Archive for October, 2010
October 29th, 2010 | by Marian Salzman, , President, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America, and Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange
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The era of mindless consumption is over. Consumers now want a simple, sustainable, and self-sufficient life.
Conspicuous consumption. Shop till you drop. All-you-can-eat buffets and supersized meals. The post–World War II era has been marked by a voracious hunger for more. In affluent countries, people bought too much, ate too much, used up too much, and owed too much. Yet, for many, it still wasn’t enough. There was something missing—lots of things, really. Among them, a sense of control and self-sufficiency, personal responsibility, and feelings of community and authenticity. Replacing the constant accumulation of “stuff” with these more substantive intangibles lies at the heart of the current shift toward mindfulness—a movement in which heedless excess is exchanged for a more conscious and considered approach to living.
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October 28th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,
By Brad Stewart
From BP green-washing to Sun Chips bending under the weight of consumer pressure, the headlines have not been good for green marketing. At first glance, the future is looking less mint green and more a pale chartreuse these days, but success stories from other areas of the sector offer clues to a more skin-tone hue.
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October 27th, 2010 | by Russ Lidstone, , CEO, Euro RSCG London
When the global financial crisis knocked the world back on its collective heels, everything went blank for a while. But after the immediate crisis dissipated, many retail banks and other financial service companies hastily returned to “marketing as usual”—with communications filled with jingles, jokes, and happy bankers and customers. It’s as if the whole thing never happened and everything is peachy again!
The crisis has had a huge impact on how people feel about banks and governments, but many of the former seem blind to this impact and deaf to what customers really want: actions that prove they have learned the lessons of the crisis. How can trust in banks ever be restored to pre-crisis levels if financial institutions ignore the real changes that the crisis produced?
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October 26th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,
“We drink our fill and still we thirst for more.”
There’s no doubt that by many measures life over recent decades has become more comfortable, safer, and more secure for hundreds of millions of people in consumer market economies. Life expectancy has increased steadily in most of the developed world (except Russia) as health care has improved. Women go further in education and work than ever before. Far fewer jobs are back-breaking and/or hazardous. People have access to foods, technologies, entertainment, and experiences that previous generations could only dream of. Even the most modest middle classes have access to material well-being.
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October 25th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,
Adapted from KNOW: The Future of Travel, available to employees and clients across the Euro RSCG Worldwide network.
Bundled within the sustainable-tourism rubrics that have grown so common of late are a variety of philosophies and practices related to greener and generally more mindful travel. The term ecotourism has been around for at least two decades, generally referring to travel that combines nature-focused sightseeing with sustainably managed accommodations. More recently, the term has been expanded to incorporate a focus on indigenous populations and the needs of local communities.
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October 24th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,
By Rachel Botsman
Engaging with your members is key to building your brand community.
We are now entering the next generation of turbo-charged collaborative brands being forged by the likes of Etsy, Zopa, Zipcar, Airbnb and thredUp. The rules, motivations and dynamics when managing these types of brands are very different from what it took to build a brand even a decade ago. It takes a community, not a campaign, to create a collaborative brand. Here are ten things to consider when building a collaborative brand.
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October 22nd, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,
This post was written by Sue and first appeared on her blog, Butterfly Balance. In it, she perfectly encapsulates the mindset of the New Consumer and the four emerging paradigms of embracing substance, rightsizing, growing up, and seeking purposeful pleasure. It is reprinted with permission.
Mindful spending is something I’ve only started really implementing in the past few years. A great deal of my life was spent pulling out credit cards a bit too freely, running up debt, and confusing wants for needs. I’ve done a lot of soul searching about the whys of what I’d done in the past, and why that couldn’t continue anymore. I’m grateful to have righted the situation before things got worse than they were and learning to live within my means.
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October 19th, 2010 | by Marian Salzman, , President, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America
Corporate social responsibility looks a whole lot different now than it did a few years ago. Back then, the emphasis was on responsibility—look at all the good things we’re doing!—and on corporate, since so much of its DNA was based on business practices and funded by corporate largess. Lavish one-off benefit events with five-figure price tags paid for by sponsors such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers? That feels as 2007 as that bright, shiny new skyscraper sitting empty in Dubai.
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October 18th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,
Seventy-four percent of respondents to Euro RSCG’s Future of the Corporate Brand study (U.S., U.K., France) believe businesses bear as much responsibility as government to drive positive social change. Here, Rachel Bellow and Suzanne Muchin, partners at ROI Ventures, discuss how corporate philanthropy is a far less effective change agent than long-term collaboration.
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October 14th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,
Many years of living in a hyperconsumerist culture have shaped the way we think and feel and speak. The global consumer culture runs deep—and extends far beyond retail. The notion of consumption has become so embedded in public thinking and speaking that even people in the fields of education and healthcare feel the need to adopt the term consumers in speaking about their constituents. We are not suggesting service providers shouldn’t take their users’ needs seriously, nor would we discourage them from applying some of the principles that shape commercial markets. However, we are questioning whether the mindset of modern consumerism is the right way forward for retail, let alone for vital social services.
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Post a Comment | 8 Comments | in Community, Consumerism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate/Brand Leadership, Eco-Consciousness, Growing Up, Marketing, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Recession, Responsibility, Rightsizing, Shopping, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Value, Values
