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A Deeper understanding of the way we work:

Putting order to chaos
Business seeks to understand and to navigate the world of consumers. Yet, many fail to recognise the emotional relations that people form with organisations, products, services and each other. The last decade has been characterised by immense change. Society, technology and politics have dramatically altered. This change is reflected in consumer behaviour, yet translating the complex world of consumers often relies on methodologies built during the 1950’s that are becoming inadequate for reading the 21st century consumer. At Sense Worldwide, we believe that a new approach is necessary to translate the subtle nuances and ever-changing lives of the everyday consumer.

A personal framework in a fragmented world
As societies have become increasingly fragmented, there has been an explosion in the number of identities available to choose from. Being able to pick and choose amongst any number of social and cultural cues enables a person to construct, discard and create a personal framework that suits their world.

The switching of social identity has now been accepted across various age groups; men in their mid-30s refusing to abandon singledom and wanting to live the youth of irresponsibility and individual freedom, teens redefining tribal identities outside of family and school - the examples are myriad.

Business must visualise these frameworks in order to appreciate what social and cultural resources people have at their fingertips. In order to understand consumers, they must understand the lifestyle fragments people combine to create their identities.

Over the last decade, innumerable social, technological and political changes have altered the way consumers behave. In turn, this has levied a number of challenges at businesses, making it increasingly difficult to engage with consumers who enjoy a myriad number of choices in every decision they make. From lunch – is it a sandwich bar, supermarket or the Japanese noodle bar on the corner? Through to schools – shall we send little Johnny to the school on the corner or do we go further a field where education may be better? Choice has enabled people to create infinite ways of living. For business, understanding consumer behavior is now far more difficult than it was even five years ago. Relying on traditional research tools will uncover part, but not all of the new consumer reality. Unearthing the depth and colour of everyday lives needs modern tools that reflect the new modernity.

We recognise that this type of consumer behavior is experienced by a lot of people. Within business, the fractured, conflicting and complicated lives of the audiences we serve is a given. Therefore, what we’ve described is not necessarily a revelation.

At Sense Worldwide, we have developed a number of methods to understand consumer reality. We specialise in understanding people and the emotional relationships they form with products, services, brands and each other. Traditional research adopts a rear view mirror approach to understanding consumers. Delving backwards to understand what’s ahead. These methods are at odds with the business ethos of moving forward. We believe that rooting our methods in this type of approach will only yield a limited understanding. Using a variety of techniques, Sense Worldwide translates the breadth of consumer sentiment into information for businesses to utilise. Along the way, much of what we discover proves illuminating on many different levels. In acknowledgement of this, we have developed a new tool that stimulates thoughts and ideas amongst our audience within the business community.

The worlds of work and education are experiencing seismic shifts as globalisation and new technologies have changed the nature of labour markets and altered people’s expectations and experiences. While this has increased the ability of economies and companies to respond to changing circumstances, it has often been at the expense of individual workers’ welfare.

Careering

Careers have fragmented as people follow a variety of zigzagging paths to pursue and meet their changing goals.

Because companies are no longer able to guarantee permanent employment the concept of a job for life has become an anachronism. Careers are no longer about progressing through one company but about jumping between jobs as and when the need or opportunity arrives. As a result employees are less loyal towards their employers and more concerned with developing their own skills and experience base. While this motivates some workers to give 110 per cent in order to maximise the opportunities offered by each employer, for others it means that jobs are always engaged in with one eye to the next opportunity.

Flattened hierarchies

Hierarchies within organisations have flattened, giving workers more autonomy but also more stress.

Technological advances mean hierarchies within organisations have been flattened to create more efficient systems that concentrate time and energy on creative problem solving. This has put greater focus on the utilisation of networks to carry out tasks both inside and outside of organisations. Unfortunately this has also increased the amount of work that many employees are expected to manage, and left managerial systems so lean that they are frequently overloaded with work when the unexpected happens (as it often does). Many countries are working longer hours as a result and engaging in a continuing debate on how their people can balance their work and family issues and whose responsibility it is to manage the balancing.

Changing work

More people in both developed and developing countries are engaged in the service sector.

Technological advances mean that the type of work people engage in has changed. Manufacturing jobs have been moving to developing countries due to cheaper wages for decades, leaving the service sector as the principle employer in many developed countries. However, many service sector jobs are now also being outsourced as higher levels of education in countries such as India means the same tasks can be performed for a fraction of the cost. To survive, companies have to focus on ever more intangible goods, such as consumer or brand experiences, to differentiate themselves from the competition, requiring a new set of skills from employees.

The response

People’s mindsets and social protocols are changing as a result of the seismic shifts within the world of work.

Education has also had to change in response to these seismic shifts. More and more people across the world are entering education and staying there for longer. People are additionally re-engaging with education throughout their lives as they retrain themselves in response to the latest developments. The new mindsets, social protocols and enterprises resulting from these developments have an effect far beyond their origin in the workplace, making the evolving world of work one of the most fascinating to explore.

Mainstream channels of discussion have increasingly populated the prevailing debate about how to achieve sustainability. National and international communities have been increasingly involved in discussing and affecting sustainability and environmental issues: from politics to the media, and from societies to individuals. This heightened awareness has communicated the overall message that everyone and everything has the potential to influence these issues. For example, consumer choices about whether to travel by plane or by train have enjoyed publicity as people become more aware of the kinds of activities that are at the forefront of the carbon emissions debate. Terms such as global warming, pollution, renewable energy and nuclear energy are now part of our everyday language and recycling has become as common an activity as shopping in some countries.

Ethical and Environmental Consumption

As consumers become more educated, companies are having to work harder at proving their green credentials and meeting their consumers’ new aspirations.

