WATCHING THE TRENDWATCHERS

Trends most likely to be real Trends for 2008.

 

You’ll hear the phrases “Customer satisfaction” and “customer retention” a lot this year.  They’re not new phrases, yet they’re top of mind among members of the Marketing Executives Network Group, an invitation-only group of senior-level ad gurus and marketing people. 

 

The concepts they pay most attention to – in addition to the customer focus already mentioned: Market segmentation, competitive intelligence, brand loyalty, search engine optimization, marketing return on investment, quality, data mining, and personalized (or, so-called “one-to-one”) marketing.

 

Out of fashion are buzz words like “Faith based,” “Buy American,” “Game Theory” and “Long Tail.”  That’s soooooo 2007, they say.    

 

The marketing dimension

 

As Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, said at the Association of National Advertisers conference last fall, all media will ultimately be created and delivered digitally.  The iPhone, Wii, and numerous other gadgets lead the way. 

 

The Advertising Research Foundation is conducting experiments on neurological response to commercial messages and brand choice.  This year will be a benchmark in going beyond traditional focus groups and consumer surveys to see what makes people tick.

 

Bob Liodice, President of the ANA, expects marketers to become increasingly sensitive to privacy issues this year.  “This tug of war between consumer privacy and information access will require marketers to work hard to explain and justify the lifestyle benefits of highly individualized, personalized, commercial communications,” Liodice wrote in Advertising Age.

 

Speaking of Ad Age, their expectations for 2008 include media companies buying into virtual ad networks, with tech companies, advertising agencies and ad networks all converging.   Michael Seidler of Madison Alley Ventures warns, however, that there are already too many ad networks.   

By the numbers

 

Older Americans are the biggest, richest and most active group of seniors in the history of the world, according to Mark Penn and Kinney Zalesne, authors of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes.  Add to that the Baby Boomers who are about to enter retirement age with little intention of traditional fishing-hole retirements.

 

You’d never know it from the car ads, but women now make up the majority of car buyers in the U.S.

 

Speaking of women, single women are now the second-largest group of homebuyers in America, just behind married couples. 

 

The average American now sleeps fewer then seven hours a night, about a 25% drop from a century ago.  That’s big business for sleep aid people and coffee people.

 

And a reality check

 

The Kiplinger Washington editors predict another 15% drop in housing starts in 2008 after a 25% dive last year.  That means that anything related to home building will be affected: appliances, carpeting, and furniture.

 

The auto and financial services industries expect a down year, as you might expect.  However, there are strong corporate balance sheets to offset economic liabilities.  Before the 2007 write-downs, big banks enjoyed years of record profits, so they’re largely in good position. 

 

One report we saw showed S&P 500 industrial firms holing $623 billion in cash; and 40% of that is in long-term debt, twice the 1997 ratio.

 

Industries that should do well this year – and, therefore, should be the focus of our selling: Health care, information technology, defense, aerospace, electronics, heavy machinery, food and agriculture.