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Microtrends by Mark J Penn

• Newsnight
• 4 Oct 07, 02:51 PM

Microtrends
The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow鈥檚 Big Changes
By Mark J Penn with E Kinney Zalesne

In Microtrends, Mark Penn explores the trends in American society today. He suggests that the ideas shaping our world are relatively unseen 鈥� under-the-radar forces that can involve as little as one per cent of the population, yet their impact on society is huge.

Mark Penn is Hillary Clinton's chief strategist. An interview with the author will be shown on Newsnight on Thursday 4 October.

From the introduction

In 1960, Volkswagen shook up the car world with a full-page ad that had just two words on it: Think Small. It was a revolutionary idea鈥攁 call for the shrinking of perspective, ambition, and scale in an era when success was all about accumulation and territorial gain, even when you were just driving down the street.

At the same time that America was becoming the world鈥檚 superpower, growing the dominant economy and setting the pace for global markets, the Beetle took off as a counterculture phenomenon鈥攔epresenting individuality in reaction to the conformity of the 1950s.

America never quite got used to small when it came to cars. But ask two-thirds of America, and they will tell you they work for a small business. Americans are willing to make big changes only when they first see the small, concrete steps that will lead to those changes. And they yearn for the lifestyles
of small-town America. Many of the biggest movements in America today are small鈥攇enerally hidden from all but the most careful observer.

Microtrends is based on the idea that the most powerful forces in our society are the emerging, counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow right before us. With so much of a spotlight on teen crime, it is hard to see the young people who are succeeding as never before. With so much focus
on poverty as the cause of terrorism, it is hard to see that it is richer, educated terrorists who have been behind many of the attacks. With so much attention to big organized religion, it is hard to see that it is newer, small sects that are the fastest-growing.

The power of individual choice has never been greater, and the reasons and patterns for those choices never harder to understand and analyze. The skill of microtargeting鈥攊dentifying small, intense subgroups and communicating with them about their individual needs and wants鈥攈as never been more critical in marketing or in political campaigns. The one-size-fits-all approach to the world is dead.

Thirty years ago sitting in Harvard鈥檚 Lamont Library, I read a book that started out, 鈥淭he perverse and unorthodox thesis of this little book is that the voters are not fools.鈥� Its author, V.O. Key, Jr., made an argument that, since that day, has guided how I think not just about voters but consumers, corporations, governments and the world at large. If you use the right tools and look at the facts, it turns out that the average Joe is actually pretty smart, making some very rational choices.

Yet almost every day, I hear experts say that voters and consumers are misguided scatterbrains, making decisions on the basis of the color of a tie. That鈥檚 why politicians pay consultants to tell them to wear earth-tone suits, or get their facial lines removed. That鈥檚 why many commercials feature pointless stories with no relation to the products. Too often, candidates and marketers don鈥檛 believe the facts or the issues matter that much. Oftentimes, it is they who are the fools. I bet at least two-thirds of all communications are wasted with messages and images that only their creators understood.

The perspective of this book is that, thirty years later, V.O Key, Jr.鈥檚, observation is not only sound, but should be the guiding principle of understanding the trends we see in America and around the world. People have never been more sophisticated, more individualistic, or more knowledgeable about
the choices they make in their daily lives. Yet, as Key observed, it takes intensive, scientific study to find the logical patterns that underlie those choices. When faced with people鈥檚 seemingly contradictory choices, it can be a lot easier to chalk them up to brown suits and Botox. And indeed, the contradictions today are striking. While people are eating more healthful foods than ever, Big Mac sales have never been higher. While Fox News is number one in the ratings, the antiwar movement dominates most news coverage. While America is growing older, most of what we see in
advertising and entertainment has been created with youth in mind. While people are dating as never before, they have never been more interested in deeper, longer-lasting relationships. While more people than ever before are drinking clear, natural water, more people are also drinking 鈥渕onster鈥� energy drinks loaded with chemicals and caffeine. In fact, the whole idea that there are a few huge trends that determine how America and the world work is breaking down. There are no longer a
couple of megaforces sweeping us all along. Instead, America and the world are being pulled apart by an intricate maze of choices, accumulating in 鈥渕icrotrends鈥濃�攕mall, under-the-radar forces that can involve as little as 1 percent of the population, but which are powerfully shaping our society. It鈥檚
not just that small is the new big. It鈥檚 that in order to truly know what鈥檚 going on, we need better tools than just the naked eye and an eloquent tongue. We need the equivalent of magnifying glasses and microscopes, which in sociological terms are polls, surveys, and statistics. They take a slice of the matter being studied and lay it open鈥攂igger and clearer鈥攆or examination. And inside, you will find yourself, your friends, your clients, your customers, and your competition, clearer than you ever thought you might.

Working for President Clinton in 1996, I identified the under-the-radar group that became known as the Soccer Moms. (I like to think I did something for the youth soccer movement, although I really didn鈥檛 mean to. The phrase was just meant to get at busy suburban women devoted to their jobs
and their kids, who had real concerns about real presidential policies.) Until that campaign, it was generally thought that politics was dominated by men, who decided how their households would vote. But the truth was, in 1996, most male voters had already made up their minds by the campaign. The
people left to influence were the new group of independent Moms, devoted to both work and their kids, who had not yet firmly decided which party would be good for their families. They, not their husbands, were the critical swing voters. To win them over, President Clinton initiated a campaign
to give them a helping hand in raising their kids鈥攄rug-testing in schools, measures against teen smoking, limits on violence in the media, and school uniforms. These Moms did not want more government in their lives, but they were quite happy to have a little more government in their kids鈥� lives to keep them on the straight and narrow.

