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Our blog is where we follow interesting stuff on the web about advertising, media, cause marketing and culture to see how it all fits together.

[brendademith]

Maslow would have been VERY worried about us

If Abraham Maslow were alive today, he surely would have been very worried about all of us.  He probably would have sounded the alarm that as a society at large, we’re not even getting our basic needs met. 

If you have ever taken an undergraduate psychology class or even a marketing or advertising class, you would have learned that Maslow’s “A Theory of Human Motivation” paper submits several key findings.  From his IV Summary:  “(1) There are at least five sets of goals, which we may call basic needs.  These are briefly physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualization.  (2) These basic goals are related to each other, being arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency.”  He goes on to explain that as one level of needs are met or mostly met, then the next level of needs emerge, and this hierarchy of needs is what motivates us as humans.

Pre-pandemic, I started to study and prepare to write about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and how the hierarchy and needs have changed in our modern day society.  My hypothesis back then (2017-2018) was that we were struggling as a society because we were stuck at the love and belonging needs.  Technology had lured us into more social independence and physical separateness.  Gaming and peak TV had left us with more reasons to stay in vs going out and physically being together. Texting had lured us into being okay with not actually hearing each other’s voices. 

But the pandemic introduced a universal, real fear of a deadly unknown disease that did two things:  1) it pushed us further in to social and physical isolation so that our love and belonging needs became even more deficient,  and 2) it introduced a new fear of basic safety.

And safety is the second to lowest section of the hierarchy of needs!  So forget about self-actualizing, folks, we’re not even having our most basic needs met, and according to Maslow’s research this will continue to hold all of us back from higher order motivations like love, belonging, intimacy, having self-confidence and achievement.

When Maslow wrote his “A Theory of Human Motivation” paper, he wasn’t worried too much about safety needs being met.  He wrote “The healthy, normal, fortunate adult in our culture is largely satisfied in his safety needs.  The peaceful, smoothly running, “good” society ordinarily makes its members feel safe enough from wild animals, extremes of temperature, criminals, assault and murder, tyranny, etc.” 

In his opinion, most people back then were having their basic physiological and safety needs met.  In fact, it almost sounds like he had a hard time finding people to study that didn’t have their safety needs met.  He states in the paper: “if we wish to see these needs directly and clearly we must turn to neurotic or near-neurotic individuals, and to the economic and social underdogs.”  Suffice it to say, I’m guessing he would have the opposite problem today…finding someone that doesn’t feel either somewhat-completely neurotic or like an economic or social underdog.   

We’re a fearful nation right now, we just don’t feel safe.  The 2021 American Fear Index reported exactly what we’re all feeling recently -  that for Americans, mass shootings were the most feared crime and the third overall fear.  The full list of things we’re afraid of is a disjointed assortment of everything from fear of loved ones dying (#1), to losing access to drinking water (#15) to being abducted by aliens! (#41). 

Coming out of Covid (if we can even say that yet), we so needed to feel safe again. We needed to feel safe from unknown diseases and contagions; safe to go back to church, movies, concerts and class; safe to get on planes and go on vacation or get on the highway to go visit relatives.  But the sad and scary truth is that we’re bombarded with this snowballing sense of the growing dangers out there, and it’s taking a toll on our human motivations.

We’ve got to figure out how to get our safety needs met pronto.  Maslow’s theory states that humans possess an effective need for a sense of belonging and acceptance.  If we’re stuck focusing on safety and stability, we might forever lose our motivation to pursue the next level, those love and belonging needs…and we’ll suffer as a society with no one reaching the higher levels of their individual needs.  No self-actualized creatives and achievers and a lot of near-neurotic social introverts.

[brendademith]

MACRO-TRENDS: Clean Eating and Clean Labeling are actually just pieces of a very powerful zeitgeist.

What is clean eating?

Some define it as being mindful about the pathway that your food takes from its origin to your plate.  The term "clean eating" is notoriously confusing.  Different groups are applying their own interpretations, and the government hasn’t yet weighed in with any official definition or guidelines.

 Clean eating is -

An evolution of the organic and all natural movements -  the push for food that’s free of chemicals, farmed with no pesticides, artificial hormones or antibiotics, and made with fewer, simple ingredients.

In meal preparation, clean eating is about using fresh from the farm ingredients that are as locally grown as possible, aka Farm to Fork/Table.

It’s part of the rising and powerful sustainability movement, that includes the shift towards clean/organic household goods (cleaners, detergents, lawn and gardening products, etc.) and embracing clean energy.

There’s even a clean beauty movement.

 Where is it showing up?

In lifestyle blogs, cooking magazines, and as meal plan themes in the latest popular diets. 

All over social media, in BuzzFeed recipes and Pinterest boards.

In all kinds of food labeling, including packaged goods, meats and dairy, restaurant menus and in the home meal delivery channel.  Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, Panera, Blue Apron, Nestle and Campbell’s have all been leaders in the movement. Nestle was one of the first CPG companies to come out with a full plan to clean label all of its ice cream brands.

 Who’s driving it?

The sustainability crowd.  Vegetarians, vegans and everyone who's already on board with organic and plant-based diets, buying local and sustainable farming.

The healthcare community - anxious and suspicious that processed foods, hormones and artificial sweeteners are linked to obesity, diabetes and other diseases.