Consumers are becoming more aware of their actions and how they impact on environmental issues such as climate change and renewable energy sources. This heightened consciousness has empowered them and they are demonstrating enthusiasm about sustainability and the environment and the kinds of things they can do to make a difference. This has impacted on everything from the commercial world to the world of politics to the domestic world. Consumers are seeking greener credentials from their political parties, the businesses and brands they invest in and their local councils. While they want to make a difference at grassroots level by taking the time each week to separate their recyclable packaging and food waste from their general refuse, they also want to see that businesses and industries are contributing by, for example, trying to reduce their carbon emissions. Consumers are becoming more aware of the bigger picture. While they have known about huge environmental issues such as atomic waste and nuclear energy for decades, today, they are also concerned with pesticides and other toxic substances in everyday cleaning products.The notion of recycling has changed in line with the general heightened awareness. The term recycling no longer just refers to the way people think about organising their rubbish, it now refers to consumer attitudes towards the products they buy and use. Whereas the average product 20 years ago was designed for longevity, today products are in some cases planned obsolescent and are designed to be disassembled. This is in part to do with the rapid pace of technological progression, which has lead to a quick turnaround in production; but it is also to do with changing consumer attitudes towards the way we consume products. There is currently a widespread consumer habit of discarding products every few years. In terms of furniture and interior design, this quick turnaround has been made possible for consumers by furniture outlets such as Ikea selling inexpensive, up-to-date and stylish designs.

While this has made frequent redesigning of interiors easy for people to achieve, it has also adversely affected the recycling movement. Consumers may pride themselves on separating their glass jars, plastic bottles and metal cans, but they are simultaneously contributing to a general waste management problem by throwing out products when they are broken instead of fixing them; similarly, by purchasing new products when fashions have moved on instead of managing with older styles, it has also impacted upon eco-friendly design, creating challenges for environmentally-minded designers to make use of discarded products to create newly usable and trendy products aimed at environmentally conscious consumers.

This acute awareness of everything deriving from and affecting the environment has lead to a large and still growing consumer movement towards organic and ethical produce. For consumers it is largely a question of trust. Previous agricultural crises such as Mad Cow Disease (BSE), or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), and Foot and Mouth Disease have lead many British consumers to support ethical farming of livestock and organically grown food because they want to know where what they consume comes from. However, this trend towards ethical eating is also about fashion. Many city-dwelling consumers like to partake in aspects of a rural lifestyle by, for instance, attending farmers’ markets, which are increasing in size and popularity as they become social, political and lifestyle destinations for ethically-minded and ‘trendy’ consumers.

Supermarkets are picking up on this rural inclination by increasingly promoting and labelling their products by naming the farmer or area they are from (cf. Waitrose). Supermarkets are now also imitating the local organic box schemes, which revolve around the central idea of creating a direct link between producer and consumer, thereby circumventing the supermarkets as intermediaries by allowing consumers to order weekly deliveries to their front doors of a selection of seasonal, organic produce that should be as local as possible. Therefore the mass-reproduction of these ‘veggie boxes’ seems to contradict the idea at the very core of the scheme, but they are still appealing to consumers looking for a quick fix to ethical and environmental consumption. This big corporation imitation of a grassroots initiate comes after Nestlé launched its own brand of fair trade coffee after previously dismissing the idea as unfeasible. Both of these examples of locally originating initiatives being adopted and adapted by large businesses raises the questions: ‘How ethical are supermarket veggie boxes?’ and ‘How fair is ‘fairtrade’?’.

Consumer enthusiasm for making a difference in green issues is not consistent; it can be contradictory depending on the amount of effort required and the sector involved. People living busy lives often see green issues as an aspiration more than a realistic goal or a necessity. They therefore seek brands to identify with that deal with the issues they do not have time for, and so they expect higher green standards than they often meet themselves. Often the move to ‘green’ is prompted by a life change; childbirth, illness or a quest for wellbeing.

Environmental Business

Business is becoming more environmentally-minded, but only because governments are pushing for greener practices and consumers are demanding greener credentials.

Businesses are well aware of the necessity to provide their consumers with the reassurances that they require about sustainability and environmental issues. Yet companies are often accused of ‘greenwashing’ and portraying themselves as being environmentally concerned, but really only making the most cursory of gestures. This situation arises because companies often can’t see the contradictions inherent in their overall brand message when it is set against the non-environmental background of their other activities.The issue of carbon dioxide emissions is a major concern for many large businesses (as it is for many nations) as governments work through policy and strategy options for the future that have the potential to limit business’ operational capabilities. However the probability of governments regulating carbon dioxide emissions more in the future means that there will be a movement towards greener technologies. If businesses can prove that they are complying with government regulations then these industrial credentials will filter down to consumers, who are looking for any reason to support a business or brand that denotes by association that they are ‘doing their bit’.

In the past identity was predominantly conferred by society onto individuals, but today the fragmentation of social structures has resulted in people creating an identity for themselves. However, the different elements that inspire and inform people have resulted in the fragmentation of identities and therefore people are not settling on one identity, they are creating a composite of identities to enable them to navigate the demands of the modern world. As a result niche products and services have had to be created. One size no longer fits all.

Me, Me, Me

Today, people are not defined by one life role. Identities are composed from a variety of different influences and responsibilities that inform and dictate their lives.

Identity is a dynamic concept and ultimately no decision is final. It is possible to be multiple things to multiple people, for example, a colleague, lover, son, friend and father all at the same time. People are now equipped with a toolkit that they can use to create different identities. These can be appropriated to suit various situations or groups. This lifestyle resource is constantly adapting and changing as different interests and influences resonate in people’s lives.