In retrospect, a profound political change was spawned by this bit of trendspotting. Previously, almost all Democrats had targeted downscale, noncollege workers, particularly in the manufacturing sector. But union membership and manufacturing jobs were shrinking, more people were going to college,
and almost the entire electorate in the U.S. was calling itself middle class. If Democrats missed the key trends, they would miss the boat. Now candidates enthusiastically target Soccer Moms鈥攁lthough someone may want to let them know that trends move fast, and Soccer Moms, too, have moved on. Now, a decade later, their kids are getting ready for college, many of them have been through a divorce, and their own financial security has become as big an issue for them as raising their children was ten years ago.

And with all of the attention being paid to those Moms, Dads鈥攕uburban-based, family-focused, office-park-working Dads鈥攁re all but neglected in politics, advertising, and the media. In the twenty-first century, Dads spend more time with their children then ever in history. Has Madison Avenue adjusted? Are Dads ever the target of back-to-school campaigns? There could be as big a shift ahead in marketing as 1996 saw in Democratic politics.

The art of trend-spotting, through polls, is to find groups that are pursuing common activities and desires, and that have either started to come together or can be brought together by the right appeal that crystallizes their needs. Soccer Moms had been there for a decade or more鈥攂ut they became a political class only when they were recognized as a remarkably powerful voting bloc in America.
Today, changing lifestyles, the Internet, the balkanization of communications, and the global economy are all coming together to create a new sense of individualism that is powerfully transforming our society. The world may be getting flatter, in terms of globalization, but it is occupied by 6 billion little
bumps who do not have to follow the herd to be heard. No matter how offbeat their choices, they can now find 100,000 people or more who share their taste for deep fried yak on a stick.

In fact, by the time a trend hits 1 percent, it is ready to spawn a hit movie, best-selling book, or new political movement. The power of individual choice is increasingly influencing politics, religion, entertainment, and even war. In today鈥檚 mass societies, it takes only 1 percent of people making a dedicated choice鈥攃ontrary to the mainstream鈥檚 choice鈥攖o create a movement that can change the world.

Just look at what has happened in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. A few years ago, they were the forgotten Americans, hiding from daylight and the authorities. Today they are holding political rallies, and given where they and their legal, voting relatives live, they may turn out to be the new Soccer Moms. Militant immigrants fed up with a broken immigration system just may be the most important voters in the next presidential election, distributed in the key Southwest states that are becoming the new battleground areas.

It鈥檚 the same in business, too, since the Internet has made it so easy to link people together. In the past, it was almost impossible to market to small groups who were spread around the country. Now it鈥檚 a virtual piece of cake to find 1 million people who want to try your grapefruit diet, or who can鈥檛 get
their kids to sleep at night.

The math can be not just strategic, but also catastrophic. If Islamic terrorists were to convince even just one-tenth of 1 percent of America鈥檚 population that they were right, they would have 300,000 soldiers of terror, more than enough to destabilize our society. If they could convert just 1 percent of the world鈥檚 1 billion Muslims to take up violence, that would be 10 million terrorists, a group that could dwarf even the largest armies and police forces on earth. This is the power of small groups that come together today.

The power of choice is especially evident as more and more Americans make decisions about their own lives. For example, the population growth in America has slowed to .9 percent, but the number of households has exploded.

Between people getting divorced, staying single longer, living longer, and never marrying at all, we are experiencing an explosion in the number of people who are heads of households鈥攁lmost 115 million in 2006 compared to about 80 million in 1980. The percentage of households consisting of one
person living alone increased from 17 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 2003. The proportion of married-with-kids households has fallen to less than 25 percent.

All these people out there living a more single, independent life are slivering America into hundreds of small niches. Single people, and people without kids at home, have more time to follow their interests, pick up hobbies, get on the Internet, have a political debate, or go out to movies. By all rights, no one should even go to the movies anymore鈥攜ou can get movies practically as fast by downloading them or using pay-per-view鈥攂ut for people with a free Saturday night, movies are such a solid preference that theaters are raising their prices, not lowering them. More people have more disposable resources (including money, time, and energy) than ever before. They are deploying them in pursuit of personal satisfaction like never before. And as a result, we鈥檙e getting a clearer picture of who people are and what they want. And in business, politics, and social-problem-solving, having that information can make all the difference.

This book is all about the niching of America. How there is no One America anymore, or Two, or Three, or Eight. In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests.

Nor is niching confined just to America. It is a global phenomenon that is making it extremely difficult to unify people in the twenty-first century. Just when we thought that, thanks to the Internet, the world would be not only connected but ultimately unified around shared values favoring democracy, peace and security, exactly the opposite is happening. We are flying apart at a record pace.

I recently went bowling and, contrary to another popular but misguided idea, no one was there alone. But actually, the people hurling the balls down the lanes weren鈥檛 the clich茅d pot-bellied, beer-drinking bowlers, either. In fact, there appeared to be no similarity at all from one group to another. In one lane was a family of Indian immigrants, including the grandparents. In another lane was a black Mom with two adolescent kids. In a third lane were four white teens, some with tattoos, some with polo shirts. And two lanes down, a Spanish-speaking man and woman were clearly on a bowling date, smooching between spares.

With the rise in freedom of choice has come a rise in individuality. And with the rise of individuality has come a rise in the power of choice. The more choices people have, the more they segregate themselves into smaller and smaller niches in society.

Microtrends is published by Allen Lane