Watchdog groups, like PETA - concerned and appalled by inhumane farm animal treatment 

Other watchdog groups like Green America - mobilized by the potential link between use of pesticides and diseases like autism.

Chefs are into clean eating.  To them it’s about preparing foods from scratch with better tasting ingredients. But notably, nutritionists are not on board as a group.

Many say that Millennials, in general, are driving the trend.

 The Backlash –

The backlash is against clean eating as a diet strategy, not clean labeling in food manufacturing, and the chatter is strongest in the UK right now.  Charges are that it’s too extreme, too much about taking traditionally important nutrients out of your diet, and driven by elitist celebrities and bloggers.  

Nutritionists point out that not all frozen or canned fruits and vegetables are bad.  People should just look for fruits and vegetables with fewer artificial ingredients.

 Stickiness Factor – High. 

In just a few years, we’ve gone from debating the merits of all natural vs organic as ingredient labels,  to clean labeling as THE top priority for retail grocers and their brands.

It’s sticky because it’s not a fad, but rather an evolution and extension of the fast moving shift towards organic and sustainable farming.

When the fast food superstars like Chick-fil-A and Panera start making major changes to their food sourcing, the trend has already stuck.

Finally, it’s sticky because growth projections are being assigned to it, and brands are succeeding by pursuing it.  Kroger’s natural and organic brands like Simple Truth have grown to be 10% of the company’s business.  

 What are the cultural implications?   

The Clean Eating Movement embodies a pendulum swinging quickly back to the way we used to grow, harvest and prepare our food – the desire to go back to a closer, more visceral relationship with our food and land.

It’s part of a swelling and forceful zeitgeist, manifested by the perfect storm of a) global warming as a hot button, b) health and wellness as an equally hot button, c) the war on big food (and big corporations) and d) millennials becoming adults and parents and expanding their buying power into more consumption categories (food, baby products, home goods, cars, homes, etc).

The tipping point may have been the confluence of documentaries like SuperSize Me and Food Inc., and social media’s viral spread of their message.  Think of our opened-up information highway as the DeLorean that shows us both the pre-1985 ways of growing and eating food that we left behind, AND the disasters ahead of us.

[brendademith]

Is it rude not to (social) listen?

Lately I’ve been learning about and experimenting with text analytics tools . They are cool and powerful, and may or may not be a must-have for your dashboard, depending on your brand and your consumers. Programs like Salience, by Lexalytics and Alchemy, by IBM are sort of the base level engines that fuel text analytics. They are natural language processors. You load in a block of text and they spit out a whole slew of analyses of your unstructured data. It’s like word clouds but at a whole new level. These programs can count words and phrases, classify them as entities and themes, and can take note of the surrounding adjectives to measure sentiment. The catch phrase often connected to text analytics is social listening. When you start with basic text analytics and add on the act of gathering and organizing all types of mentions, tweets, likes and posts that are happening around your brand, you are fully engaged in social listening. Is social listening a must-have? On the one hand it does qualify as gathering insights, since insights can come from all types of data, including written and spoken words from focus groups and surveys, numerical sales data and even observational data from ethnography studies. However it doesn’t really replace a traditional marketing research study that’s more about purposefully gathering the specific information needed to quantify an opportunity, identify a key target or find the right positioning. In the not-so-long term, though, as more and more consumer feedback gets shared out into the cloud, this type of unstructured data will likely become a bigger chunk of the insights pie for brands and companies. It will be increasingly harder to leave unmined.

[brendademith]

Is it rude not to (social) listen?

Lately I’ve been learning about and experimenting with text analytics tools.  They are cool and powerful, and may or may not be a must-have for your dashboard, depending on your brand and your consumers.

Programs like Salience, by Lexalytics and Alchemy, by IBM are sort of the base level engines that fuel text analytics.  They are natural language processors.  You load in a block of text and they spit out a whole slew of analyses of your unstructured data.  It’s like word clouds but at a whole new level.  These programs can coun words and phrases, classify them as entities and themes, and can take note of the surrounding adjectives to measure sentiment.

The catch phrase often connected to text analytics is social listening.  When you start with basic text analytics and add on the act of gathering and organizing all types of mentions, tweets, likes and posts that are happening around your brand, you are fully engaged in social listening.

Is social listening a must-have?  On the one hand it does qualify as gathering insights, since insights can come from all types of data, including written and spoken words from focus groups and surveys, numerical sales data and even observational data from ethnography studies.  However it doesn’t really replace a traditional marketing research study that’s more about purposefully gathering the specific information needed to quantify an opportunity, identify a key target or find the right positioning.

In the not-so-long term, though, as more and more consumer feedback gets shared out into the cloud, this type of unstructured data will likely become a bigger chunk of the insights pie for brands and companies.  It will be increasingly harder to leave unmined. 

[brendademith]

The new generation of DIYers are owners and makers, just like their grandparents

Luther Hicks Sr. and Luther Hicks Jr., driving the family car, a 1956 Chevy Bel Air on vacation in California, Summer 1956.  Dad was 16 and did the driving.

The DIY lifestyle is about being an owner or maker, instead of just consuming everything.  I feel like this has to be a good thing.

A conversation with my dad earlier this year brought my attention to the differences between living in a culture of consumers and “end users” versus one of owners and makers.

