Writers See Consumer Wrath, Pleasure-Seeking In Our Future
Imagine …
Do-it-yourself plastic surgery.
A dog or cat that lives as long as you do.
Church services at Costco.
“Catavans” that roam the neighborhood showing goods you can order for next-day delivery.
These are a few of the 21st-century trends predicted by Faith Popcorn and Lys Marigold in “Clicking” (HarperCollins, $26).
Popcorn has her fingers on America’s pulse. She gets paid for listening to people tell her what’s wrong, why they’re unhappy, what they need. Then she tells corporate America what it can do about those needs and feelings.
And she’s almost always right.
Popcorn’s first book, “The Popcorn Report,” was published in 1991. It detailed social changes Americans should expect in the 1990s. She’s the one who made “cocooning” a buzzword of the decade. (For those perhaps a little too tightly cocooned, it means a more home-centered lifestyle).
She predicted booms in fresh foods, herbs, home offices and four-wheel-drive vehicles. And they’re happening.
At the end of her 1991 book, Popcorn invited readers to write, fax or phone her with comments, ideas. Forty thousand of them did.
She discovered readers were using her book in their personal lives, even though it was written as a business guide. It clicked with her that people needed a book to guide them into the 21st century, to help them get into sync with what’s happening, to assist them in making the most of their futures.
Popcorn and her staff work at BrainReserve, a New York-based futurist marketing firm she founded 22 years ago. They conduct more than 4,000 interviews annually.They “braille” the culture, their term for keeping track of things like the top 10 songs, books and television programs to help make their trend reports.
BrainReserve compiled a list of 16 buzzwords and phrases to identify current and future trends. Some, such as cocooning and clanning, are familiar; others need defining.
“Clicking,” for example, refers to mastering control, becoming clear.
The book’s chapter on “anchoring” begins: “The bad news is that our society is adrift, but the good news is that it’s still afloat.”
“Anchoring” has nothing to do with boats. It’s Popcorn’s name for the back-to-our-roots trend. During a one-day stop in Seattle this week, she said we’re going to need our inner resources more than ever to be securely anchored in the future.
It’s the anchoring trend that’s making 12-step groups, yoga, meditation, organized or unorganized religions, and genealogy more popular today.
“Vigilante consumer” is another phrase/trend Popcorn has targeted. Consumers are staying home and shopping from catalogs, she says, because they’re frustrated with shopping in stores.
“Consumers are angry and apathetic, and that anger is going to turn into rage,” she predicted. While consumers may rage and demand answers, Popcorn said that creates a great opportunity for retailers and manufacturers to respond. Those who reach consumers, talk to them, and solve their problems will flourish.
Anger is vented in other ways, Popcorn said.
People fed up with nutritional and health advice are drinking martinis, eating chocolate or chomping on cigars. She labeled this “pleasure revenge” - another trend to watch for as we move toward the next century.