The text generation of teenagers who continually text their friends using their thumbs (some send over 200 text messages per day) may be the first generation who does not instinctively use their pointer finger to ring the doorbell or press the elevator button. Perhaps they should be coined the Thumb Generation.
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Thumbers
Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | May 28, 2010
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Apple sells 1 million iPads
In the January 13, 2010 issue of The New York Times, writer Steve Lohr raised the ugly notion that the iPad did not “fill a clear niche”. That perhaps real innovation happened in teams, wisdom of the crowd, open innovation, and other pop notions.
But what do crowds know? They can tell you what they want, but they can’t flash forward to what they might want. Research has always been likened to a rearview mirror, and nothing signals that more perfectly than in technology. A category where, as consumers, we simply don’t know what we don’t know.
Few among us have claimed they desired, much less foreseen the popularity of thin screen TVs, Bose noise-canceling headphones, or GPS, much less an iPad.
It wasn’t so long ago when first adaptor wannabes were pecking away at their PalmPilots with that quirky little stylus thing. As an attempt in handheld multitasking, the Palm Pilot foreshadowed all the awe-filled and awful digital gimcrackery to come: the iPhone apps, ringtones, movie downloads, GPS, joke of the day and all the rest. In that land before time, we sat right on the edge of hi-tek arranging our calendars, sending emails (not txt), and (maybe?) playing a game or two.
Today all that is trashed by any teenager’s $29 Nokia. Which is something the wisdom of crowds can create: something for everyone. An advance not in the high slipstream of innovation, but the mainstream. Today’s cellphone is a handheld digital toolbox. It’s a compilation of greatest hits.
It takes a personality with vision–and the courageous ability to repeatedly say “no”–that creates the extraordinary hand of god that has become Jobs.
As sales of the new iPad indicate, Steve Jobs’ innovative vision may be personal, but his effect is global.
Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | May 8, 2010
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GLOBAL CONSUMERISM MEANS THAT DISTANCE DOES NOT MEAN DIFFERENCE
In 2007, Thinktopia® conducted business in every continent on the planet, except Antarctica. An intercontinental sweep from New York City to Amsterdam to Cape Town to Beijing to Paris to Moscow to Bogota reveals some similarities (and differences) that exist in our 21st Century.
Departing the Ngala Game Reserve in South Africa on a two-hour drive to the Nelspruit airstrip, our African driver slipped a Jimmy Reeves CD into the player. As we listened to Jimmy’s warbling honky-tonk woes, we passed containers (the kind usually found in ship cargo holds or on the back of truck semi-trailers) that are village cell phone sites. Hot sites where remote villages can call friends and family on other parts of the planet. Cut to Moscow. The container-cum-cell phone trendspotting was contrasted by a young woman in Moscow who flaunted her new iPhone—still unavailable from Apple in Moscow—which had been purchased in New York, then uploaded with pirated software that not only connected her with Moscow mobile phone company Beeline (check out their online television programming), but also enabled her keypad with the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
In a grocery store in Cape Town, we saw Lays Oven-Roasted Chicken with Thyme potato chips. Doritos in Poppy Seed with Roasted Garlic and Italian Cheese flavor. A trip to a Moscow market revealed Moscovites not only have a fondness for Bentleys and Rolex watches (they’re competing with China for largest number of billionaires), but also for Danone’s Activia. We had already seen Activia in Paris in March (before it launched in the U.S. this year). A hallway chat with Danone product managers in Bogota learned that Danone’s exclusive Bifidus regularis will not launch there until next year.
Cold turkeyed from Starbucks in Africa, we were forced to attempt tasty African coffee from my safari tent, as lions—rather than Starbucks iTunes downloads—roared in the background. I also savored fine espresso at an Italian café in Cape Town, European roast at the National Hotel in Moscow, and in Bogota (home of legendary Juan Valdez—Juan Valdez coffee cafes are sprinkled like Starbucks throughout Bogota), I learned about a coffee drink named Perico (half milk, half coffee) and consumed the best cappuccino of my life.
The stark contrast of tribal innocence against the Age of Starbucks continues today in the context of global consumerism. Similar contrasts are evident in mental snapshots: native South African women wearing Aeropostale t-shirts carrying oversized loads on their heads. An elderly Russian grandmother swaddled in heavy layers crammed into a blue porta-potty, peeing with the door open. The Russian army lining up in formation in Red Square for the 90th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, in front of a block-long Rolex billboard. Shopping at the Albert & Victoria Mall in Cape Town, just a few minutes from widespread slums in the Cape Town Flats–and the highest murder rate in the world.
Globalization is not new. The Mongols and Chinese spread trade from Vietnam to England in the 13th century. The Portuguese, Dutch and English followed suit centuries ago. What is new is the speed to markets and the ubiquity of primary brands. Even mundane staples like potato chips, yogurt, pizza, blue jeans promote an overall sameness. The more we come together, the more we become the same.