Sitting at the kitchen table, he was going over the records and plan for maintenance that he had done for my daughter’s car.  I had asked him to drive it for a few days, take a look at it and help me figure out what all needed to be fixed, before sending it back to school with her.

In three days, he’d done a complete inspection of his own in his garage and pieced together a maintenance log (as best he could, based on the stray receipts found in the glove compartment).  THEN he took it to his preferred, trusted mechanic to run the obligatory diagnostics that spits out everything that needs to be done to a car according to the recommended manufacturers plan or best practices.  (Note:  in Texas we refer to this as “whatever will make the check engine light go off so that you can pass inspection”).  

But when the long list of “to do’s” came out of the printer, he didn’t react with shock or anxiety, as I would have, but instead was able to say “yes, I agree with that”, or “no, that can probably wait.”

He had equipped himself with his own evaluation and 60 years of experience of owning vehicles, not just driving them.  His was the second generation of people to have automobiles.  They did most of the work on their cars themselves, out of both necessity and enthusiasm. They wouldn’t have thought of paying someone else to do something as simple as changing oil and spark plugs.  

We all experience emotional benefits from different things, and those emotional benefits help us ladder up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  When we do something on our own, we get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment. It’s why people sometimes pursue the mastery of things they’re passionate about, like cooking or karate.  Another emotional benefit from doing things yourself is the feeling of being in control.  YOU get to decide what goes in your food and drinks or what kind of oil really goes in your car.  And unfortunately that control is what we give up sometimes when we allow ourselves to be just consumers instead of owners or makers.  

But this new generation of owners and makers are sort of juiced up versions of their grandparents and great grandparents. Their sense of frugality drives enthusiasm for DIY videos, recipes and hacks for this or that.  But also, they have uniquely grown up with global access to all people, places and things, which has boosted their creativity and sense of adventure.  And finally, their command of accessing information and using technology feeds their self-confidence and their desire to be in control. 

I would say this group feels comfortable in the driver seat, whether it’s for actual driving, hacking the Chick-fil-A recipe, brewing beer, or making pallet furniture.

http://www.elle.com/culture/travel-food/news/a31648/meg-gill-golden-road-brewing-founder-interview/

[brendademith]

The new generation of DIYers are owners and makers, just like their grandparents

Luther Hicks Sr. and Luther Hicks Jr., driving the family car, a 1956 Chevy Bel Air on vacation in California, Summer 1956.  Dad was 16 and did the driving.

The DIY lifestyle is about being an owner or maker, instead of just consuming everything.  I feel like this has to be a good thing.

A conversation with my dad earlier this year brought my attention to the differences between living in a culture of consumers and “end users” versus one of owners and makers.

Sitting at the kitchen table, he was going over the records and plan for maintenance that he had done for my daughter’s car.  I had asked him to drive it for a few days, take a look at it and help me figure out what all needed to be fixed, before sending it back to school with her.

In three days, he’d done a complete inspection of his own in his garage and pieced together a maintenance log (as best he could, based on the stray receipts found in the glove compartment).  THEN he took it to his preferred, trusted mechanic to run the obligatory diagnostics that spits out everything that needs to be done to a car according to the recommended manufacturers plan or best practices.  (Note:  in Texas we refer to this as “whatever will make the check engine light go off so that you can pass inspection”).  

But when the long list of “to do’s” came out of the printer, he didn’t react with shock or anxiety, as I would have, but instead was able to say “yes, I agree with that”, or “no, that can probably wait.”

He had equipped himself with his own evaluation and 60 years of experience of owning vehicles, not just driving them.  His was the second generation of people to have automobiles.  They did most of the work on their cars themselves, out of both necessity and enthusiasm. They wouldn’t have thought of paying someone else to do something as simple as changing oil and spark plugs.  

We all experience emotional benefits from different things, and those emotional benefits help us ladder up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  When we do something on our own, we get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment. It’s why people sometimes pursue the mastery of things they’re passionate about, like cooking or karate.  Another emotional benefit from doing things yourself is the feeling of being in control.  YOU get to decide what goes in your food and drinks or what kind of oil really goes in your car.  And unfortunately that control is what we give up sometimes when we allow ourselves to be just consumers instead of owners or makers.  

But this new generation of owners and makers are sort of juiced up versions of their grandparents and great grandparents. Their sense of frugality drives enthusiasm for DIY videos, recipes and hacks for this or that.  But also, they have uniquely grown up with global access to all people, places and things, which has boosted their creativity and sense of adventure.  And finally, their command of accessing information and using technology feeds their self-confidence and their desire to be in control. 

I would say this group feels comfortable in the driver seat, whether it’s for actual driving, hacking the Chick-fil-A recipe, brewing beer, or making pallet furniture.

http://www.elle.com/culture/travel-food/news/a31648/meg-gill-golden-road-brewing-founder-interview/

[brendademith]

“Make America Great Again” is a depressingly successful grandchild of “Just Do It”

If you step back from all of the angst and debate around the fallout of the Trump campaign and look at it purely from a positioning and messaging strategy perspective, you might say:  Wow, this is classic Nike-esque core value communication.

