MarkPenn.com

The New Cool Kids: Part of a rising counterculture, smart, black teenagers are flexing their intelligence instead of hiding it

“…Perhaps riding on the rise of prominent post-civil rights black leaders including Obama, more and more black kids are stepping up the smart quotient with a new level of pride.

Those who track youth culture are taking notice of this segment of the millennial generation – the name for today’s youths who are raised to be confident and to believe they are special, and told they have the power to change their world. These observers characterize millennials as far more engaged than their Generation X predecessors.

Author E. Kinney Zalesne calls them “black super-achievers,” teens rising under the radar and shattering stereotypes.

When it comes to indicators of good citizenship – voting, volunteering, and religious participation – many black teens are succeeding, with little notice, said Zalesne, who co-authored “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes.”

“The notion of achievement is [more ] deeply embedded in the African-American culture than most people give it credit for,” Zalesne said in a recent phone interview….

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Reach Consumers Who Friend Before They Spend
Ever scoured the web for information about a brand of shampoo you’ve been considering using? Did customer reviews on Overstock or Amazon play a role in any of the purchases you made this past holiday season? Have you “Googled” a date’s name before, or after, going out with them? You may be a New Info Shopper if… (read doing your best Jeff Foxworthy) you answered yes to any of these questions. And, according to a recent online Wall Street Journal article, advertisers and marketers looking to improve their bottom line may want to start paying closer attention to the way you and your fellow NISs operate.

Finding, then seeing, is believing
E. Kinney Zalesne, who co-authored the WSJ.com article, along with the book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes with Mark J. Penn, contends that this new breed of consumer primarily trusts information it finds on its own — not necessarily what you provide in your outreach. The Microtrends shopper’s survey conducted for the January 8 article found that 92 percent of those surveyed believed information they got on their own over information they got from a salesperson or clerk. And 78 percent of the respondents felt television ads don’t contain enough information to make a purchase decision.

“That’s really a profound shift in attitudes towards shopping,” says Zalesne, who attributes at least some of this shift to a decrease in the power of branding. “I think part of what we’re seeing in the New Info Shopper is that people are not as willing to rely on brand. And they’re not as willing to assume that a fancy name, or a popular name, will be the right product for them.”

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The Firm Voice: Post-Inaugural PR: What to Expect in Politics and the PR Agency Business in 2009

Many assumed a “wait and see” stance these past few weeks as uncertainty continued to drive the markets and outlook for the PR firm business and beyond. Yet that holding pattern may shake out as businesses get a clearer bead on the future, precipitated in part by yesterday’s inauguration finally signaling a shift from promising to practicing change.

So what exactly does the future hold for the agency business under an Obama administration? What lessons can we—as a profession and as individual practitioners—learn from President Obama’s communications strategies, techniques and tactics? Where will policy and PR intersect in the year ahead—and what does it all mean to you and your day-to-day work?

For the answers, we checked with Mark Penn, whose domain is the nexus between PR and politics. Worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and president of market research, polling and consulting firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, he has advised both Clintons, Tony Blair and Bill Gates. In 2007, he authored “Microtrends: The Small Forces behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes,” the paperback edition of which will be published in spring. Precipitating its release is Penn’s new “Microtrends” column, which runs regularly in the “Media and Marketing” section of WSJ.com and focuses on demographic trends in society, business and politics.

Here, Penn—who has been called the “Master of the Message” by Time magazine and the “Guru of Small Things” by The New York Times—gives us a sneak peak of his trend-spotting talents to help you navigate the months ahead, and shares his post-inaugural analysis of the new administration, its key communications challenges, and the year ahead for Corporate America and its agency partners.

Rise of the Office Romancers

Red Rodell is said to have responded to a reporter’s question about whether the Yale Law School faculty was “polarized” by proclaiming: “Of course not – they’re far too divided for that!”
In a nutshell, that’s also Mark Penn’s diagnosis of the American polity. He notes that the so-called Red/Blue divide is far weaker than generally supposed, but also points out that American society is, in fact, so splintered that dividing along Red and Blue lines makes it seem almost unified by comparison.

