Ann O’Reilly « The New Consumer

Posts Tagged ‘Ann O’Reilly’

The New Rich: What Success and Wealth Mean to Consumers in 2010

July 19th, 2010 | by Andrew Benett, CEO, Arnold Worldwide, and Global CSO, Havas Worldwide, and Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

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All year long Forbes comes out with lists of the world’s richest people—the youngest billionaires, the most eligible billionaires, the richest women, the wealthiest families on each continent. People find it fascinating to track the waning and waxing of personal wealth, watching as perennial front-runners Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are eclipsed by a Mexican telecom titan and chased by various silver-spoon princes of Asia and the Middle East. To be among the world’s wealthiest is the stuff of many a daydream.
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| Tags: Andrew Benett, Ann O'Reilly, Arnold, Consumed, Euro RSCG, Forbes, Havas, mindfulness, New Consumer, simplification, success, wealth
Post a Comment | in Consumed, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Uncategorized

The Global War on Clutter

July 13th, 2010 | by Andrew Benett, CEO, Arnold Worldwide, and Global CSO, Havas Worldwide, and Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

The following is excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010), written by Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly and drawing on findings from the Euro RSCG New Consumer study:

“Eliminate physical clutter. More importantly, eliminate spiritual clutter.” —Minimalist advocate D. H. Mondfleur

There are said to be four paths to Nirvana but only two lead to rightsizing: (1) shop less and (2) haul your excess out to the curb. Respondents to the Euro RSCG New Consumer survey are doing both: Just less than half the U.S. sample and 58 percent of U.S. Prosumers agreed: “I’m getting a sense of satisfaction from reducing my purchases during the economic downturn,” and nearly six in ten Americans (and seven in ten Prosumers) said that, in recent years, they have thrown out (or thought about throwing out) lots of stuff in order to declutter their lives and homes. A decluttering movement is rapidly gathering momentum, sweeping all before it.
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Rethinking Value

July 6th, 2010 | by Andrew Benett, CEO, Arnold Worldwide, and Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

The following is excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010), written by Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly and based on the Euro RSCG New Consumer study:

Euro RSCG research shows that the conditions that permitted hyperconsumerism to flourish are disappearing. “I don’t think we are ever going back to the way it was before,” Jim Fielding told us in a telephone interview. The president of Disney Stores Worldwide sees impulse buying giving way to a new thoughtfulness. Customers come into his stores having researched products and prices online. “A few years ago, shopping was recreational,” he says. “Now it’s planned.”
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Faces of Mindfulness

July 2nd, 2010 | by Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

There are all sorts of faces behind the New Consumer movement. Some well known, some not. Today, a tribute to five favorites (more to follow):

Juan Mann: In our increasingly isolated, computer-mediated society, sometimes it takes a special effort to beat down the barriers we have erected around us. In 2004, an Australian who goes by the pseudonym “Juan Mann” started the Free Hugs movement, hoping to rehumanize the population by offering friendly embraces to passersby. Appropriately, he began his efforts at a shopping mall, giving consumers a different kind of fulfillment than they had perhaps expected to find. Mann’s ideas caught on, and there is now an International Free Hugs Day annually. Watch the birth of the movement here on YouTube.
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Blowing Homemade Bubbles

June 30th, 2010 | by Andrew Benett, CEO, Arnold Worldwide and Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

Excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010)

Along with “Bridezilla,” lavish weddings have gotten a bad rap lately—further evidence that the rightsizing mentality is taking hold. “When Wedding Is a Big Show, Marriage Often Doesn’t Last,” one newspaper grimly warns us. But perhaps the divorce rate is about to fall: Sifting for trends among the more than two million weddings in the United States in 2009, wedding planners noted a growing preference for simplicity and intimacy—smaller ceremonies with fewer guests, choosing off-peak times (mornings, afternoons, Fridays and Sundays, with October “the new June”). As couples found new ways to economize, spending slumped 10 percent compared with 2008, which itself had seen a decline of around 20 to 30 percent from the year prior. Bridal registries have shown a definite shift toward simplification, the casual, and the practical.
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POV: Peter Pan(ics)

June 10th, 2010 | by Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Knowledge Exchange

In the 1960s The Who sang defiantly, “I hope I die before I get old.” That lyric reflected the aspirations voiced by generations of pop culture icons to “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse”—a sentiment expressed in one form or another by such marquee names as Bonnie and Clyde, James Dean, and Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. For decades following World War II, the glamour of devil-may-care youth has been the brightest beacon on the horizon, guiding the quest to remain forever young.
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| Tags: accountability, Ann O'Reilly, consumers, consumption, delayed adulthood, Euro RSCG, Peter Pan, youth
Post a Comment | 3 Comments | in Consumed, Growing Up, New Consumer, Responsibility

Signs of Change: Sam Gets Sustainable

June 7th, 2010 | by Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

Let’s face it: If global retail were a western movie, Walmart would be the guy in the black hat. The enormity of the megaretailer is such that if it were a country, it would be the thirty-first largest in the world, ranked by GDP. With some 2.1 million employees, it is the biggest employer in Mexico and one of the biggest in the U.S. and Canada. Add to that brawn a reputation for bullying suppliers, destroying Main Streets, and stiffing employees on healthcare and other benefits, and you have a company that’s catnip for critics. And so it was no surprise in 2005 when the public reacted skeptically (to put it mildly) to Walmart’s announced plans to become a positive force for environmental and social change. Yet five years down the road—under CEO Lee Scott and his successor, Mike Duke—the company has emerged as a bona fide leader in sustainability. It has reduced both its own carbon footprint (redirecting 57% of waste in its Walmart and Sam’s Club locations in the U.S., for instance) and the footprints of many of its customers (for starters, by selling them 350 million CFL light bulbs and stocking only concentrated laundry detergents to cut down on packaging). And it has been a perhaps unlikely proponent of transparency, applying pressure for clearer sourcing of goods ranging from gold to cotton.
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Posts Tagged ‘Ann O’Reilly’

The New Rich: What Success and Wealth Mean to Consumers in 2010

The Global War on Clutter

Rethinking Value

Faces of Mindfulness

Blowing Homemade Bubbles

POV: Peter Pan(ics)

Signs of Change: Sam Gets Sustainable

Prosumer Report

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