In the last few days people have been trying to figure out the Trump voting block. Jamelle Bouie wrote about it and quoted Matthew MacWilliams from Vox - “A voter’s gender, education, age, ideology, party identification, income, and race simply had no statistical bearing on whether someone supported Trump.”  In other words, if we were doing a classic segmentation study this group wouldn’t cluster on demographics.  They would cluster on attitudes. MacWilliams says it’s their penchant for authoritarianism.

But more importantly, the unmet emotional need they all have in common is straight out of Maslow – the need for security.  The Trump message takes this unmet need and puts it at the top of the core value communication pyramid as the emotion to tap into.  

The audience’s lower level emotions, fears and needs are different (frustrated with the economy and jobs, fearful and worried about immigration, distrusting of government and politicians, etc.)  But they all ladder up to the emotional feeling of insecurity.  

So what you have is a frighteningly powerful umbrella message that connects with both the legitimately frustrated people who are not feeling very secure for one reason or another, and the illegitimate “hatefuls”.  

Comparatively, the Nike, Just Do It campaign was groundbreaking because it connected with both athletes and non-athletes with a powerfully positive desire for confidence and achievement - both of which sit higher on the hierarchy of needs.

AND…the Trump message is using the old “fear in advertising” strategy.  We’ve been studying the effectiveness of fear in advertising since Ray & Wilkie in the 1970’s, when they hypothesized that “non-owners” (vs owners), are more susceptible to their anxieties being tapped into.  At the time they were studying things like using “fear ads” to sell life insurance (people who didn’t have life insurance were more persuaded by a scary ad).  But their theory totally makes sense for today’s disenfranchised-feeling voters.

So this campaign is executing some sort of evil trifecta of tapping into a core Maslow hierarchical need, reaching a larger group of people with an umbrella message and playing the fear-in-advertising card.  Ugh.

[brendademith]

Beer Trends - Back to a Nation of Towns

Landon Hunter on Etsy

Much has been opined about Budweiser’s ad presence on Super Bowl Sunday, from the disappointment of no puppies, the first time presence of a craft brand in the mix, to the unsolicited Peyton-delivered product endorsements.  But it’s no doubt that Budweiser’s message of not backing down is an answer to the fierce challenge of the craft beer segment.

Two years ago we explored beverage trends, beer included, and the craft beer segment was really starting to explode.  It was at 11% of the category and growing at 18%.

And as we dive into trends and predictions for 2016 it looks like craft beer brands and brewery proliferation, are again significant trends to follow and understand.

WE’RE OPENING TWO NEW BREWERIES A DAY

In this article from bon appetit, Joshua Bernstein recaps his coverage of last year’s Great American Beer Festival and presents his trends to watch in 2016. One is the continued openings of American breweries. Apparently we’re at 4,011, the highest since 1873, right after Anheuser chose an eagle for their logo.  So back then we made and drank all of our own beer, city by city, and it was the best thing ever. Then came manufacturing and automation, so fewer breweries needed. Then there were mergers and prohibition. Post prohibition the breweries slowly came back, fueled by cans and then micro-breweries in the 80’s; and imports may have been hot for awhile, but right now America is the thing and people want local beer. It’s one of the many ways we’re demonstrating an overall desire as a culture to sustain and tend to our own communities.  

Local breweries bring a whole new kind of industry (and all kinds of local spending/dollars) to their communities.  There are jobs and revenue in the production of it and the serving of it in restaurants and bars.  They spawn events and festivals, which in turn result in tourism and entertainment dollars.  They even help local musicians thrive.  Their popularity meshes with the desire to buy and consume locally, and support local businesses.

   Rogue Farms

FARM TO KEG

This article in craftbeer.com gives us 10 trends in craft beer to look for in 2016, and one of them is farm-to-keg.  Brewers are loving the idea of growing and sourcing local ingredients to create artisan masterpieces of small batch and seasonal beers. It shows how the buy local – eat local - support local phenomenon that started out as a restaurant and food trend has now transcended into a broader sense of sustainability and community. The principle is now being applied to other categories, namely anything that can be produced locally.   It’s also wrapped up in the zeitgeist of anti-big (big banks, big corporations) and pro small (small businesses, family owned restaurants).

But there’s further peeling apart of the onion to do around farm-to.  Is the core value more about supporting community or being a good steward of the planet? One is about supporting the people around you and one is about the need to be responsible.  

I asked Chuck Kukic, CEO of Heagy Foods to weigh in.  Their company has consumers who care about buying local.  Their dairy products and deli meats are made fresh from local farmers/manufacturers and are sold in local farmers’ markets.  He says “people want honest food from people they can see and engage with.  As the food industry continues to evolve, there are so many things leading us back to rituals that are rooted in local traditions.  You are seeing a trend that is driving demand for more handcrafted products, and it was one of the biggest drivers for us to purchase Carmen & David's Creamery in Lancaster, PA; a handcrafted, small batch ice cream brand made from milk locally produced, it doesn't get any more local than that.”  

“The rituals of our ancestors are leading us back to discover that mass production has manipulated our food and beverage supply to add preservatives and chemicals that consumers are just fed up with.  If they can't pronounce it in the ingredient list, they won't buy it.  In fact, we have several of our better restaurant partners wanting just product from this area.  It is driving our go-to-market strategy right now.  Food is about nourishing not just our bodies, but also our souls.  So we are working on feeding the passions of our customer base with honest products that have honest ingredients."