Technological advances have meant that identity is no longer confined to the physical world. The internet offers a rich playground for experimentation, including blogging private thoughts under a pseudonym and participating in a MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). In the virtual world the only identity constraint is the perimeters of the imagination.

Global Fuel

The world is shrinking; globalisation has enabled worldwide access to media messages that inform and inspire identity choices.

People from Argentina to Zimbabwe have access to the same online media influences. Celebrities have become global role models informing and inspiring what we buy and wear. This has resulted in consumers across the world looking different but the same.

In order to retain unique identities people are taking a renewed interest in their indigenous cultures and traditions. It is the combination of these local and global influences that creates unique identities and provides a sense of stability in an uncertain world.

Branded

In a world full of possibility and choice, brands have become a way of carving out identities.

Brands provide people with frameworks within which to define their identities. In this current age of hyper-consumerism, children are adept at recognising brands from a young age and judging people by the way they dress and what they buy.

People convey their aspirations and affiliations through the brands they buy and the products and services they invest in. Brands bought by a group of people work to signify group identities and to provide a sense of belonging. These brands can be called ‘affinity brands’.

Multifaceted Me

While people are no longer defined by their careers, their special skills and interests often provide anchor points for their identities.

Identity is not confined to aesthetics. Increasingly people are being characterised by their skill sets; it is these special skills that define them within their social networks as knowledge is traded among friends, family and increasingly over the internet via networking websites. These areas of expertise can include being skilled at DJ-ing, photography, setting-up blogs, introducing people to products or even putting together flat-pack furniture.

Forging connections has always been a priority for people. Connections allow for the sharing of ideas, thoughts and interests over time and space. As society has developed and technology has improved, new ways of communicating have emerged. The emergence of each new communication technology has meant that the social conventions that surround and support it must be learnt, both on a collective and personal level. People must learn how to use them, their functions, strengths and weaknesses. When these applications are understood, new forms of communication can become established forms of connecting with others. They will then find a suitable place in the wider topology of connections. This topology represents the range of connections at the disposal of an individual at any given time.

Getting connected

Emerging technologies are empowering communities across the world with the ability to connect with others.

The rapid rise of digital communication channels is being felt more in the developing world than in the developed world where these technologies are reaching ubiquity. The developed world has had landline telephones for nearly a century, whereas the developing world has had no such luxury. However, with mobile phones now reaching close to total penetration in the developed world, business is turning to less developed markets for growth. The difference between these two experiences is that the developed world has integrated mobile communication into the same paradigm as landline communication whereas the developing and under-developed world is leapfrogging straight to the mobile platform.

Mobile connections are radically changing the lives of people who have access to them. In many rural locations, particularly in India, mobile phones are community-shared. In these cases the phones not only form links with the outside world, which means prices on crops can be negotiated, they have also become community focal points in that they represent a common desire to relate to the rest of the world. The One Laptop Per Child initiative is one such organisation campaigning to get the developing and under-developed world connected via the internet.

Same text, different purpose.

Most forms of connection derive from pre-established modes of communication, but their uses can be manipulated to satisfy different purposes.

The differences between seemingly similar communication tools can cause teething problems in terms of levels of miscommunication, misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Email and text messaging are text-based ways of communicating, but their applications differ. Email has more rational functions and text messaging has more emotional ones. Email is primarily used for notification, while text messages are used on a more regular basis to bond friendships, as well as to inform. Emails can come from complete strangers whereas text messages from strangers are less common and treated with more suspicion. Understanding the differences between the two is a key factor in the success of emerging communication tools.

Instant messaging ‘chat’ services exemplify the way a new communication service has to develop quickly in order to survive. However, because of the nature of instant messaging the ability to express emotion clearly and quickly is often forfeited, resulting in miscommunication. People have adapted their communication by creating a code of expression using pre-established combinations of text characters, such as ;-) to indicate a smiley face and :-( to indicate a sad face. These symbols denoting emotions add a level of emotional richness to the experience of instant messaging. The industry soon caught on and introduced predefined ‘emoticons’, such as and . These emoticons can now be user-generated as users make personalised emoticons to symbolise how they are feeling via images and symbols of their own choice. Therefore, friends now communicate in their own pictographic language built on common signifiers.

Media and the connected world

Today, media can be cross-channelled and repurposed to fit a variety of consumer wants and needs, including communication.

Rich media, including video clips, music tracks and high-resolution images, has become a primary vehicle for initiating and facilitating conversation. Much of this media is the intellectual property of others, but appropriating it as a method of communication has become normalised and is not considered to be wrong, never mind illegal. The owners and managers of this repurposed material have been slow to adapt to this development, often reacting by suing their target audiences. However this is slowly changing. Media companies are now starting to realise the potential of repurposing media content for communication purposes. This is most obviously seen in the commercial explosion of ringtones, but is also penetrating other areas of the connected world. Companies now allow users to ‘share’ professionally produced music, video clips and pictures often with a price attached if the user retains the media.

At the same time, legitimate user-generated content has become a cheap, easy and fun way of connecting with people. Online channels such as YouTube and Flickr allow people to exhibit their personal lives, thereby ‘sharing’ themselves and being exposed to comment and criticism.

Games – the new conversation

Much like traditional board games, computer games are becoming a catalyst for communicating with others.

Until recently, the majority of one-player computer games were no more than complex, sometimes visually appealing, versions of solitaire. Modern games consoles are changing this. The so-called ‘next generation’ consoles are networked in a variety of ways, using WiFi, Bluetooth and Internet connections. By using digital connections, people can play with, or against, each other irrespective of distance or familiarity. Gender, race and age are of secondary importance to the gaming task in hand, whether it be collectively conquering a beast or building a simulated town model.

