More than ever, marketers will benefit by seeing the long view and not just the micro trends

Several years ago this mission developed around a single question:

How do really big picture secular trending issues relate to the short and intermediate term circumstances we must deal with ? What will knowing this teach us to use now?

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In the early stages, before learning what technical analysis can offer to a marketing mindset (generally), I learned how many patterns in history were repeated over and over by successive generations of people, many patterns skipping entire generations. It seems that to express what comes naturally, including making mistakes of excess as we are prone to do, we must first forget we are not always being original and instead, displaying impulsive behavior that is endogenous to large crowds of people. I call these "group processes" and they are similar to but different from individual creative cycles. As individuals we do not like to think of ourselves as being predictable or like many others when in fact big picture issues repeat over and over for a reason. The 20th century, from one perspective, seemed all about emphasizing our individuality as both a nationa and individuals like we just discovered it for the first time ever. In popular culture we often credit the baby boomer generation but as at least one book points out, Boomers are one of four generational archetypes that seem to repeat over and over. This may seem like an esoteric viewpoint owing to a textbook, but it is not if you live inside a marketing mindset.

I read the following lesson this AM (which is actually six week ago now) reviewing the financial pages(blogs). We are headed for a break in credit markets a week, a month, or maybe even six months from now. It will happen because we seem to have forgotten the following lesson on a large scale again....and banks will pay dearly for the mistakes. In the proper perspective, we may see money as a source of social energy and something about that energy has been very exaggerated for a few decades. So these mistakes are really a symptom of a much larger series of social trends that have expanded and will eventually retrace their steps as social energy is removed and redistributed. This is the basis for a trending we see...social energy. This sounds financial when I talk about markets, but, it really matters to marketers of all kinds. Where this energy goes and how it colors our experiences past present and future will be changing because of one primary trend we have never been taught to see or acknowledge and to marketers it is bound to seem peripheral at best. It's not.

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"Borrow short, lend long, go broke; one of the oldest stories in lending, but somehow rediscovered by every generation. The new wrinkle here was to make some especially bad loans too." (from calculatedrisk.blogspot.com)

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How will this relate to what we see in focus groups? What is talked about in discussion groups regarding products and experiences people desire? If how we cover our bodies (fashion trends) follow basic patterns, over and over, then what does this imply about changing mood in our other markets? The concept that social mood drives group behavioral patterns and it is ignored in our culture dedicated to pure individualism, is a window into a world that can tell us so much more about all the markets we serve and not just esoteric financial issues which is where the tool has been safely stored (with limited utility) for seven decades. It is worth owning the perspective. That is the single message the Root Trend offers as I evolve my own demonstration of how this goes beyond simple social trends like fashion, music, dance, gadget trends, as well as our relationships both personal and in larger settings, into all the markets we serve and the industry we build to serve those markets. (if you go to the "about" pages and Where the method behind The Root Trend comes from: there are a aseries of links to the original authors of the work. My intentions for the Root Trend are simply to commercialize the work in the area of enterprise strategy and in the  adoption of this perspective in the creative process. These two areas are to me, the most appropriate places to begin. 

This was a reposting of these thoughts from mid October but as the credit markets continue their confusion and pending further unwinds and bailouts, the trends in both financial markets and much more generalized social issues suggest that we keep our peripheral vision working hard as marketers. If you do not care for the blow by blows in the Wall Street Journal, I understand. Any link this work has to financial market behavior can be used to benefit or ignored completely while we build our own methods to see social trending in our markets. Social mood is all about how groups of people collectively respond to and create circumstance as we look forward to what is always an uncertain future. The two extremes of social mood (both positive and negative) and all that falls between these endless transitions is the realm of marketers because the implications for consumer behavior are endless. All it takes is a willingness to see it and then apply it to the markets you serve.  With these last two paragraphs in mind, read these slides (jpegs you must click on them).