So the values driving farm to keg and craft beer are also tradition and simplicity.  It’s the mindset of supporting the community and the desire to bring consumption of our food and drink back to a smaller scale.  That being said, if larger beer makers are thinking of getting in the game through acquisition, (which is what some are predicting) they would ideally want to maintain that small batches are still small, local families still run the business and local farmers supply the ingredients. Basically, this current group of Americans wants the nostalgia of town and community back and they’re not likely to settle for less. They are not backing down either.

Two more beer trend articles:

Millennials as craft beer consumers - they care about authenticity. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246092

This one, from 2015, reinforces the popularity of session beers and artisanal ingredients.  http://www.winemag.com/gallery/top-6-beer-trends-of-2015/

[brendademith]

Why you need a geographical map for innovation projects

If you’re starting an innovation project this year, you might first think of doing a category analysis – taking a good look at the size of a category, growth drivers and the key players.  BUT ALSO think about the idea of mapping the landscape. I’m not talking about a road map that is a set of directions, but rather a geographical map that lays out the terrain of the territory.  You do want to know about the land mines, right?

Things to map:  Map all of the key players, and then some.  Your data will tell you which competitors dominate the category, but won’t always identify the flanking competition – those who are poised to get into the category. They might be delivering similar benefits or against the same occasions and need states.

Map the growth drivers, both tangible and intangible.  A good analysis-of-data points to things like flavors, sizes and value that are driving growth, but it’s also helpful to layer in macro-trends and consumer behavior that might be influencing the category.

Place the key players’ positioning on the map, which should highlight the white space (like a typical perceptual map).  A good attitude and usage survey reveals how consumers see the strengths, weaknesses, benefits of the different players in the field, BUT ALSO think about broadcasted positioning.  Broadcasted positioning can shed light on what your competitors perceive as their strengths, benefits and target audience, while perceived positioning reveals met and unmet needs.  It’s interesting to see the gaps between broadcasted positioning and perceptions.

Map the terrain of different channels, as we know that even the same shoppers have different needs and expectations in different places.  AND as more and more transactions happen online, your terrain can start to feel more like a galaxy, with immeasurable distances, unfamiliar competitors and unforeseen challenges.  It becomes imperative to move faster, maintain fluidity; know your strengths and when to use them.   

So plan to thoroughly map your competitive landscapes this year, for optimum pipeline exploration.  In other words, don’t just “work like a boss”; work like a Jedi.

http://www.starwars.com/video/star-wars-the-force-awakens-tv-spot-official

[brendademith]

Our consumer panel is growing.  Let’s fuel your favorite “.org ”

Fuel Your Dot Org is a panel of consumers who use marketing research to fuel the non profit organizations in their community. In a nutshell, you can JOIN our panel as a consumer or USE our panel to do your research.  It’s a win-win, so to speak.   Go to the dashboard here to see who’s in the panel.

Ways to use the FYDO consumer panel:

Qualitative - focus groups, online journaling, shopper insights, ethnography

Shopper marketing and retail audits

Cause marketing insights

Contact us  to hire or join FYDO! 

[brendademith]

We’ve reached 200 members!  Each time we do a project we grow and give to everyone’s favorite charities. 

Email me at [email protected] to join the panel or hire us to recruit for your research project.

Thanks to all who’ve participated so far!

[brendademith]

Your Kids Won’t Know What Black Friday Is

So Black Friday is over and everyone is asking “How did it go?”

The nerd analyst in me looks forward to the National Retail Federation’s Thanksgiving Weekend Survey.  I want to see the trends.  Are people really going to continue to go out on Thanksgiving night? Will Christmas creep right over Thanksgiving and on top of Halloween, creating some sort of weird new custom of dressing up like Santa, elves and Rudolph and going house to house to collect candy in a Salvation Army bucket?

Well the report is out, they do a nice, thorough job of it, and it does look like a ton of people reliably went out shopping on Black Friday, and on Thanksgiving. The deals were good and the emails came more urgently and frequently throughout Thanksgiving Day and the weekend.  Versus last year, people started shopping earlier in the weekend and earlier in the day on Friday. (Fewer people said they left the house after 10 am.  10 A.M.!!)

Not so for my group, though.  A quick poll of my friends showed that we led the day with watching football and eating leftovers. 

So I’m predicting that out of home shopping on Thanksgiving and even Black Friday will go away, or at least tone way down and here are three reasons why:

First and foremost, online shopping will surpass in-store shopping on Thanksgiving weekend.  It’s easier, mobile, and consumers can watch football and their shows/movies at the same time.   Also, retailers can move around and add deals faster online so it’s easier for them to stay competitive.  A win-win.

Secondly, Thanksgiving worker sensitivity – yes there have always been people working on Thanksgiving (at the grocery store, hotels and some restaurants), but no one actually wants to, and the idea that our behavior is causing others to miss their family gatherings should make us feel bad.  REI’s statement won’t go unnoticed, and could result in others following their lead next year.

Thirdly, and something you might not have thought about, but college football during rivals week is more important now!  The new playoff system has us glued to all the games, routing for whoever’s in the top 4 to be knocked out, and then waiting around on Sunday for Condoleezza Rice and team to make their decisions. It’s riveting, and it makes the idea of enduring long check out lines and crowded parking garages much less appealing.