We are trained as consumers to anticipate new things. When they do not come from existing brands, we are disappointed. As consumers, we are addicted to the stimulus of the new, the dopamine drip that stimulates and satisfies us. What we seek traveling to other places is a refreshed thrill. As frustrating as it is to find Coke, McDonald’s, Levi’s and Starbucks wherever you go (there is even a Sbarro a few blocks from Red Square), they exist because of the most fundamental marketing truth of all: we trust them. When we put down our money, we know what we are getting. And, globalized or not, that’s as true in Chicago as it is in Beijing.
The appreciable point of global consumerism is that distance does not always mean difference. Because we can find the same products on the shelves even after flying 18 hours, we need to appreciate the experience that we experience. If we cannot be stimulated by new things to stimulate our dopamine drip, we must rely on existing brands to continually excite and titillate us.
Predictably, what becomes rare and remarkable is the unfamiliar. In Bogota, I tasted fruit (still unidentified) I had never seen before. We brought back microwavable pappadums from South Africa. Le Petit Ferme chardonnay from a Franshhoek winery founded in the 17th century. Some things are not transportable. The smell of Africa. Moscow has some of the best bread on the planet, incredible fish, and an unimaginably tasty crab dish unanimously agreed worth flying 10 hours for. A small South African soap store called Rain that could become the next Body Shop. A bookstore in Cape Town that had its own unique charm, in a world curiously without Barnes & Noble or Borders booksellers. And back in the homeland, a wonderful gift shop named Watson Kennedy on a street corner in Seattle.
I remember a picture that appeared in the German publication Stern 30 years ago. In the photograph, a naked New Guinea woman leans against the shining aluminum of a jet airplane, a visual culture collision. She smiles into the camera lens, blithely unaware of DKNY, the potential sociological consequences that might come if we really can’t buy fake “Made in China” Kate Spade, Gucci, or Chanel purses, or the differences between this year’s Jimmy Choo bag and last year’s.
Perhaps ignorance really is bliss.
Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | May 5, 2010
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Lady Gaga as a primal brand
Late in 2009 we conducted research with young women around the world: from Paris to Moscow to Mumbai to Sao Paulo to Tokyo. In every city, young ladies brought up Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Otherwise known as Lady Gaga. How does a young performer go from being a virtual unknown in 2007—to becoming one of the hottest stars on the planet? As someone entrenched in the music business once told me, “It’s not about the music.”
It’s about the brand. And the ability to meld performance talent with a brand narrative that captures imaginations and makes people (forgive me) go gaga.
Sometimes this melding produces Disneyesque mutations like The Jonas Brothers, The Backstreet Boys, and the Hanson brothers. Sometimes not.
Back to Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Her story contains all the elements of the primal brand: creation story, creed, icons, rituals, sacred words, nonbelievers and leader.
If you don’t already know, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta began performing in the rock music scene of New York City’s Lower East Side. She performed at local clubs around NYU until she signed with Streamline Records in 2007. Music producer Rob Fusari, who helped her write some of her earlier songs, compared her vocal style to that of Freddie Mercury. Fusari helped create the moniker Gaga, after the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga“. The singer was in the process of trying to come up with a stage name, when she received a text message from Fusari that read “Lady Gaga”.
Her debut album, The Fame, released on August 19, 2008. It topped the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart. Its first two singles, “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” became international number-one hits. The album earned six Grammy Award nominations and won awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Best Dance Recording. In 2009, she embarked on her first headlining tour, The Fame Ball Tour. By the end of 2009, she released her second studio album The Fame Monster, with the global chart-topping lead single “Bad Romance“, as well as having embarked on her second headlining tour of the year, The Monster Ball Tour.
Her creed is about being a total woman. And sometimes totally outrageous.
Iconically, Lady Gaga performs in lingerie. She alternately has pink hair, black hair, and all other. She holds a microphone like she’s having sex. She reminds older folks of the traditional of outrageous rock performers, but Lady Gaga has has kicked grandma Madonna up a notch.
Some of Gaga’s rituals are standard rock fare: the concerts, the appearances, the fanzines and foto shoots. But Gaga has given each of them her own twist. (Let’s face it: a bra that shoots fire is in a category all its own.)
In terms of a special lexicon surrounding her brand, “Lady Gaga” of course is a sacred word. Her song lyrics—mouthed by her millions of fans around the world at concerts—have also become a part of her lexicon.
Just as Dunkin’ Donuts people abhor Starbucks (and vice versa) Lady Gaga’s nonbelievers include people who people who prefer Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus, as well as those are as turned off by her outrageous appearance—the same thing that turns on her millions of fans.
The leader, of course, is Lady Gaga. And those who advise her rocket ride to stardom.
With her brand now known around the world, it will be up to Lady Gaga to see whether or not she can sustain her fame. Or become just a flash in the global digital slipstream.
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