5 green consumer trends for 2011

By Allecia Vermillion

GateHouse News Service

Posted Mar 16, 2011 @ 03:48 PM

Last update Mar 16, 2011 @ 04:00 PM

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As more Americans become concerned with sustainability issues and eco-friendly habits, the days of eco-fads like reusable shopping bags and refillable water bottles have become everyday lifestyle choices. Here are some predictions for green trends we’ll see in the coming year:

Savvy green consumers. Dating services, dry cleaning, cookware and cat food — all kinds of companies are marketing countless green products. However, consumers have become savvier about deciphering eco-friendly claims. This year, the Federal Trade Commission will revise its guidelines for environmental marketing claims to combat “greenwashing,” or misleading information about environmental benefits of a product or practices of a company. Simple acts, such reading an ingredient list and recognizing overly vague advertising claims, can serve consumers well.

“Eco-superior” products. More households are buying green products, but an eco-friendly dishwashing detergent still has to clean the dishes. Trendwatching.com says 2011 is the year for “eco-superior” products that are better for the environment and better in practice, too.

Urban farming goes mainstream. Municipalities across the U.S. are revising rules for keeping chickens, bees and other animals, as Americans grow more concerned with eating local, unprocessed foods. Keeping a chicken coop in the backyard will become increasingly normal in 2011.

Green data centers. You’ll likely never see the data center that stores your e-mails, health records, Google searches or Facebook information, but these clusters of computers and servers burn large amounts of energy. Some studies estimate the information technology industry alone is responsible for 2 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. Companies are working to create more energy-efficient ways to secure and store our growing body of data, and the Environmental Protection Agency has introduced an Energy Star rating for data centers.

Buying quality built to last. Consumers are learning the pitfalls of a cheap item with a short life. Add to that concerns about chemical off-gassing and huge landfills, and 2011 is likely to be a year when many people embrace vintage china sets, handcrafted furniture and locally knit sweaters. While these products can cost more up front, savvy consumers know the long-term cost of buying cheap.

Chains take a bite out of mini-dessert trend

The Associated Press

Published: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 7:19 p.m.

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Small is big when it comes to dessert trends.

From Mini-Blizzards at Dairy Queen to the new line of Petites launched by Starbucks last week, sweets are shrinking to fit a craving for snack-sized portions.

"There's a huge trend of mini desserts," says Annie Young-Scrivner, global chief marketing officer for Starbucks. "Our research shows that customers are looking for that little something in the afternoon. They don't want it to be very big. They just want a couple of bites of something to complement their tea or espresso or other beverage."

And so Starbucks Petites were launched. The line features eight items — all of which pack fewer than 200 calories each and cost $1.50 — including cake pops (cake-on-a-stick), whoopee pies and lemon squares.

The move toward smaller desserts started some years ago, says Kathy Hayden, a food service analyst for Chicago-based Mintel research company. Eating healthier was one factor. Another was having more choices; now you could have a bite of apple pie and a spoonful of pudding. And when the economy went sour, the smaller price tag of tiny treats became all the sweeter.

Bite-sized desserts have made the top five restaurant trends for the past four years, according to surveys by the National Restaurant Association, though that seems to have settled down. The mini treats came in as the 35th trend out of 226 in a "What's Hot in 2011" survey of more than 1,500 chefs.

A pioneer in petite patisserie was Seasons 52, an Orlando-based chain that specializes in fresh, healthy options and has nothing on the menu more than 475 calories.

Coming up with a dessert was a challenge, says Cliff Pleau, senior director of culinary and beverages. But then someone suggested, "Why don't you get the real thing and stuff it in a little cup?"

He went out and bought dessert ingredients, got some shot glasses and within a few hours the concept of Mini Indulgences was born.

The desserts, which include Key lime pie and chocolate and peanut butter mousse, cost about $2.50. Most have between 200 and 300 calories.

The key, says Pleau, is to make sure the flavors are intense. "We've got 3 ounces to really get our point across."

Mini desserts also have been popping up at quick-serve restaurants, like Dairy Queen, which last summer introduced Mini-Blizzards, 6-ounce versions of their trademark Blizzard soft-serve frozen dessert. The mini, about half the size of the smallest Blizzard, was a response to customer feedback, says Michael Keller, chief brand officer.

"There was a very large trend afoot in general with how consumers were eating and, specifically, Blizzard customers were looking for something a little smaller and therefore easier on their wallet and easier for some of them on their calorie counts," he says.

In addition to lower prices and fewer calories, downsized desserts fit into another big trend — snacking.

People who once packed a bag of trail mix or brought a banana to tide them over the 3 o'clock blahs, now may pop into a quick-serve restaurant for a snack wrap or other small menu item.

Mini desserts "really fit well with the snacking phenomenon that has not by any means peaked," says Hayden. "I think there's some traction there."

Can smaller desserts result in smaller Americans?

"I don't think anyone's losing weight from them," says Hayden. "I think that they're a nice little extra."