The folks at Ebay agree with me.  They posted an excellent Cyber Monday column that says we should “say goodbye to the traditional holiday retail calendar”. They see an evolution to four distinct phases of holiday shopping: Pre-holiday Inspiration and Discovery (Nov. 2 – 15), Peak Phase (Nov. 15 – Dec. 17), Last Chance Phase (Dec. 18 – 24) and Post Holiday Phase (Dec. 25 – Jan. 10).

But wait, the Pre-Holiday Inspiration and Discovery is now happening just two days after Halloween…SEE?!!  Santa Christmas-Treating hear we come. 

Addendum - here’s another article in Time, that’s also in agreement about fading Black Friday. Let’s hope.

[brendademith]

Our consumer panel is growing.  Let’s fuel your favorite “.org ”

Fuel Your Dot Org is a panel of consumers who use marketing research to fuel the non profit organizations in their community. In a nutshell, you can JOIN our panel as a consumer or USE our panel to do your research.  It's a win-win, so to speak.   Go to the dashboard here to see who’s in the panel.

Ways to use the FYDO consumer panel:

Qualitative - focus groups, online journaling, shopper insights, ethnography

Shopper marketing and retail audits

Cause marketing insights

Contact us  to hire or join FYDO! 

[brendademith]

Bernie and the Millennial Zeitgeist

Bernie Sanders seems to be almost effortlessly doing what every brand and advertiser aspires to do:  connecting with those Millennials.   Yay!

Some say it’s because he’s sort of an outsider, not caring about conventionalities or traditions, and so aligns with their freethinking sensibilities. But don’t chalk it up to “disheveled hair = just like my tattoo”.  They recognize and believe the sincerity. “He's no nonsense and you can tell that these aren't his views just to get people to vote for him, they're actually what he believes”, says a supportive college student.  And this group is well versed at spotting a fake.

More importantly, he’s tapping into their penchant for equality and fairness. They’ve come of age as part of the 99%, in a recession where for a lot of them, their parents have not necessarily had it better than their grandparents.  

When Bernie self identifies as a socialist democrat, a vision of Eastern Europeans standing in line waiting for government-rationed food DOES NOT pop into their heads.  Instead they might just be thinking of normal people they know, like single parents struggling to pay all the bills with one paycheck, or friends and relatives that work retail and can barely make ends meet,

OR they’re thinking of themselves, graduating college with looming student loans and having to compete for jobs against all of their hyper-aggressive ex-coeds.

Unlike generations before them, they’ve been sold on college as an “absolute necessity”, but then the actual product turned out to have been priced as a luxury item.

When the Senator talks about income inequality, and his ideas for solutions, it doesn’t feel like Robin Hood, it feels like leveling the playing field, or just playing fair, and they’ve heard a lot of pre-soccer and little league game speeches about playing fair.  

Unlike those of us well versed in 70’s and 80’s cold war lingo, when you say socialist, they don’t hear “path to communist”. They hear “community” - a word they relate to, and in fact one that they invented the modern day definition of.

So equality, fairness and community are core values this generation uniquely identifies with.

Finally, as Senator Sanders has elevated income inequality as the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, he’s also calling for a movement, and that is an idea that indeed taps into the zeitgeist of our young adult generation of today.

 You can watch the videos of his interviews with John Dickerson on Face the Nation here.

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PumpkinSpiceGate?

There seems to be a debate going on between the lovers and the haters of pumpkin spice this year.  A bit of a backlash per se.   #PumpkinSpiceEverything captures thoughts on it.  While some have rejoiced in the return of this beloved LTO, others are mentioning that enough is enough already.  It's too much.  It's.in.literally.everything. 

Who are the lovers of pumpkin spice?

Evidently it’s the “basic white girls” who love it the most, but also just people who like fall weather, any hints of autumn, wearing sweaters, etc., and who mark the beginning of the season with the PSLs at Starbucks.

For example, this girl got super excited over the Glade display.

Then there's the alcohol group.  They love pumpkin spice.

Also food companies, obviously, or anyone who has successfully capitalized on the $308M category of pumpkin flavored products.  Food Lion is tweeting about it!

Who are the haters?

Untrusters – those who are on to the whole “marketing trick” and are very aware of the fact that almost no actual pumpkin is in any of the products.

And those that are just over it and find the overkill annoying.

Then there are the jokesters

So what does the pumpkin spice debate say about us?

As a broad group, we like Fall, so if a PSL means Fall then okay, but also we’re onto the whole marketing thing, food companies, so you should probably step up your game next year and come out with a NEW Fall flavor so everyone can move on.

I tried to dig deeper and find out whether pumpkin spice has actually connected with consumers on an emotional level, but got nowhere.  Below is my poor attempt on Facebook.  You could call it a #PumpkinSpiceLadderingFail.  And there's a jokester.

So call to action for innovative people - everyone go look at your Fall/Thanksgiving recipes and find something for next year that smells great, tastes great and would be good in a beverage.  Sweet potato casserole spiced latte anyone?

[brendademith]

5 Things happening in gaming right now that might make you TWITCH

#1 - GAMING IS OFFICIALLY A SPORT 

The rise of eSports has ushered in gaming-as-a-sport, and this has changed everything.  There are leagues, championships and prizes.  There are plenty of advertisers and sponsorships.  Both Red Bull and Coke have eSports platforms.

