Faith Popcorn – Trend predictions

popcorn.jpgpopcorn.jpgThat’s the actual name of a person. Faith Popcorn, although she was born as Faith popcorn.jpgpopcorn.jpgPlotkin….

Faith has a bit of a reputation as a Nostradamus of marketing. Given her uber cool book“The dictionary of the future” from 2001 is now much like the story of the present, she just might have some insights for us budding entrepreneurs.

Swiped directly from trendhunter.com here are Faith’s latest predictions.

Identity Flux Technology has enabled us to experiment with different personalities, leading to a much more fluid sense of who we are. Having tasted the nectar of virtual liberation, we’re beginning to reject the singularly defined roles we’re expected to play in society.

The Future: Gender-neutrality goes mainstream. People list skills on their business cards rather than title, and dress up in various costumes depending on who they feel like being that day.

Liquid Brands Today’s consumers are capricious and non-committal. Brands will have to become more liquid to keep up with their constantly moving targets.

The Future: Chameleon-like brands focus less on communicating a static message and more on being the right thing for the right persona at the right time. Constantly morphing retailers carry products until they sell out and never restock.

Virtual Immortality Consumers globally are creating fully fleshed out existences in the virtual world-dressing up their avatars, making friends, having affairs and buying property for their pixilated alter-egos. And now that people have multiple lives, who says you can’t live forever?

The Future:  While some let their avatars drift away to online purgatory, many more leave behind specific instructions on how their virtual selves should proceed. Services offering avatar surrogates flourish, and we bequeath avatars to friends and family in our wills.  

EnvironMENTAL Movement Like the movement to combat environmental pollution, the next consumer-led reaction will be against the mental pollution caused by marketers. With every corner of the world both real and virtual becoming plastered with marketing messages, bombarded consumers are starting to say they’ve had enough. The current attack against marketing to kids is just the beginning.

The Future:  Companies are expected to reduce the amount of damage they are doing to our minds. Savvy companies sponsor marketing-free white spaces in lieu of polluting the environment with models and logos.

Product PLACEment  In the globally networked age, consumers are much more concerned about the consequences of consumption. Is my garbage poisoning someone in a developing country? How much fuel was burned in order to get these strawberries to my local supermarket? The Future:  Enviro-biographies are attached to just about everything, letting consumers know the entire life story of a product: where the materials were harvested, where it was constructed, how far it traveled, and where it ended up after being thrown away or recycled.  Brand-Aides The government has let us down when it comes to providing the social services we had once expected from it. Brands are stepping in to take over where the government left off. Companies are already finding there’s profit to be made from providing affordable healthcare to the masses.

The Future: Socially responsible brands make a buck while providing desperately needed services. Communities are revived by Target daycare, Starbucks learning centers, and Avis transportation services for the elderly.

Moral Status Anxiety In today’s increasingly philanthropic climate, expect conspicuous self- indulgence to go straight to the social guillotine. The globally conscious consumer regards altruistic activities as a necessary part of self- improvement.

The Future: A person’s net worth is no longer measured by dollars earned, but by improvements made. Families compete with each other on how many people they fed while on vacation, and the most envied house on the block is not the biggest, but the most sustainable.

Oldies but Goodies

Our culture is suffering from an experience deficit. With the availability of online knowledge, we’re claiming expertise based only on secondary experience. Now that everyone’s a web-educated know-it-all, we’re secretly longing for authority figures to guide and assure us with indispensable nuggets of wisdom that could only come from having actually accumulated life experience.

The Future: Respect for elders makes a comeback in the form of Ask Your Grandma hotlines and the proliferation of online video clips by seniors showing us how to tie knots and concoct home remedies.

How can your start up get ahead of the curve using these mind jams?

Anthill magazine

In the model of Fast Company and Inc magazine Australian Anthill is a magazine for entrerepneurs and fast growth companies. It can claim first to market in this geography.

 

anthill-magazine.jpg

The fact is Forbes, BRW, Fortune et al tend to focus on the top public companies. There’s some learnings, but it’s not all we need as entrepreneurs and stewards of fast growth companies.  If you’re reading this blog it’s fair to say Anthill is for you. Another good thing about this magazine is its willingness to provide some free content on line. With the advent of the internnet, publishing now has a sampling forum.

 

For those in Australia, the mag makes a good read for when your PC isn’t handy and provides the depth most blogs don’t. 

 

Be sure to check out yours truly in the startups section on page 78 or here.

Trophy ideas

Trophy Ideas shouldn’t be your first attempt at a start up.

 

trophy

 Definition: Highly original and ‘expensive’ business concept which could change the behaviour of consumers, business or the world and make you rich in the process.

 

 

Trophy ideas are typically capital intensive and have long lead times to get up. They usually involve external capital. They’re often the domain of inventors.

 

The reason that trophy ideas are onerous is that they don’t succeed very often and they take up the two most valuable tools we have, time and money, and lots of it. Sometimes people dedicate large portions of their life to trophy ideas. But we only ever here about the successful ones. An example might be the Dyson vacuum.

Here’s my advice if you want to go for a trophy idea. Do it after you’ve had some smaller successes first. Do it when you already have passive cash flow from another startup, business or investments.

We should all pursue things that are worth doing, the trick is knowing the right time to chase them.

Continuous Improvement

Is not a Japanese buzz word from the industrial 1980’s. It is actually an important marketing principal all entrepreneurs should keep in mind.

The reason it’s an important tool is this:

                       The product ‘is’ the marketing.

Always has been, always will be. Brands are simply a written or visual descriptor of a product and its credentials.

Events

The number 8 restaurant in the Crown Casino Melbourne has done something special.

chamapgne.jpg88 guests at $888 per ticket to sample a 1907 vintage Heidsieck & Co Monopole champagne. (Which was found at the bottom of the ocean!) Apparently the perfect temperature & storage conditions. At $13,200 a bottle, it puts new meaning into premium pricing.

Who says a start up needs to be a going concern?

 

Maybe it’s an event to remember.

Leadership

Leadership: Here’s the Start Up Blog definition:

Being prepared to do anything that you ask of your team. Being inspiring enough that you team knows and believes this.

Top 10 reasons your start up will succeed

Top 10

  1. You had the courage to leave paid employment
  2. You need it to succeed as it’s your only source of income
  3. Your idea is at least as good as the worst successful business you can find
  4. You don’t care what your mum, dad, ex colleagues, brother et al think
  5. You’ve always been a good story teller at school, work and home
  6. You can tolerate long periods of loneliness
  7. You’re not motivated but money alone
  8. You’re not scared of financial risks
  9. You understand that marketing doesn’t mean advertising
  10. You know that nothing sells itself, not even ipods

Your thoughts? Other reasons?