcher in 1979. So much so that when my son asked me about it I told him (before I’d found out about the OAA’s thumbprints) it was probably put up ahead of this year’s election by a group which supported the Conservative party.
Add comment 13 January 2010
Christmas collection # 4
By far, the most interesting thing I read this year was a magazine article not a book.Add comment 31 December 2009
Christmas Collection # 3
Andrew Curry, London: Future Savvy, by Adam Gordon
Future Savvy was the most stimulating futures book I read this year. I was put off at first; it sets itself up as a book about forecasting, and I am sceptical about this (you learn early in futures work that all forecasts are wrong, except for the ones which are right for the wrong reasons). But businesses and governments live by forecasts, and as you go further in, you discover that Adam Gordon’s intent is to make us appreciate the limits of forecasting.
There are good chapters on the nature of bias (social and personal), on why technology-led forecasts are so often wrong, and a reminder that the ‘blockers’ of change can be as influential as the ‘drivers of change’. Unlike some futures books, it is also clear and well-written.
It ends with a couple of chapters which are designed to improve the quality of our thinking about the future. The first takes some actual forecasts and interrogates their assumptions and gaps. (The forecast for the US housing market to 2013 by the US Homeownership Alliance is self-serving and spectacularly wrong). The second has a useful set of questions the reader can use to test the value of a forecast. As he concludes,
Good forecasting is as much about seeing what won’t change in the future. Even in fast-moving situations, not everything will change.
(The Future Savvy blog is here.)
Liz Walkling, London: The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
I have just finished reading this crime trilogy inside a month! The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest are un-putdownable, with a complex, interconnected and riveting plot and a cast of intriguing characters – journalists, security experts, corporate heads and a network of hacking experts. Particularly likeable – even given her multi-faceted role as victim, anti-heroine and the saviour of the day – is the dysfunctional Lisbeth Salander, an extraordinarily gifted computer hacker. These skills enable her to uncover the long-unsolved disappearance of the daughter of a Swedish corporate millionaire, aided by the other central character, Mikael Blomqvist, an investigative reporter. The trilogy starts and finishes in tight courtroom dramas. It’s compelling because Lisbeth’s own story is a true injustice in all the senses of the word, but it’s this that makes her unusual character so likable. I was sad to finish it and desperately tried to slow down to eke out the pleasure, but the final volume was so gripping that I failed. I was so engrossed I almost missed my tube stop several times.
Claudia Rimington, London: Damien Hirst, No Love Lost
Hirst’s latest exhibition consists of 25 oil paintings, all large, dark and brooding, in two rooms in the Wallace collection. Most of the paintings contain an object associated with death (a skull, a skeleton) and they sit in dark blue spaces. All similar in feeling, and dominating the two classical rooms in which they are housed, their exhibition space is cold and atmospheric. Though the exhibition isn’t full of cheery subject matter, I would definitely recommend a visit to this before it closes on January 24th. What’s attractive about this exhibition is the rare beauty of some of the works. There’s something strangely compelling about Hirst’s low lit skulls in the dark – the deepness of the colours, the contrast between a sense of humanity and the nothingness which surrounds.
(You can watch a short video where Damien Hirst talks about the works in this exhibition here.)
2 comments 30 December 2009
Christmas Collection #2
Oliver Wright, London: Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day, by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford & Orlanda Ruthven
When we hear about those living on less than $1 or $2 a day, it’s easy to assume that the world’s poor do, in fact, have a stable but incredibly meagre income. The authors of Portfolios of the Poor establish that this is far from the case, and from information gleaned from individual financial diaries kept over the course of a year (and also from the personal relationships formed in so doing) they uncover the complexity that characterizes financial management for those below the poverty line. In Bangladesh, India, and South Africa, they find that the poor have remarkable coping mechanisms to deal with uncertain and irregular incomes. In South Africa, they discover that over the course of a year, people often manage 17 different informal financial products, ranging from savings clubs, deposit collectors, and short-term cash loans. Lacking basic literacy skills, many keep track of these mentally. In order to manage the risks which often threaten their livelihoods, they find that the poor are often using a greater number of financial instruments than the rich.