There are spectators and professional athletes who make their living from playing online and drawing an audience. This 30-something supports his wife and daughter as a professional Banger playing the golf game, Golden Tee, and this 22 year old expects to earn $200K this year playing Dota 2 online and traveling to tournaments around the globe.   There is organized academia to recruit these athletes with State Department issued visas and athletic scholarships.

What’s driving it? Expanded broadband access and free-to-play games have opened up the audience, plus it’s just makes sense that it’s fun.  Paul Tassi called it in Forbes, two years ago:  “Games I already know and love are turned into professional sports, and I get to watch players compete at a high level of play while being able to follow exactly what’s going on? That’s an activity I can get behind."

The numbers.  More than 70MM people worldwide watch eSports over the internet or on TVs.  League of Legends has more daily active users than Instagram.  (Very cool infographic here.) MLG has been holding tournaments on TV and online since 2002, and their viewership increased by 1,376 percent in Q1 of 2014.  But more than 55 million visited Twitch in July of this year.  It averaged almost 7MM viewers each day (the Game of Thrones season finale drew 7.1MM) and that was before Amazon bought it for $970MM.  Deemed the ESPN of eSports, Twitch now is averaging the equivalent viewership of MTV.

Twitch uniquely delivers more for everyone, as it enables revenue streams for game developers, leagues, advertisers and individual gamers.  It is like ESPN + YouTube.  I can watch things on ESPN, but not upload my own content and make money from it - I can do both on Twitch.  Look for Twitch to become more Amazon-like as they chase the audience levels of their rivals like Netflix.  No doubt your Amazon Prime subscription is about to be loaded with a bunch of eSports content including tournaments, documentaries and music.

In their report "eSports video: A cross platform growth story", the Broadband Media Intelligence service at IHS credits services like Twitch for the current and future growth of eSports for its ability to aggregate viewers globally, thus achieving huge audiences.  They expect eSports video to be worth $300 million per year, globally, by 2018.

#2 - VIRTUAL REALITY GAMING IS COLLIDING WITH MOBILE WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

At E3, Facebook-backed Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus battled it out over the ability to deepen the gaming experience for core gamers with their VR set-ups.  Both previewed a variety of games and experiences (there was a shark), showing that developers are ready to get on board with producing games for VR.  Both are playing around with different interfaces and control styles, and Sony’s headset appears to be more comfortable than OR’s coming out of the gates. Sony obviously has built in hardware with Playstation controllers and consoles.

But now Oculus has inked a deal with Samsung, which could swing the pendulum in favor of Oculus.  Gear VR, which is basically a Samsung headset + Oculus software + Samsung mobile phone, solves a lot of problems for Oculus right away. 1) A new option to the not-as-comfortable Oculus headset; 2) The entry cost to virtual gaming goes way down - "The primary expense is something you already paid for: Your mobile phone," said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG.  3) A built in user base.  The user base of Sony’s Playstation is impressive...BUT Samsung sold 300 million smartphones last year.  This in turn solves the problem of "Having enough customers to convince game and other content makers to develop for the device", according to Amir Rubin, head of motion control technology firm Sixense Entertainment.  And finally 4) Distribution:  Gear VR fits right into Samsung’s already healthy wearable technology platform, so it works strategically for Samsung to provide lots of marketing support.  Note:  This just in today, Oculus people are saying consumers will want to buy both headsets - theirs and Samsung's.

#3 – MOBILE GAMES ARE THE POP MUSIC OF GAMING

The crazy moves of Angry Birds got everyone’s attention and then inspired others from all over the world to create their own instantly addictive Flappy Birds out there and the fans went wild. 

Now we have a continuous pipeline of one-hit wonders battling for the top of the charts, (See: Kardashian won the summer and ended Candy Crush's long reign at the top of the charts).  They are played as "short 45’s to relieve boredom or as the background music of our daily lives".  These are not the same sort of games that you spend hours with, analyze the meaning of, play backwards and collect. 

Mobile games have brought everyone into the tent and just like pop music, they’ll change over time to reflect pop culture, but are here to stay.

The numbers.  By the end of 2014, mobile gaming is expected to reach $21.1 billion, up 19 percent from $17.7 billion in 2013, according to market researcher SuperData Research. And no one expects it to stop. "I really think we’ll see 4 billion people playing games,” said Michael Pachter, managing director at Wedbush Securities and a longtime gaming analyst, speaking at the Cloud Gaming USA conference.

The Asian influence.  The Chinese mobile games market is forecast to grow at an astounding rate of 93% in 2014 over 2013, to $2.9 billion, and is expected to continue growth at a brisk CAGR of 37.6% through 2018 AND China is beginning to distribute mobile games via mobile chat apps, like WhatsApp, creating yet another distribution point. The Asian market will continue to drive growth, as China, India, and Russia are all markets that have large portions of their populations still waiting to pick up smartphones

What’s being bantered around now in mobile gaming is how to make money.

The most popular current model is a free download, and then the main revenue stream is from in game add-ons, but a low percentage of players buy add-ons, so only a small percentage of users are contributing to revenue.

And it's no surprise that with so many people playing, advertisers want in. comScore says that over half of the total time spent with digital media is being spent with apps. And 32% of time spent with apps is spent on gaming, And we know advertisers want in on digital media, so it makes sense that they'll want in on gaming.  If advertisers are let in, we're likely to see versions of the Spotify model, with free play with ads or paid-for play with no ads.

