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19 May 08

"Rich Jerk Watch," by Knute Berger (Crosscut Seattle)

Berger is on another tear here (and being inconsistent, as the first comment points out), but I'm totally intrigued by his illustration of the "transumer" trend. It makes so much sense, when you think about it, even though it's almost creepy at some level. (I'm not impressed by Berger's rants against transumers, though; those diatribes fail to ring my bells.)

Years ago, I recall learning that Mick Jagger never traveled with luggage because he just "acquired" whatever he needed wherever he was. He didn't need to trail a score of cases of possessions when he hopped from place to place. In a sense, the wealthy people that Berger describes here exemplify a kind of Jaggerism-trickle-down effect. You don't need to be a rolling stone anymore to be "free" of possessions (and fashion mistakes). You just rent the appropriate materials for brief moments of time. You become an occasion, occasionally dipping into things, and just as quickly escaping their hold again.

The really really important thing about capital, after all, is that it circulates. Of course people will be the site of that circulation, not just the site of accumulation.

www.crosscut.com/...Rich+Jerk+Watch - Preview

crosscut knute_berger trendwatch transumerism

Then I stumbled on a piece with a word I hadn't heard (though I'm sure Crosscut readers are way ahead of me on this). It was in a story about a Seattle company called Bag Borrow or Steal that rents high-end fashion accessories online, mostly to women who want to try out the latest Sex in the City-style shoes or purses. Here's the explanation:
Because fashion trends come and go so quickly, women want to have over-the-top luxury accessories for special occasions without suffering buyer’s remorse or over-cluttered closets, [chief marketing officer Jodi] Watson says. Once customers have finished with their fashion statements, they can exchange them for the next things on their lists for a monthly fee, à la Netflix.

Women also use the company as a way to try the items out before sinking a few grand on the newest Gucci. The “steal” option in the company’s title allows customers to purchase any accessories, sometimes at discounted rates, depending on the make and condition of the item.
2 more annotations...
- So it's a business that doesn't promote consumption, but in a way restrains it: instead of buying wardrobes with quick expire dates, you rent and return them. Sort of high-end fashion recycling.
  
  So who rents this stuff? "Transumers." No, these aren't spendy trans-sexuals or transvestites, they're "people who want to experience luxury without the hassle of ownership."
- Transumers are consumers driven by experiences instead of the 'fixed', by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions. The fixed is replaced by an obsession with the here and now, an ever-shorter satisfaction span, and a lust to collect as many experiences and stories as possible. Hey, the past is, well, over, and the future is uncertain, so all that remains is the present, living for the 'now'.

26 Feb 08

FREE LOVE

Available as a 15-page printable PDF, too, this is the website version. From the intro:
"FREE LOVE: the ongoing rise of free, valuable stuff that's available to consumers online and offline. From AirAsia tickets to Wikipedia, and from diapers to music.
FREE LOVE thrives on an all-out war for consumers' ever-scarcer attention and the resulting new business models and marketing techniques, but also benefits from the ever-decreasing costs of producing physical goods, the post-scarcity dynamics of the online world (and the related avalanche of free content created by attention-hungry members of GENERATION C), the many C2C marketplaces enabling consumers to swap instead of spend, and an emerging recycling culture.
Expect FREE LOVE to become an integral if not essential part of doing business."

trendwatching.com/briefing - Preview

free marketing trends trendwatch

So let's look at five manifestations of FREE LOVE: 'Any excuse to advertise', 'Courting saturated consumers', 'C2C', 'Swapping, not spending', and 'Less is more', which all incorporate one or more of the above drivers.
5 more annotations...
- Student textbooks • U.S.-based Freeload Press provides free college textbooks in electronic form with advertisements inserted at chapter breaks. Inexpensive print-on-demand versions with no ads can be ordered for about USD 30. 'Customers' include students at four-year and two-year colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada. Freeload publishes primarily business and finance books. Students who register and complete a survey on Freeload's website can download a free PDF version of their textbook. Advertisers include Discover Card, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the College Loan Corporation.
  
  In Europe, Danish Ventus Publishing runs a similar concept in 5 countries: (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium). Ventus offers titles in the fields of economics, science and engineering, featuring ads from companies such as T-Mobile, British Airways and Deutsche Bank every four pages.
- Finance • Free software may be nothing new, but sophisticated personal finance/money management tools had until now eluded the FREE LOVE dance. Enter Mint, which has relationships with more than 3,500 banks, credit unions and credit card providers, and each night securely downloads transaction data to give users a unified view of all account activity. Transactions are categorized and organized to show users how much they spend on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals, etc., while an alert system proactively notifies them about unusual activity, low balances, unwanted fees and charges, and upcoming bills. Mint's revenue model is based on lead generation. The system keeps tabs on the latest offers from hundreds of providers and recommends ways users can save money on interest rates and other expenses. Mint is currently available only to U.S. consumers, of whom more than 100,000 have already signed up. The company claims it is now organizing USD 6 billion in user transactions, and has identified nearly USD 90 million in savings opportunities.
- Also check out Wesabe, which is part financial software, part community. With Wesabe, users can see all their bank accounts and credit cards in one place, categorize their transactions however they want, see spending and earning summaries, discuss things with other interested users, and receive tips for saving money based on their spending. Membership is free.
- If giving is the new taking, then hundreds of thousands consumers/individuals are on the right path. Never before have we witnessed such an explosion of free content, courtesy of individuals who—for free, nada, zilch—are happy to share their thinking, their novels, their photos, their movies, their music, their knowledge and expertise, their advice, their crafts and more.
  
  Call it GENERATION C, the HOBBY ECONOMY, the GIFT ECONOMY or CROWD MINING, as long as you don't forget that besides undeniable passion, this user-generated FREE LOVE provides participants with visibility, with respect, with status. Even if they participate anonymously (Wikipedia is a good example), it gives them bragging rights among other GENERATION C members.
  
  Now, we’ve written and spoken about participation vs consumption so often that we won’t repeat the whole spiel, but two more thoughts:
  
  Firstly, nothing indicates that user-generated content, both of the paid and the free kind, and in all its variety, is not here to stay.
  
  Secondly, if many consumers are now producers too, and if they mostly produce for free, will they not expect a similar sharing and loving attitude from corporations? So as a brand, not only may you find yourself competing directly with individuals doing what you do for free, but you will also be confronted with growing expectations for your brand to be giving rather than just taking.
- Now, FREE LOVE is not about everything being free in the (near) future. After all, not everything commercial can be ad-sponsored (if only because those ads in the end have to sell something else), not everything will be copyable, and not everything that's non-commercial can replace the for-profit business world. In fact, scarcity can and will forever be redefined, creating an endless stream of new products and services that many consumers will be happy to pay for. For some instant inspiration on what may in fact be better than free, (re)read Kevin Kelly's excellent 8 Uncopyable Values.

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"Rich Jerk Watch," by Knute Berger (Crosscut Seattle)

FREE LOVE

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