The last couple parties I have gone to have featured a crockpot dish as the main entrée. Now it has been a long long time since the crockpot has surfaced in my life. I have fond memories of mom’s crockpot dishes growing up…meat cooked all day until it is so juicy and tender that it just splits when your fork hits it. But the past 10 years have been filled with the ever increasing popularity of the food network and chefs teaching us how to “execute” home cooking. A far cry from the crockpot! We have been marinating meat all day but not popping it in a device that we then could go about our lives and not have to worry about the exact temperature when it would be perfectly cooked.
The crockpot gives us the freedom to spend more time with people, it acts as our social connector as well as our personal chef and cooks your dish to the perfect done-ness without the worry and time of manning a meat thermometer. The new crockpot recipes are updated classics. Updated classics - maybe that is what we are all searching for. In our busy, over-scheduled world, this resurgence of the crockpot is just another symbol of our desire for an easier way to feel homey and share with friends and family.
February 25th, 2008 - Posted in Consumer Products, Cultural Trends | |
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When I was in New York last week I couldn’t help but notice that most of the men looked like they were out of the 1950’s and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why and then it hit me, the cardigan. They were all wearing cardigans.
I know fashion cycles but I can’t help but think is there something more behind this. It’s far from the recent bright colors and patterns of the 80’s surge.
The cardigan is a symbol of home, warmth and security. The standard dress from the Leave it to Beaver times. I think this might be a manifestation of our deeper feelings and need for simpler times and a return to security.
February 14th, 2008 - Posted in Cultural Trends | |
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Everywhere you look the focus is on the momentum of the Obama campaign… and the question of whether that momentum is sustainable. Yet the question always seems to be framed as whether Obama himself can sustain this momentum. Maybe this is the wrong way of framing the question, that we should be concerning ourselves with taking a closer look at who really has the power to sustain the momentum.
As anthropologists we think about power a lot. Mostly we think about power as double-edged. It operates from above as domination and from below as resistance. Primarily we look at cultures that have traditionally been relegated to the margins of society–colonized societies, marginalized groups, ethnic communities, and so on.
The question then becomes how do people sustain a culturally meaningful life in the face of large-scale domination? How do people engage and enact life projects that have transformative capacity?
Framed this way, the Obama momentum takes on a different quality. Is what we’re seeing here a form of resistance, a fighting back from the dominant feeling that the people in our studies express? For as they have told us, particularly the younger Millennials and Generation Xers, they feel they have no place in the realm of politics, there is no room for them to engage in the debate, there is no entrée for understanding what is really going on in the higher echelons of power.
Has Obama instilled hope that the people can speak, that they can engage and enact life projects that are meaningful to them, that have the capacity to transform the current political landscape?
If the answer is yes, then the gift he has given is that of power. And, it’s up to the people to keep the power flowing, to keep the momentum going.
February 13th, 2008 - Posted in Anthropology | |
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What was up with the ads that debuted during the Superbowl? As I think back to them, and of course, working so closely with an advertising agency, talk about them in their aftermath, I’m left with a singular vision. Loud, beat driven music, with in-your face graphics… and everyone in the commercial being brought together for the final shot dancing, or head banging, in unison.
Do companies really believe that we’re all struggling to be the same? The work we’ve done over the past year with Context shows that to the contrary, consumers are all struggling to be different within the onslaught of the same. Yes, most Moms, for example, are struggling with the question of how to make a nutritious dinner for their families in a short amount of time - and one that they’ll eat. But just like each child in the family has his and her own dislikes that they bring to the table every night, each Mom has her own unique take on the struggle.
One company that we worked with during 2007 had the courage to go beyond the ever constant drive to segment. They looked at the market outside of their segmentation. They struggled to understand how people were changing and ultimately how in fact they were all quite different.
We hope more will follow in 2008.
February 6th, 2008 - Posted in Anthropology, Behavior, Ethnography, Habits | |
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We were waiting for someone to finally strike the right chord. We didn’t know how badly we needed inspiration, energy, hope. We did know we needed an end to divisiveness - political, racial, religious, economic. But we didn’t have a true vehicle to make it so. Enter Obama. I’m having a cultural anthropologist’s field day. In many ways Obama is transcending the political race. The Obama phenomenon is about social and cultural transformation. It’s actually bigger than just winning the presidency of the United States! The latest evidence is the wild success of Black Eyed Pea’s will.i.am’s Yes We Can music video. It’s a sample from Obama’s New Hampshire speech. The video went up on February 2nd and as of mid-day February 5th has 1.2 million views! Watch it here and then go to You tube too and follow the thread. Yes We Can.
February 5th, 2008 - Posted in Cultural Trends | |
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People have been playing, planning meals, making dinner, grocery shopping, packing their children’s lunches, buying exercise gear… and so on since long before us marketers began studying them. In fact what marketers have studied is the desires, motivations, aspirations, and dreams that people possess around these decisions, these purchases, and these activities. What can one possibly say that is new?
Well, instead of joining a tired arms race to proclaim the “new,” we can place these behaviors within their appropriate context and thus provide a whole new way of looking at playing, eating, shopping, and decision-making. This appropriate context is our cultural moment. Without explaining how these behaviors fit into our cultural moment, the meaning that these behaviors have taken on, both in individual lives as well as in how we come together as a community, there is no hope to ever get deeper with people.
February 1st, 2008 - Posted in Anthropology, Behavior, Cultural Trends, Ethnography, Habits | |
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