Trailblazing developers have started to blur the lines between gaming, communication and participation. Second Life allows users to create virtual replicas of every element of the world from cars and houses to underwater ship wrecks and parachutes, and all the content is user-generated. Though billed as a game, Second Life is as much a complex ‘chat’ environment where people can connect with the community at large. Advanced users can even programme their avatar with gesticulations so that they can better express themselves. Connecting through the online world is becoming not only easier, but also a richer experience.

Money to be made in connections

The connected world has resulted in new business models that thrive off individuals communicating with each other

Retail markets are increasingly using the myriad of connections available to them for profitable purposes. Ebay and Amazon have both shown that there is money to be made in allowing customers to talk to other customers. The use of digital communication services to make money is now moving into other sectors of the online world. Google Mail scans email conversations of its users and matches key words in the content to target users with relevant adverts.

Business is also using ‘connections’ to understand markets better. A seemingly obsessive interest in collecting personal information (name, age, address, credit card details) is now a standard request for even the most superficial enquires. This is causing consumers confusion, which is having a negative effect on the sharing and submission of user-generated information that represents the interconnected structure of what many are calling Web 2.0.

Connections of the future

Mobile phones are increasingly being hailed as the tool for the connected world of the future.

Unlike computers, mobile phones have always been devices for forming connections. The mobile phone is inherently personal and is therefore more conducive to facilitating personal connections. Mobile phones offer a solution for connecting the digital world with the real world. Electronic business cards, which have been tried and tested to varying success, represent the beginning of digital person-to-person connections. Just as email revolutionised the office space, emerging mobile connections have a similar potential to revolutionise the domestic space. How these services will manifest themselves remains to be seen. They must be compelling and offer users a viable communication model that benefits them.

People are becoming more proactive. They are conscious of their wellbeing and the negative implications of leading an unhealthy life. However, despite the increased awareness of health as a general issue, the conventions of modern life are often contrary to healthy living.

Today, people are leading largely sedentary lives, sitting down more and moving around less. The physical body is playing a smaller part in the way people conduct their everyday lives: work is increasingly office-based and transportation is generally preferred to walking from a to b. The issue of health has also changed; it now not only incorporates matters of the body, it also includes the mind and the soul. Modern living has led to a more holistic understanding of health referring to emotional and spiritual wellbeing as well as physical, a composite appreciation that has raised general awareness of all-round healthy living.

Re-learning to relax

To combat the stress of modern life people are concentrating on relaxing their minds, bodies and souls.

Today, it seems that everyone is experiencing stress of some kind. Although stress is often seen as a mental condition, it also affects the body and soul and it is exemplary of how the three facets of holistic health are inextricably linked. Manual labour is in decline. Most people are therefore using their minds to conduct the majority of their work. This increased intellectualisation of the employment sector correlates with the rise of stress levels.

Despite the increase in stress levels, people do not deem downsizing their obligations and commitments to be the answer to relieving the stress and strain of modern living. They want to have everything at the same time: the positive aspects of the modern world and the benefits of a calm life. For example, relocating to the country is becoming increasingly popular, particularly among middle-aged people, because they can enjoy the tranquility of the country but remain connected with broadband.

In addition to the adaptation of lifestyles, people are tending to their bodies, minds and souls; they are learning how to relax again in order to manage stress. Practices such as yoga and meditation are becoming ever more popular as people seek to redress the unhealthy stress imbalance. Exercise is being included as part of the working day, with many people now going to the gym in their lunch hours.

Efficient experiences

Increasingly time-starved lifestyles mean that people want tailored health experiences that allow them to achieve maximum results.

Everyone has a different life, body and personality so it makes sense to customise experiences. Tailored health experiences have been designed to make every wellbeing effort as relevant as possible. Gyms are designing exercise routines for each customer and personal trainers are being employed to make each exercise relevant.

Personalised experiences are time-efficient, but people also want to achieve more than one body-benefit at once. They want to work on their mental and spiritual wellbeing while toning their bodies. Services and regimes that offer consumers different treatments for different parts of the body at the same time are therefore welcomed. Yoga, for instance, is a popular exercise routine as it works the body, mind and soul rigorously and simultaneously. This health experience could be further enhanced, as people can save even more time if they practice yoga at the workplace or on a plane.

While experiences that achieve several things concurrently are important, so is minimum effort for maximum benefit. People are attracted to experiences that accomplish a lot in a small space of time. Power Plate is an example of a collection of products and services that claim to produce good, fast results. They claim that ten minutes two-three times a week will give most people the desired result because, according to Power Plate, achieving this is not about the duration of the training, it is about the intensity of the training. Plastic surgery is another example of a quick-fix body and health solution that may be financially demanding, like Power Plate products and services, but require minimum physical effort.

Efficient health and wellbeing experiences are not just about relevancy and time-efficiency, they are also about doing the exercise well. To have the desired, beneficial effect people must exercise correctly and regularly. Therefore certain reward schemes have been set up to give people incentives to encourage them to commit to keeping fit. These schemes include health insurance that rewards people who lead healthy lifestyles with lower premiums and video games for teenagers that keep players fit while playing.

Image extremists

While awareness of general health issues has grown, attitudes towards body image have polarised.

