May 15th, 2008
Have You Met Patricia Martin’ RenGen (Renaissance Generation) Cultural Consumers?
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I first heard about Patricia Martin and her book RenGen (Renaissance Generation) while I was listening to Susan Bratton’s Dishy Mix, one of my favorite podcasts.
The basic premise of RenGen is that we are about to see a cultural movement that is similar in scope and scale to the Renaissance. This movement will be spearheaded by a sophisticated and demanding group of ‘cultural consumers’ who are expressing themselves creatively and organizing themselves into communities using the powerful tools provided by social media. To succeed in this context, brands will need to transform big ideas into reality (idea brands), build compassionate relationships (compassion brands), provide the tools to remove anxiety (anxiety brands), fuse opposites into a holistic collage and provide authentic experiences.
Now, Patricia is the founder and president of LitLamp Communications Group, which specializes in building brands through art sponsorships, so it’s easy to dismiss RenGen as a rather sophisticated sales brochure for her agency.
However, even if Patricia’s case for a cultural renaissance is a little overstated, her observations on the trends that are reshaping consumption are totally spot on. These are the same trends that led me towards my off consumption experiment. Specifically, these three trends are especially worth watching out for –
1. People Want Personalization: Social media has changed how we express ourselves creatively and organize ourselves into communities. Not only that, social media has enabled us to have conversations with each other about the brands we buy, which means that the brands that listen to these conversations, participate in them, or provide a platform for them, will emerge as winners. Social media has not only allowed us to control exactly what we read, hear or watch, but also enabled us to become influencers or mediators ourselves and shape others’ choices. Now, all of us are creator, editor and audience all rolled into one, and mass media has given way to personalized media. Moreover, now that we look at personalized media experiences as a given, we are beginning to demand personalized brand experiences, and part of that involves asking if the brands are relevant to our lives in the first place.
2. People Want Authenticity: A related trend is that we want real and authentic experiences, instead of packaged formulaic one. So, when we travel, we are not satisfied with the usual photo-opportunities; instead, we want to participate in adventure sports, or immerse ourselves in local culture, or go off the beaten track and explore nature. When we eat out, we are not satisfied with the fast food version of a foreign cuisine; instead, we want to taste the authentic cuisine in its authentic ambiance, which means that nothing beats home cooked food eaten at home. When it comes to music, we are not satisfied with listening to the latest hits on TV; instead we want to watch our favorite local band perform live, or even better, pick up a guitar and jam with them at a house party. Brands are great at reducing experiences into formulas and packaging them for mass consumption. Brands that resist the urge to reduce experiences and instead try to enhance them will build a cult following for themselves.
3. People Want Simplicity: Even as we crave for meaningful personal and authentic experiences, we realize that it is time, and not money, that stops us from having these experiences. We feel overwhelmed by the bombardment of messages from brands, media and retail and learn to filter them out. We feel overburdened with the demands of the million things we own and decide that we don’t really need them. We feel overstretched with our 12 hour workdays and realize that there is a trade-off between time and money. So, we don’t only want to personalize our media and brand experiences, we also aspire to personalize our work experience. It means different things for different people, but it often involves down-shifting, working for ourselves, or blurring the boundaries between work and play. Brand that help us reduce clutter and free up time will become the most important necessities, the only things we can’t do without.
You can call us the ‘new rich’ (like Tim Ferris does), or the ‘creative class’ (like Richard Florida does), or the ‘cultural consumer’ (like Patricia Martin does) — the bottom-line is that we are part of an increasingly important subculture that is different from the mainstream masses in important ways. Brand still have a place in our subculture, but only if they allow us to interpret them or even change them, instead of trying to dictate our desires or telling us what we need or want. By the way, brands don’t really have much of an option, because even though we are only a sub-culture today, we will be the mainstream soon.