The players.  King is king.  They have all of the top games right now, and are among the big players that analysts are betting on.  The others include Activision Bizzard, Electronic Arts and Glu Mobile.

But the random success of the many Flappy Birds-to-come makes betting on continued dominance of any one player sort of a crap shoot.

The big developers are key players,but they generally don’t control their own distribution, so they can’t control individual artists/indie developers from self-publishing and competing on the same platforms.

Will it really end in the death of consoles?  Pachter brings up the CD analogy here, and says we are seeing the last cycle of focus on consoles. 

#4 – NO ONE REALLY KNOWS WHAT "INDIE GAME" MEANS ANYMORE, BUT IT'S MORE POPULAR THAN EVER

Indie games are games created by small, independent developers that don’t make much money and have smaller audiences.  But:  Minecraft.

Indie games are anything not coming from the big name developers.  Except Sony.

Just like it was with independent movies, the idea of games being created outside of the compounds and the confinements of big studios is inspiring and brings out the Robert Redfords of the industry to lend support and create festivals/events where artists can showcase their work.  In addition to the larger national indie game festivals, we're seeing more and more local festivals to showcase and encourage local artists.

YES, this is happening. Chicago had its first indie-gaming festival this summer put on by Bit Bash, and supported by Ryan Weimeyer of Chicago’s Indie City Collective.

Platforms like the App Store and Steam have made it easier for independent game creators to get their games distributed to the masses, without going through major studios, and it’s awesome.

Except that now it’s so over-saturated that no one can breakthrough.  Which IN TURN is why some creators might be tempted to “sell out” to the Sony’s of the world.

Indie game creators are the Andy Warhols and Jackson Pollocks of our time.  Yes!  They are artists that want express themselves and tell their own stories without the influence of editors.  And they’re even getting noticed and celebrated with their own museum exhibits.  And they also experience anxiety about what's happening with their art form.  They don't like that it's become too big and encroached upon.

Here is a video from PBS Digital Studios' show Game/Show that does a good job laying out the whole debate over indie games.  The host, Jamin Warren says that the definition of indie has now boiled down to just how the game is marketed, and that so many of the games really shouldn’t be lumped together like they are.  He votes for dropping the word indie altogether.

AND FINALLY, #5 – GAMERS ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A HUGE IDENTITY CRISIS

#gamergate.  It started as a spat between gamer journalists and the gaming community.  One particular writer is known for calling out misogyny when she sees it in newly released games and unfortunately her criticism brought out the worst of the worst.   

What happened next.  A lot of online harassment, trolling and taking sides.  #iamnotyourshield seems to be where gamers are siding with gamergaters and calling out the journalists for not recognizing the diversity of the gaming community.  It’s confusing, but it seems like they hate the journalists, too. Here is a great synopsis of #gamergate from Vox.

An underlying cause of this easily flared anger and anguish could be that a smallish tight-knit community (filled with people that enjoyed self-identifying as part of said community) has expanded so exponentially and so astonishingly fast, which is great for all of the new people enjoying games and being gamers, but not so great for the original group of people with a now watered down version of what they were identifying with.  Buzzfeed makes an interesting analogy to moviegoers here.

OH YEAH, AND THERE'S THIS.

[brendademith]

It’s post-4th and we are on the back half of summer, so prepare for the heat (and/or humidity, depending on where you are). Hot days have always been battled with ice cream treats, snow cones, ice cold beer and frozen cocktails, but wow, this summer they are being presented in a...

[brendademith]

Buy me some peanuts and...waffles!

Waffles are officially everywhere.  The newest gastro-treat you can get at a Texas Rangers game is a bacon waffle on a stick.  (Move over corn dog?)  Earlier this year Taco Bell’s waffle taco was added as front line artillery in their breakfast war (move over tortillas?), and Popeye’s fans are salivating for the return of last year’s LTO hero, Chicken Waffle Tenders.

On the upper end of the spectrum chicken and waffles continues to thrive as an on-trend “elevated comfort food”.  It gets reinvented as locally sourced farm-to-table dishes, and in Philly it has it’s own food truck.

Waffles can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson’s keen acquisition of a waffle iron as a souvenir from his time in France, which led to waffle parties and a new “quick bread” for the American breakfast menu.

But it was evidently the pragmatically creative Joseph T. Wells, owner of the Wells Supper Club in Harlem who served up the first chicken and waffles entree to his hungry Jazz Renaissancian patrons who had finished their performances around town.  The dinner-breakfast combination was the perfect after-party meal and a good use of the day’s leftover chicken.

Chicken and waffles hasn’t quite plateaued, but it has reached the fusion stage.  Here is Indian chicken and waffles. 

Here is Italian chicken and waffles.

Do the 50% of millennials who call themselves foodies love chicken and waffles?  YES, PLEASE, which is why you'll find it front and center on their new Food and Wine site, FWx, thoroughly covered in Thrillist, and beloved on Buzzfeed.  BTW, this Buzzfeed article is the perfect primer on how to millenify any food item.

What will be the next chicken and waffle-like phenom? No doubt something that simultaneously connects us to a fond memory of our youth, AND is basic and simple enough to lend itself to revisiting, reinvention and all around next-leveling. 

Can you say Ramen?