When it comes to body image two extreme reactions have emerged: those who are dangerously blasé about their weight and those who are overly body conscious. Body image is a confused subject: there is no one consistent message about body image. The media ridicules celebrities who have naturally sized bodies, it condemns abnormally thin celebrities and it features extremely thin models. The proliferation of shock-tactic television programmes is also confusing the matter. On the one hand it is raising the profile of body and health issues, but on the other, these programmes scare people by setting a high standard, both in terms of body image and healthy living. Such programmes include: Extreme Makeover, You Are What You Eat and Honey, We’re Killing The Kids.

The body image issue is a paradox. Obesity is a major public health concern and as it threatens to become a global epidemic, more and more people are becoming obsessed with how their bodies look to the point of endangering their lives. Although the body image issue has usually been attributed to women, men are increasingly becoming affected by this mass striving for the perfect physique. Anorexia is increasingly being diagnosed in men. In addition more and more young men are taking steroids to improve their muscle definition, which is endangering their long-term health.

Male grooming

Men are more body and image conscious than ever, creating a captive audience for health and beauty sectors to market to.

As societies become evermore health and body conscious, men are correspondingly aware of their appearances as they spend more on their body image, look/style and health. Representations of men have progressed and new ways of thinking about modern men have materialized. In recent years there has been much attention given to the term ‘metrosexual’, originally coined as a satirical attempt to describe the negative effect of consumerism on traditional masculinity. Marketers and reporters describing a new segment of male consumers have embraced this term to refer to younger and older men who care about how they look and are spending more on their bodies and images.

Despite a backlash to this breed of metrosexual men and the macho man making a comeback, men are still demonstrating vanity and consuming traditionally female products like face cream, body wax kits and shavers as never before. Indeed, a new appreciation of gay culture is being valued by straight men (Queer Eye for a Straight Guy is an entertainment case in point), who are acknowledging the importance of understanding fashion, style, and culture as being a fundamental part of doing well, or at least better, with the ladies.

Protecting the people

Societies’ vices are being targeted by governments as they try to minimise the damage people are doing to themselves with the unhealthy lives they are leading.

Governments are responding to the ever-worsening condition of their nations’ health by implementing strategies and campaigns that target unhealthy habits such as smoking, excessive drinking of alcohol, drug abuse and obesity. There are various ways in which the state discouragement of its people is being carried out. These include taxing, product and media campaigns and the generation of general hype. Influential people that are not in government, but in the public eye also generate this kind of publicity. High profile people are galvanising politically apathetic citizens to press governments to take action. Jamie Oliver is an example of one such non-governmental campaigner. His school dinners campaign, which aired on Channel Four, has influenced the UK government due to the public outcry it sparked. There have been governmental actions as a result that have seen new funding and schemes in place. Similarly, across the Atlantic Bill Clinton has been heavily involved in grassroots campaigning, both on health and environmental issues. Bill Clinton not only campaigns on national health issues, such as child obesity, he is also actively involved in campaigning on global health issues, such as the AIDS crisis.

Previously integral institutions such as community, social background, gender, religion and political ideology no longer confer people with an identity and path through life. People are now encouraged to create their own life paths, engaging and disengaging with education, careers, relationships, ideologies and lifestyles depending on whether they meet their desires and personal sense of self-fulfillment rather than maintaining the status quo. This is weakening, in some cases terminally, the social bonds that exist between people and creating a more individualised society.

Rights And Insecurity

These changes have occurred primarily because of the growth of individual rights and the need to protect oneself against the insecurity of the modern world.

Partly this is due to individual rights and needs growing in importance to the point where they are as significant, and sometimes more so, than the needs of society as a whole. This has transformed people’s relationship with the state and the institutions and organisations within it. It is a point of much debate whether this has occurred primarily due to cultural and political influences, such as identity politics and the social liberation of the 1960s, or due to economic ones, such as the predominance of consumerism and the free-market.It is also due to the greater perceived personal insecurity within modern societies resulting from their fast changing nature. Old certainties such as jobs, relationships and values appear to be constantly changing and leaving people vulnerable as a result of their transformation. People feel they have to invest more time and effort in looking after themselves and their assets, whether familial or financial, not primarily out of a sense of selfishness but because the perception is there is nobody else to do so.

The New Tensions

Many of the world’s problems are a result of tensions between old and new ways.

These changes haven’t completely wiped out the old social structures. Some, such as political ideology, gender and community, still have relevance. However, individualism has significantly altered the perception and experience of them. For example, the expectation of self-fulfillment and the reality of it is one of the root causes of many of society’s present ills.

People are continually negotiating new relationships between individuals and organisations in individualised societies throughout the world. For example, international Islamic terrorism has been described as both a reaction to individualism and the Western values it is perceived to embody, and as a form of individualised religion where the importance is placed on achieving individual salvation through one’s own actions.

This is a pertinent example of why it is vitally important to understand these social changes in order to better understand many of the developments in the modern world.

Culture is inextricably linked to the way societies function; it includes everything from codes of dress to religion. UNESCO extends the definition of culture beyond the common use of the word which refers to a society’s creative outputs: “[Culture is] the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of a society or a social group, and it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs”. The way we communicate with each other, through creative expressions such as plays, novels and television programmes, reflects broader cultural and social concerns such as religion, national identity and language. Culture as a concept is moving in two directions: it is widening as the world becomes ever more global, and narrowing as culture is employed by people to differentiate themselves. Meanwhile, in the current age of hyper-consumerism everything is becoming more commercialised, which has lead to people reviewing and consuming culture like a purchase, in terms of how it will benefit their lifestyles. Therefore cultural expression has had to become competitive as it is ever more linked to consumerism.

Cultural differentiation

As globalisation affects cultural distinctiveness, there is a renewed interest in indigenous cultures as means of differentiation.