(This review was based on a podcast with the authors, hosted on Development Drums.)
Ramona Liberoff, London: Rambert at Sadler’s Wells – Triple Bill
Modern dance scares the uninitiated. Will the audience will be comprised of angular women with spectacles on rhinestone chains, with birds nests of greying hair? Will dancers snap their wrists and flail around to honking random horn notes? Nothing could be further than the Rambert’s last mixed bill at Sadler’s Wells. The combination of young dancers, choreographers and audience brought accessibility and modernity to ‘old’ music: Schubert’s Death and the Maiden arranged by Mahler, Saint Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. Modern dance is a great way of ‘hearing through seeing’: the submerged elements of the pieces were re-mixed by the imaginations of the choreographers, and made new again through associations with movements that – while being influenced through classical ballet – were much fresher than that. Imagine a Hermes Kelly bag made of PVC, and you’ll get the picture.
Mary-Kay Harity, Chapel Hill: Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Wherever you are reading this, you’re likely to be seeing lots of familiar holiday reminders of those less fortunate: ubiquitous bellringers next to big red kettles, coat collections, food drives and other charity appeals. These are often accompanied by images of homeless families, isolated seniors, and gift-less children at Christmas. These may be even starker than usual this year, courtesy of the recession. That is why I highly recommend reading (or re-reading) Barbara Ehrenreich’s classic Nickel and Dimed. Ehrenreich turns the spotlight on those ‘caught in the middle’ - The unseen poor: neither destitute enough for aid nor solvent enough to live decently, all while working fulltime (and often two and three times ‘full time.’) Nickel and Dimed suggests a new item for the social agenda as a greater sense of shared responsibility takes hold among consumers.
Add comment 29 December 2009
Christmas Collection #1
To see out 2009 on the blog, we asked people from across the company to give us a short review of a movie, book, exhibition, or anything that struck them during the year. Here’s what they sent us.
Andy Stubbings, London: The Hurt Locker, by Kathryn Bigelow
My favourite film of 2009 was The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow. Hugely captivating and at times ridiculously tense, I can’t remember the last time a film at the cinema has been so immersive (certainly not the slew of mediocre ‘disaster porn’ movies of the last couple of years). I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it, but if you do get the chance, try and see it in a great big, loud cinema. Just don’t sit too close.
Jessica Baluss, Chapel Hill: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall
Part-time runner, part-time journalist Chris McDougall tracks down the reclusive Tarahumara (‘the Running People’) in the rugged terrain of Northern Mexico. He explores physiology and training across sports and cultures; the subculture and relatively unknown athletes of modern ultra-running; and a quirky cast of characters – including the author himself – who ultimately face off against the Tarahumara “ghost runners” in a page-turning extreme race through the desert. It’s a thought provoking take on why we run – examining unnecessary layers of the modern running shoe and ‘the Nike effect’, as well as the corporatization of racing and sponsorship. It’s inspired many runners to try a different stride, terrain, pair of shoes, and to rediscover the joy of their next jog.
Stacey Yates, London: Sophie Calle, ‘Talking To Strangers’
For her exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, Sophie has taken a ‘break up’ letter from her lover and sent it to 107 women with different backgrounds and asked them to interpret the letter from their professional, or in some cases, personal standpoint. Among others she has called on a criminologist, writer, proof reader, opera singer, mother, mime artist, 9 year old school girl, editor, and an 18th century historian….the list goes on.
It’s a fascinating look at our capacity to approach subjects in a variety of different ways and it’s done brilliantly. A fantastic multimedia installation where the audience seems to be walking around, well… looking for themselves in the various interpretations! Interesting and inspiring – and on until 4th January.
(The picture is from the Whitechapel Gallery, and is used with thanks.)
Add comment 28 December 2009