Penn, the Clinton pollster who “discovered” soccer moms and is chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, instead slices and dices the American polity into 75 “microtrends.”

Penn defines a microtrend as “an intense identity group [that] has needs and wants unmet by the current crop of companies, marketers, policymakers and others who would influence society’s behavior.” Most of Penn’s book consists of short descriptions of groups he considers particularly significant and unappreciated.

The Emotional Trap – Forbes.com

“…Interestingly, some folk are finally beginning to weigh in on the more rational approach to selling. Mark Penn, in a new book called Microtrends, makes the point that “the rational side of people is far more powerful in many areas of life than the purely emotional side.” He should know, as he is widely regarded as the most perceptive pollster in American politics. He is also the worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a very large PR firm…”

The Surviving Dads Of Ads

“…Mark Penn’s book Microtrends, a survey of emerging demographic and psychographic groups, includes a chapter on “Neglected Dads.” Penn charts the course of McDonald’s, which figured out early on that marketing directly to kids could increase the bottom line (not to mention those kids’ bottoms). But sometime in the mid 1990s, “moms started paying more attention to what their children ate.” That led to initiatives like 2004’s “McMom,” which includes an online newsletter with tips on parenting.
Yet at a recent company retreat, Penn pointed out to McDonald’s execs that since the 1970s, fathers have been spending more time with their kids. In fact, in 1997, dads living at home spent 65% as much time in the company of their progeny during the week as their mothers did, and 87% as much time on the weekends, per a University of Michigan study.

Penn continues: “This is serious father-child interaction time, say the researchers—which means meals. But where is the McDad initiative? Who’s targeting the volunteer coaches who need a place to take the kids after Saturday’s practice?”…

New York Times: Home Office Politics

Like other businesses, politics these days is conducted less in person than on speaker phone and laptops. Campaign consultants, policy analysts, fund-raisers and bloggers do most of their work in the comfort of their own homes, or in their cars, or maybe at Starbucks. Political professionals have as a result become part of a much larger American movement. In his new book, “Microtrends,” the Democratic pollster Mark Penn notes that 4.2 million Americans now work exclusively from home (a nearly 100 percent increase from 1990), while some 20 million do it part time. Some of these workers are employees who telecommute to traditional offices, but most represent a kind of modern, untethered American work force.

Taking a Chance on Love: Rethinking Office Romance

“…In his new book, “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes,” [Mark Penn] predicts a relaxing of attitudes about workplace love.

“Many more people of both sexes are at work now, and there are many more office romances happening,” says Penn, who calls the office “the 21st-century singles bar.”

In recognition of this, Penn suggests, companies are going to need to do more than turn a blind eye, or forbid intermingling.

“They have to recognize the fact that there are much more likely to be real relationships among people at the office, and adopt more detailed policies,” he says – addressing, say, whether a romance needs to be disclosed, and how to best handle a breakup…”

The Trend in Trends: Experts try to predict the future without knowing the past. – WSJ.com

“Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes,” by Mark J. Penn, was published a couple of weeks ago. Its title reminds one of the 1982 best seller “Megatrends,” by John Naisbitt. Mr. Naisbitt also has a new book out, “Mind Set!” on how to interpret trends. The Internet search giant Google has recently decided to offer consumers the Google Trends Labs, which allows you to see how frequently topics you enter have been searched for by other Google users. A retail-industry think tank at the University of California, Riverside, has announced a new trend in trend-prediction: prediction markets, which will, it says, produce more prescient predictions about online sales trends.

Is there a trend here?

Mr. Penn, a pollster for Hillary Clinton, thinks so. He writes: “You can’t understand the world anymore only in terms of ‘megatrends,’ or universal experiences. In today’s splintered society, if you want to operate successfully, you have to understand the intense identity groups that are growing and moving, fast and furious in crisscrossing directions. That is microtrends.”

Finding Big Meaning in Small Trends

In 1996, pollster Mark Penn highlighted what he thought was an important Democratic constituency: soccer moms. Now, he’s got a new book out. He tells Kai Ryssdal of a new trend — young people minding their knitting.