The worldwide reach of the internet enables previously remote corners of the globe to connect with other societies and cultures; it allows everyone (almost) equal access to information, which has meant that local cultures and trends are rapidly travelling around the world. While in some respects this global ‘openness’ is a wonderful thing, there is the danger of homogenisation. People want to differentiate themselves from the overarching ‘culture’ of globalisation; they want to convey a unique cultural identity. To do this they are celebrating their local and national cultures.

Global multiculturalism

As diverse parts of the world are increasingly connected, global awareness and the appreciation of different cultures is on the rise.

The globalisation of cultures has increased the appreciation of indigenous cultures, but it has also meant that multiculturalism has become accepted as the norm in many developed societies. Heightened awareness of other world cultures has created the conditions for multicultural co-existence. More and more diasporic cultures are becoming accepted and adopted by host nations rather than denied and diluted.Global forums that celebrate multi-culturalism, in terms of creative outputs from different societies/nations, are becoming increasingly trendy. In addition to contemporary art events such as the Venice Bienniale and Susak Expo, festivals that celebrate international music outside the major music industry nations, such as Exit festival and Benicàssim International Festival, are also in vogue.

Online living

The interconnected nature of the modern world has opened new avenues of cultural consumption and expression.

Web 2.0, as many are describing the internet’s interconnected structure, has exposed new ways to interact with popular culture. Broadband penetration is rising, which is enabling people to conduct everyday practices that they’ve always done offline, online. Instead of reading a newspaper, or watching a film on a VCR, people are able to consume cultural artefacts via their computer screens. This streaming of everything from TV programmes to music files has made local popular culture more convenient to consume and in some cases resulted in global celebrity.The internet has provided producers, consumers and prosumers with the platform to view and post content more easily than ever, but these opportunities have also created a culture of instant gratification. There is an expectation that cultural communications such as music, news, videos and books should be available at the click of a mouse and often for free.

The increased use of the internet has also has an effect on the global consumption of different languages. Despite only 30% of internet users being native English speakers, over half of the internet’s content is uploaded in English. This just goes to strengthen the English language’s position as the second most widely spoken language in the world. It also means that the global exposure to English is extensive. In this sense, the internet is both linguistically homogenising the world and acting as an educational tool, by exposing many non-English speaking internet users to the language.

Convenience culture

Instant gratification is changing people’s expectations of the nature of culture and the consumption of culture.

While the internet has streamed a vast array of creative outputs, it has also increased levels of exposure for those producing the content. This is true of both prosumers (seen unmistakably on YouTube where you can view culture of the people, made by the people, for the people) and professional producers (television channels such as Channel Four). However not every type of cultural output can, or would, be uploaded. This is good because it means that new modes of producing and consuming will never supercede conventional cultural objects, such as sculptures and books, but it also means that traditional cultural artefacts are in danger of suffering from lack of exposure.The convenience of instant gratification has trained people, particularly the younger generations, to believe that everything they need is on the internet, in the media or on TV. The digital age is therefore adversely affecting more traditional means of cultural expression and the industries that produce them.

This movement towards consuming culture online and on demand has created a disparity in consumer expectations, both in terms of what constitutes culture and what involves consuming it. It has also affected the nature of cultural expression itself. The increasing use of the internet as a channel for consumption has meant that everything has become more commercialised, due to the extent of the advertising opportunities on the net compared with those of a gallery exhibition (largely limited to sponsorship). It is not surprising therefore that traditional cultural outlets are finding it difficult to compete with the mass-exposure capabilities of the internet.

The culture of experience

In the current economy of experience people expect consuming culture to be part of a rich experience that benefits them in a number of ways.

Art created for art’s sake is in danger of gradually dying out as people’s inclination to consume it wanes. In order to offer a compelling proposition in the global culture of commercialism, traditional cultural institutions will need to continue to present art as part of an innovative and exciting experience. Viewers/consumers want beneficial experiences that allow them to achieve more than one thing simultaneously. Retail environments have had to incorporate additional consumer offerings into their spaces, such as educational and café experiences. Similarly cultural environments now have to offer their visitors an enriching experience that goes beyond viewing paintings on a wall. Good examples of cultural institutions that achieve this well are Tate Modern and the National Theatre in the UK.

Consumption is a fundamental part of the way societies and nations function. People in developed and developing societies have increasingly come to perceive themselves as consumers in a consumer-driven world alongside seeing themselves as citizens of a state. This is in part due to the post-war growth of individualism but it is also due to the rise of consumerism as a social concept. Consumerism has become a dominant global ideology; it has raised standards and expectations around the world, albeit at different rates. The world is becoming more affluent and flooded with choice. People are struggling to live within their means as hyper-consumerist values increasingly hold sway over their lifestyle choices. The problem is not how to get something but which one to get.

Debt-driven consumption

Debt is becoming more and more normalised and is becoming one of the foundations of modern lifestyles.

Debt has become one of the new pillars of many developed societies. People’s attitudes to money have changed due to their ever-increasing accrual of debt. Credit is easy, plentiful and no longer has a great stigma attached to it. This has lead to many people perceiving the function of money as currency for leisure and consumer goods, rather than living necessities or saving for the future. The current culture of instant gratification, which stems from technological advances, allows consumers many more commodities and luxuries on demand. This has meant that the general attitude to spending money has changed: people no longer defer purchasing a desired product until they have the means to pay for it, instead the various loans and credit cards at their fingertips mean their desires can be satisfied even though full payment of the amassing debts is merely a dot on the horizon.

This lack of concern about debt - after all, everyone is in the same boat – is producing young generations that do not understand the value of money. While their parents may have saved money in order to create their futures, today, young people spend it. Consumerism is encroaching on children’s lives earlier. Research has shown that even before they are teenagers, children are hugely affected by marketing. They desire brands and products because marketers and advertisers have told them that they should want them, as opposed to actually needing them.

