Consumer Consciousness: Two Forces Redefining the Value Equation.

The bubble of indifference has burst.

Until recently, it used to be very different. Consumers cared about functional performance and price...and cared about very little else. Like how products were really made. The ingredients they really contained. What they really did to the body. So the reasoning went, if it was available, it had to be safe. Governments regulate, after all.

Nothing like crisis to wake people up. And shaken up they have been. Toxicity in toy paint, lethal ingredients in pet food, health threats in the food chain (fruits and vegetables), ever rising cases of cancer, and obesity on a mass scale among not just adults but children. This is the PERSONAL dimension that evolved the value equation of what people buy. No longer is buying convenience foods so easily divorced from the health consequences of doing to. Marketers are responding with convenient foods that force less of that trade-off. It is a good development.

The consumer value equation is also being redefined by another key dimension: PLANET. The environmental crisis has precipitated a shift: people en masse are making a direct personal link between what they consumed and the impact they were having on the planet.

The result: a time of greater scrutiny but if anything higher standards. People care more about what's in products and how they're made. They have to know, it's almost not a choice. The cost of indifference - personally and for the planet - is too high. Companies are responding by making better products.

















A new kind of involvement and a new strategy has emerged among consumers: asking question and demanding answers. The smart companies are recognizing this is a new age of transparency. Avoidance is an option but not a good one. Being part of the conversation is a way companies can shape the dialogue about them, thought the days of control are over. Trust has been broken and companies now have to earn it back.

Science that could be mistaken for an Onion headline

Looks like the folks at Live Science beat the Onion to it.








Well known for faux headlines that state the obvious, the way Live Science's summarize the findings from a recent study comes very close:

Emotional wiring Different in Women and Men.

We at OFD agree that there is something of the absurdly obvious to this statement. Well, when science can't tell us what we know already, at least it can tell us why. Clusters of neurons processing experiences hook up to contrasting brain functions in men and women.

With men the cluster "talks with" brain regions that help them respond to sensors for what's going on outside the body, such as the visual cortex and an area that coordinates motor actions. This skill comes in handy, especially in many of today's dense urban settlements, where parking in a tight spot can be a challenge.

With women the cluster communicates with brain regions that help them respond to sensors inside the body, such as the insular cortex and hypothalamus. These areas tune in to and regulate women's hormones, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and respiration. Their connection to these vital bodily functions over the course of a lifetime might have a hand in why they live longer than men.

"Throughout evolution, women have had to deal with a number of internal stressors, such as childbirth, that men haven't had to experience," said study co-author Larry Cahill of the University of California Irvine. "What is fascinating about this is the brain seems to have evolved to be in tune with those different stressors."

Next time we're inclined to be frustrated by an emotional display of a spouse, partner of friend, it would be good to consider that perhaps it really might be something out of their control, shaped not only by biology but millennia of evolutionary adaptation and interaction with our environment, more cultural and social than perhaps physical in this instance.

Communist icongraphy for a capitalist tool

How enterprising. The self proclaimed champion of capitalism, Forbes has dusted of the iconic fist from Soviet era propaganda and re-purposed it.

The device is itself clever support for its underlying business ideology: using it represents a very entrepreneurial act. No doubt Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin are rolling around in their collective graves.

Will the common man or woman on the street be confused by this creative license and think that Forbes is extolling political virtues, or worse, that the brand has abandoned its principles? Hardly. Most young people today have such a disinterest in history that they most likely aren't even aware of the satire.

Most outdoor media are read for a matter of seconds and requires short, concise visual and verbal expressions of an idea to be fully digested. It's why icons and symbols can be so effective in these challenging environments. They represent potent devices because the meaning is so immediately and viscerally evident, short-circuiting normally longer processing times.

Being comfortable with the uncomfortable

Many people experience discomfort when they encounter something that challenges an existing held belief or understanding about their world. It is often not something people are conscious of, and while the reaction may occur in the form of a feeling, most often it does not: it is merely an immediate visceral rejection to the stimulus which emerges as a sense that it is simply wrong.

Comfort represents a condition or state in which a belief has solidified and become firmly entrenched. The stimulus is challenging precisely because it threatens this established order, it is literally stirring up that which has settled in the mind.

We are not talking about stimuli that are blatantly offensive, such an an image of one person violently kicking another; discomfort and rejection at a subconscious level can be precipitated by something relatively innocuous.

A case in point: OFD was invited to talk with some folks in the advertising industry recently about the luxury car brand they were representing. The task at hand was to understand how to sell more of these expensive vehicles in what is a heavily contested market. OFD raised the need to understand the intersection of the core idea of luxury with current cultural trends. The former is what people have a fundamental relationship with, but due to the modulating, moderating effect of the latter, it needs to be re-contextualized to attain contemporary relevance.

In this regard the group was asked to consider how the quality of power could be play out in the current luxury climate. There was immediate resistance. The associations which they had with this term - dominance, an aggressive attitude or display, abuse - were firmly entrenched and got in the way of openly engaging with the idea. There was much discussion, but the echoes of the deeply held beliefs about power kept coming out. The idea that the character of power could be different, something intimate, privately experienced and enjoyed rather than being aggressively and publicly displayed created real discomfort, real friction.

As a society we have stopped appreciating the value in feeling uncomfortable and forgotten how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. These are unpredictable and uncertain times, which only heightens people's tendencies to want to cling to the familiar. This is above and beyond the cultural forces that work beneath the surface of our daily consciousness which push us towards inertia and stability rather than flux and change.

In the pursuit of progress, the idea itself is not enough. The context in which the idea is exposed, the 'mental environment' in which people encounter it has a critical impact on the ability to fully understand the idea itself as well as the ability to fully engage with it.