I've added a new article link to the Good Reading section in the right hand column of the blog. It's a link to a Floyd Norris article in the NYT and he writes about financial matters. (A Little Pity, Please, For Lenders). Before you read the article, try seeing it through this perspective.
Discussing finance issues....Why here? It is a good sign of the times. The underlying assumptions in the idea of social mood is that how we do things (collectively) when we get together into groups expresses some form of patterning related to social mood. And while this social science, used this way, will not dictate precise predictions from day to day, it does provide essential insight to how we create and de-construct our social creations (and shared values) in the two periods that correspond to rising social mood and falling social mood. In this generalization is a prescription for trend following by seeing the underlying social impulses that collective behavior forms around. Basically, it is an incremental tool that has great potential for understanding markets better.
These two opposite states of shared perception and all the possibility in between is very basic when you think about it. Out of our shifting between these two extreme states is how we collectively choose to see the world, and thus how we react to the events is seen in how we create and tear down when acting in our groups of association. Malcolm Gladwell spent a book writing about one point in this process, The Tipping Point. The perspective that social mood affords one is much broader with greater depth to see the implications of social creation (social trends).
Marketing is a broad set of activities organized around a specific purpose. In this sense, as marketers, we are often expressing The Trend. Just as a conductor cannot play the notes for the orchestral performers, the performance is a dance between the two. On a strategic level, the insight social mood offers is chunked up and transcends many boundaries. Floyd Norris' article from this past week demonstrates that how we value home ownership is changing. How we value (collectively) the social meaning of debt and obligation is changing. Just as we were focused upon an endless bright future for real estate a few years ago, we now increasingly expect that everyone understand it was all a chance we took and some chances fail. As this perspectives spreads through our continental geography from one area to another (as all national trends do), it is a symptom of much greater social change owing nothing to real estate at all. It is our emtionally based, shared perception of the uncertain future that has changed, and with it come a completely different set of trend threads that impact consumer behavior and matter to marketers on several key levels and in several different time frames.
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