Non-committal consumers

The consumer-driven world is fast becoming saturated with choice, which is conditioning people to be always on the lookout for the next big thing.

Today, everything is temporary and nothing is guaranteed: job security has declined and traditional social structures, such as the nuclear family, are being eroded. All of which is creating an unpredictable environment driven by reaction, both at an economic and consumer level; this volatility has affected consumers whose worlds are flooded with choice. As marketers strive to provide consumers with the ultimate in variety and individualisation, consumers have been habituated to be forever searching for whatever most suits their evolving needs and desires. Easily available credit has allowed people the funds to cultivate relationships with as many different brands as are beneficial to their lives at any given moment.

The internet has fuelled this disloyal tendency. It has enabled consumers to compare and contrast brands easily, making it simple and convenient to choose another more attractive, and often cheaper, product. In response to this trend the world of retail has had to increasingly make allowances for its commitment-shy shoppers by introducing tolerant return policies that allow customers to try after they buy without having to keep the item if they change their mind. Additionally, inexpensive clothing stores such as H&M and Old Navy allow people to spend little on high trend items that will be discarded once the season is over.

This consumer fickleness has lead to dynamism, particularly in fashion trends. Low-priced UK fashion stores, such as Primark and Peacocks, are keeping up with the catwalk trends to meet the demands of the consumers who want to change their styles more frequently because doing so grants social kudos. The Spanish chain, Zara, was considered to be at the forefront of this ‘fast fashion’ phenomenon, which commenced a few years ago. However, in response to the mass-market demand for instant gratification and inexpensive fashion solutions, more niche products and brands have emerged. While people are shopping at the ‘cheap-chic’ fashion stores, there is also the desire for more niche products and brands to differentiate individual styles from the mass-market fashion.

Convenience is key

Consumers increasingly expect to consume a multitude of products, services and experiences at once; they want their consumption to be as convenient and time-efficient as possible.

Time-starved modern lifestyles have created a new set of consumer needs and desires. They now not only want value-for-money, but also value-for-time. People want to be constantly achieving the most experiences from their leisure time. Therefore they require consumption experiences that allow multiple experiences simultaneously. For instance, consumers want to be able to pick up a video and a fresh coffee while doing the weekly supermarket shop or receive a massage while visiting the dentist. Achieving more than one task simultaneously makes consumers feel like they are being efficient and utilising the convenience experiences that companies are increasingly offering.

This type of convenient consumption is not just about services and experiences, it is also about products. Consumers are attracted to self-gifting products that offer more than one benefit at the same time so that they feel that they are treating themselves with convenience and efficiency. This can be seen in practical convenience products such as chewing gum that freshens the breath and cleans the palate while releasing vitamin C, but also in emotional convenience offers such as luxury aromatherapy bath products that allow consumers to enjoy relaxation while physically unwinding in a bath.

Consumer producers (prosumers)

Consumers are now creating and customizing products and entertainment experiences, then sharing their creations with the rest of the world.

Customization has become a standard feature. Mainstream consumers now expect to be able to modify the products they buy, whether it is downloading ringtones or bejewelling their jeans. Rather than merely modifying existing products, trailblazing consumers are actively looking for tools to create entertainment and products from scratch. For instance companies like Xingtone and Primetones are offering services that allow users to create ringtones from their personal digital music collections.

Consumers are taking full advantage of the creative freedom they now enjoy and companies are utilising this shift in control to their advantage by consulting their consumers on marketing strategies as well as product development; they are even casting their consumers in adverts for added validity, as Dove did in their Campaign for Real Beauty.

Today’s consumers are increasingly interested in expressing their creativity and personal style at a time when there is such a variety of styles that it is becoming harder to have original flair. However they are often going for products that make this easy. Products that allow consumers to ascribe to a mass-market brand with kudos, while being able to make the product unique to them, are also very popular such as Nike ID and Adicolour trainers and an Anya Hindmarch handbag. Mobile phones are also examples of mass-market products and services that consumers relish customizing. Mobile phones were one of the first products to offer consumers the opportunity to change the fascias and accessories like covers.

Technology has made customization tools much easier to access, particularly for trendsetters who are looking to make their own movies or mix their own music. Technology has also made sharing these creations possible. The internet and its various networks have given consumers and prosumers the forum and the means to communicate with each other through creativity; whether they’re friends or have never met before, what ties them together is the content they have created.

It is not just products and services that are caught in this wave of consumer production. Consumers are producing their own identities via methods of self-promotion. Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo have resurrected the whole notion of self-promotion. Each member of these sites has the freedom to customize their homepage with online accessories, such as wallpaper, and lists of their favourite things, like music – all available for others to view their profile and make a judgment about them. The power of online identities can be seen in the lonelygirl 15 fiasco which was sparked from the videos that were posted to YouTube and MySpace last June.

Authentic consumption

In a world driven by marketing hype and media spin, consumers are searching for brands that signify truth and authenticity.

Many people are reacting to hyped-up news stories, over-packaged pop culture, the promised happiness of materialism and over-paid professionals by rewarding brands and products that denote authenticity. They are fed up with dishonesty and manipulation and seek out brands they can relate to on a human level beneath the artificial publicity.It is not just brands that are benefiting or suffering from this trend of authentic consumption, popular culture is also being targeted by consumers who are disengaging with anything that they deem untrustworthy. ‘Reality’ TV has become a self-parody, in which the ‘reality’ it proposes to offer is in fact an edited and manipulated story, created by self-interested producers. Conversely, indie rock music and singer/songwriters have profited from this quest for the ‘real’. Artists such as Jack Johnson and Nellie McKay are rising in popularity, indicating that people are attracted to musicians with true vocal, musical and creative talent, rather than pre-fabricated pop.

