American Trends important to know - Daniel Levine at TIAC's Leadership Summit

Daniel Levine, a respected trend watcher and consultant in the US gave an engaging and informative talk about trends in America that are important for marketers to know in order to take advantage of them. These trends are:

1. Personalization: consumers want more and more customization. Individualism is growing.
2. Targeted Segmentation: this refers to niche marketing, going after specific segments of the American population and designing goods and services specifically for them. For example, there is growing activity in the area of goods and services for women and also for the second half of the Baby Boom generation that is being called the Joneses
3. The democratization of information: this is a major American Cultural Trend. This is the citizen, the consumer taking control - mostly by using the Internet and Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook, The Consumerist, TripAdvisor and others where consumers can and will comaprison shop, praise or criticize goods, services or politicians.
4. Social Networking 2.5. This one refers to a trend of moving the Web social community from a virtual world to the real physical world. For example websites that connect people to each other who may be travelling on the same flight and facilitating their getting to meet each other. Airlines are using this to facilitate networking among business people travelling to Asia, for example.
5. Life Story Labeling: this refers to making products interactive in a way and telling their story to the consumer. Americans, more and more, want to know where their products come from and how are they made, mostly to know if these products or services are environmentally responsible or are not made with child labour or similar concerns.

Cheers,

Jaime