HumanKind 2012: The Transformation of Aspiration

HumanKind 2012 january

The Transformation of Aspiration

HumanKind 2012

The Transformation of Aspiration

january 2012

HumanKind 2012

The Transformation of Aspiration A Big Life Of Small Plans Once upon a time, there was a Big Plan. This Big Plan told us that good things would happen if we followed its instructions. All we had to do grow up, go to school, get married, have kids, and climb the corporate ladder.

Sadly, the Big Plan died. It was mourned by educated men standing in the unemployment line. Oh well. It was a good run.

The end of the Big Plan means that we can’t plan our lives like we used to.

There’s no more taking the pain in the short term so we can do fancy things later, like shopping at Whole Foods while wearing white pants. There’s no working hard now to reap rewards in the scheduled future—the bar bands don’t want to play “everybody’s working for the weekend” anymore. Because life isn’t too unpredictable anymore. So we transformed our lives.

Our transformations are a reaction—an adaptation—to our environment.

And they sound like a bad movie trailer: Imagine a world in which the rich and the poor are suspicious of each other. Where no one is married and no one has a family as we know it. A world where women go to work and men stay home to raise children.

Such is America in 2012. We make our own Big Plan to fit our own needs, and damn what anyone else thinks. We enrich our lives from custom-made plans because we know that the good times are not something to look foward to. We recognize opportunities as they pop up and pounce. Now, absent the Big Plan, we don’t want like we used to want. It’s the transformation of aspiration. With our new expectations bolted to the horizon, we make a big life of small plans.

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The Transformation of Aspiration

Why So Sad, America?

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probably best to file that question under “where to begin.”

But the real surprise isn’t that we’re sad but the fact that we were happy a few short years ago. Traditionally, Americans have been optimistic people—even our poor. Not any more.

Not since the recession.

Not since income inequality spawned the “Occupy” movement. No matter how Occupy’s founding intentions buckle under the professional protesters who hijacked its cause, the fall-out is a huge catch phrase. “We are the 99 percent” is raking its fingernails across the chalkboard of the mind, and it’s not going to die for a while. That’s why our poor don’t just suspect the system isn’t fair: They’ve confirmed it. They know they are powerless to change the system. All they can do is find out who will treat them as well as anyone else. The people and companies that make everyone feel at home will get somewhere.

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We Live Who We 60% of married couples live together first

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e With e Love.

We make a family in our own image: Forty percent of all kids today are born to an unwed mother. And it’s no big deal.

But make no mistake, the idea of the 2.2 kids and the white picket fence isn’t extinct. It’s not even on the endangered species list.

What’s changed is that traditional vision of the family no longer serves as a blueprint for us. It’s not an ideal. There is no ideal.

It’s open season on defining what our family should look like.

And yet most of the media has been slow to catch up to the reality. We’re force-fed a steady diet of traditional family images when we could be bi-racial, single parents, gay, unmarried, or some combination. The companies that hold up a mirror to real family life can find affinity from us. Even if we’re the single gay parent of an adopted kid of a different race.

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The Transformation of Aspiration

40% of kids today are born to unmarried moms

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The Transformation of Aspiration

Men Aren’t What They Used To Be. of all different kinds. while a lot of america’s men worship at the temple of steve mcqueen and peyton manning, lots of guys are too busy chasing toddlers with a wet wipe and chiseling macaroni off the couch.

Sure, there are plenty of our men butchering the corporate pig to carry home the bacon parts.

But we’re increasingly surrendering that role to the women in our lives. Women outnumber us in many professional college degree programs.

They are catching up in earning potential. And we’re fine with that. If our women are better hunters, let ’em hunt. Most of us are OK spending our days at play dates and storytimes. The companies that implore us to “man up” don’t understand that masculinity is what we say it is. The companies are better off showing that men are ever-changing beings with a variety of identities. We’re sensitive like that.

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Men account for 2/3 of recessionary job losses

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78% of men don’t care about traditional gender roles

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Healthy is what we say it is Americans eat big, bad, and often.

That’s not news. What’s news is that almost half of us want healthy choices on every menu— but only 23 percent actually the healthy stuff.

According to our studies of American culture, people are increasingly telling us that cheeseburgers taste better than salad. But choosing to eat poorly is a bigger issue, because a cheeseburger is much more than 12

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lunch. It’s an affordable luxury— something that gives us five minutes of happiness amid the new uncertainty and unhappiness that surrounds us. We can’t afford the big luxuries any more. So we’ll settle for smaller ones—whether it’s food or something else.

The people who bring us pocket size luxuries are going to get some business from us. Which is why there’s a “value menu” plastered to every drive through in the nation.

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47% want healthy food on menus but only 23% actually order the healthy stuff

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Every Consumer Is A Shark.

We don’t pay retail anymore.

We used to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. But we don’t need to endure the polyester shirts and and fresh-off-the-truck deals anymore.

We have the daily deal in our inbox. There’s a few every day. So we’ll pass on the laser hair removal and wait for the next one. We’re smarter now.

We know to be patient and wait for what we want. We know how to sniff out a deal with flash buying, social shopping, and online shopping clubs. So we know how much our business matters. No longer does the cable company doesn’t threaten to cut us off: We threaten to cut them off. The companies that integrate special incentives and deals and loyalty programs to heavy users are going to thrive. And if they don’t, we’ll show no mercy: by ignoring them.

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DIGITAL COUPONS OUTPACED NEWSPAPER COUPONS

6:1 19

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58% follow brands for deals 21

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Everyone Knows There’s An App For That.

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Twenty million more of us are going to be smartphone users in 2012.

HumanKind 2012

That giant number adds up to the populations of New York and Los Angeles combined. And 20 million new smartphones means more of us checking the scores while sitting at the table — or worse. But it also means video chatting in the back of a cab, Facebook updates while the plane is on the runway, watching movies in class, and working on our own terms. Lots of us have already got a fancy phone and demand a lot from it. So the people who don’t yet have a smartphone expect a lot. Anything that comes to our phone had better be useful. We want to deal with companies that bring practical stuff to our phones. If something hits our phone, and it doesn’t make life easier or fun, it’s garbage.

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HumanKind 2012 contact: stephen.hahn-griffiths@leoburnett.com

tel 312.220.5959

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