Products, services, culture and information available for consumption must increasingly empathise with consumers in order to connect with them and give the impression of authenticity. Brands must now take a different stance: instead of marketing projecting lifestyle possibilities onto their consumers, they must now reflect their consumers’ lifestyles. They need to get to the heart of the motivations and aspirations of their target audiences in order for their brands to resonate with them. Brand offerings must be honest, exciting and passionate to compel developed, modern consumers to invest precious time and money.

In order for brands to successfully project an authentic image they must get under the skin of target consumers. Similarly savvy, conscientious consumers exhaustively research brands before they buy into them. Brand and company transparency is important. With every news story related to a particular company under scrutiny, brands must prove that the operational reality corresponds to the image they project. Consumers want to know about what lies at the core of an organisation: the values, attitudes, traditions, passions, aspirations and ethics, so that they can make informed decisions about who is authentic, who has integrity and who, therefore, they should support. There are also socially and ethically conscious consumers who want to know where their products have come from; they want to support local production. Companies like Waitrose have picked up on this desire for ethical products and have heavily incorporated their local sourcing into their marketing campaigns.

Modern time-starved and ‘on the go’ lifestyles mean people are attaching more importance and value to what they do with their leisure time; they are more motivated to make the best possible use of it. This has resulted in a new wave of leisure experiences, often combining a number of different events and activities in one, or crunching down broad experiences into snack-sized portions. The internet is becoming an increasingly important function in people’s leisure time and as technology improves, online entertainment options are widening. As well as facilitating communication, the web is allowing people to record and media-fy their leisure pursuits in order to add meaning, share experiences, and open their lives up to strangers. New forms of social interaction, still in their infancy today, will shape and define our leisure lives in the future.

Experience efficient

Time-poor lifestyles lived ‘on the go’ are driving creation of a new wave of leisure experiences

Driven by the motivation to optimise their time, people want to experience as great a range of leisure options as possible. Organisations have capitalised on this by ensuring their products and services can be easily used while engaged in other activities and a range of media is dedicated to helping people choose what is ‘best’ to do. This time-starved feeling has created of a new wave of optimum leisure experiences that allow users to combine a number of different events and activities, or to reduce broad experiences down.People feel under increased time pressure in both their personal and work lives. As a result there is a perception that modern lifestyles are time-poor as work is felt to be taking up all of people’s precious time. People have great problems doing all the things they want to do. While people relish the great range of leisure options available to them they often become paralysed by too much choice. In the future, people will value the brands that help them access and select services and activities more than they value the services and activities themselves.

Due to the constant feeling of time-pressure people are increasingly reducing experiences down to make them more time-economical. People snack while on the go instead of sitting down to eat, which is losing the social aspect of dining. Sending emails is also now preferred to writing letters, which is taking the personal touch out of correspondence. Dating becomes speed dating, and travelling and learning about new cultures has been crunched down into ‘experience’ holidays for independent travellers.

Leisure 2.0

As technology improves, online entertainment options are growing and more people are using the internet in their leisure time.

The internet is no longer a functional entity. It is a place for people to pass their time, express themselves and communicate with others. As a result, a new wave of compelling people-centred products and services have arrived, giving rise to the term Web 2.0 and leading some to hail the arrival of an online revolution. However, some people are willing to take their interaction with the virtual universe further than others by creating new identities for free social expression. While on the other hand people are using it to cocoon themselves in and hide away from the world.People are spending a lot more time online and are shunning television, radio and newspapers in favour of activities such as online networking, website browsing and downloading media to phones and iPods. It is also clear the internet is no longer a functional entity. As technology improves, online entertainment options are growing. Broadband penetration is rising and more people are using the internet as a leisure form in itself.

Online dating has taken off and has huge potential for continued growth. Online shopping is booming as is online betting. The rise of online role-playing games is showing that some people are willing to take their interaction with the virtual world further than others. Whether it is a case of people escaping from the real world, thousands around the globe are choosing to interact (with other avatars) in the virtual world rather than the real world.

Techy hype aside, the Web 2.0 just seems to represent what people have always done in their spare time. The revolution that’s being trumpeted is in effect just people acting out their everyday lives – shopping, socialising, chatting, dating, listening to music, watching TV, reading etc. However this time around there is a sense that the consumer is more in control, shaping products and services to meet their needs.

Get connected

The range of options for keeping in touch is wider than ever before and technology is driving the adoption of new forms of social interaction

New communication forms such as instant messaging, SMS, MMS, online chat, VoIP and the BlackBerry are allowing people to be connected at the touch of a button or a click of a mouse, wherever they might be. Social networks, which boast memberships running into hundreds of million, are about people needing to record and media-fy their leisure pursuits in order to add meaning, share experiences and open their lives up to strangers. This connected community is giving rise to new, often wacky and spontaneous, leisure pursuits.The idea of community and connectivity is what unites the online and offline worlds and their impact on leisure. While some say community is dead, others say it is just changing. One thing is clear: the range of options available for keeping in touch is more extensive than ever before.

Children are becoming technology savvy at a young age and are adopting new forms of social interaction. MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and other social networks enjoy huge memberships.

New connected community leisure pursuits that have been enabled by social networks – often original and spontaneous like flash mobs, mass pillow fights, mobile clubbing, guerrilla gigs, giant public games of Pacman – are all examples of communities expressing themselves in new ways, perhaps as an antidote to the pressures and seriousness of modern life.