Romancing the consumer

March 15, 2011

Wendy Cukier

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My how the world has changed. I am a boomer. My first phone was black with a rotary dial, provided by Bell Canada for a few dollars a month. To get the beautiful pink princess phone I coveted for my girly bedroom, we would have had to pay extra. For touch tone, another fee.

A Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications (CRTC) decision in 1982 made it legal to purchase a phone and plug it into the network, and 10 years later we got competing telecommunications providers.

The first “cellular” phones were the size of a cinder block and the first cellular “flip-phone” introduced by Motorola cost more than $1,500.

During my formative years, there was little choice in communications technology and services — in marked contrast to today’s wide array of phones in every imaginable colour, with every imaginable feature and pricing based on flat fees, usage-based fees, location-based fees or almost any combination.

Faced with this amazing and every-changing smorgasbord, it has become clear that the weird and wonderful thing about today’s consumers is that functionality is necessary but insufficient to win their hearts and minds.

Innovators need to intimately understand how technology is, can, or might be used by people, how to add value (real or perceived) and how to shape those perceptions and adapt to them. And they have to recognize that what people say they want may not be what they will use — who ever admitted that porn would be their principal use for the Internet?

These processes are highly iterative. Technology is not just bits and bites but complex social practices.

Consider the breathtakingly funny but profane “iphone4 vs. HTC Evo” YouTube video. A customer tells the salesperson she wants an iPhone4. He offers her a HTC Evo with superior functionality (bigger screen, higher speed, replaceable battery and lower cost.) At every point, she says “I don’t care.”

“If it’s not an iPhone, why would I want it?”

Salesperson: “It %^%$#$ prints money.”

Customer: “I don’t care.”

Salesperson: “It will grant you three wishes, even if one of those wishes is for an iPhone.”

Customer: “I don’t care.”

And so on. . .

Objectively speaking, it may be true that other devices have the same or better functionality than the iPhone4. But, fundamentally, adoption of technology has little to do with rational decisions about functions and features.

Perhaps no device in modern history has engendered the same deep emotional attachment as the iPhone — it has 100 million units sold to prove it. The iPhone is not just a device, it is part of a lifestyle, or an identity. It represents the height of technology fashion. It is sleek and beautiful.

With technology, as with romance, the heart wants what the heart wants, and winning consumer hearts is often more important than winning their minds. Technology developers who unlock the secrets of romancing customers, who understand the role of aesthetics and brand and identity and behaviour, are more likely to succeed.

To push technology to market in the not too distant past, it was enough to be more powerful, faster, smaller or feature-rich. Now consumer needs and wants — however weird and wonderful or “irrational” they may seem — drive market growth and innovation.

The pace of change is mind-boggling. Among the top 20 websites in 2010, five — Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, Twitter and Wikipedia — were not even on the list in 2005. How can technology providers plan when they cannot predict or even glimpse the trends that will rule the market in five years?

Smart companies are learning how to shape those needs and wants, and consumer decision-making processes, by intense engagement with consumers.

The secrets of Apple’s success are certainly complex and difficult to emulate but it has been a game changer. Of course it has been building its brand for almost 30 years — many kids grew up with Apple. But the company has managed to grow beyond the hard-core enthusiasts. Its products are complete solutions — hardware, software, content — with consistent look and feel, strengthening customer engagement and loyalty.

The brand is extremely powerful — virtually synonymous with “hip.” It has been brought into the mainstream with brilliant use of both traditional and emerging media.

But the foundation is its focus on shaping the customer experience on multiple levels. Certainly the functionality is there, but the emotional and aesthetic appeal is what give it staying power.

As Steve Chazin, former Apple marketing executive, has noted with respect to the runaway success of the iPod, “Apple isn’t selling you an MP3 player. They are inviting you to experience the Apple lifestyle and to become part of the iPod community. Use any other MP3 player and you’ll hear good music. Use an iPod and you’ll feel good. You’ll fit in. Product features don’t create fans.” Understanding the psyche of consumers and their very identities is critical.

And given the increasing importance of aesthetics and consumer behaviour to technology design, it is no surprise that educational institutions are trying to build cross-disciplinary programs and teams that harken back to the heady days of Xerox’s famous research Parc in Palo Alto, California.

Blood-sucking teens and 9 more dangerous teen trends

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It's not easy being a parent of teens these days. Once-rational children transform into moody, unreasonable creatures whose need to shock is only surpassed by their efforts to fit in. Factor in impulsiveness and experimentalism, and it's no wonder risky behavior skyrockets during these years. What a parent can do is to keep the lines of communication open, stay informed of the health dangers of some common trends, and keep their fingers crossed.

From Dr. Orly Avitzur, medical avisor of Consumer Reports, here's a roundup of 10 troublesome trends - some old and some new - that your teen may be exposed to this school year.

Biting and sucking blood

Yes, as unbelievable as it sounds, there's a vampire movement afoot thanks to the glamorous portrayal of teen vampires on the Twilight series and The Vampire Diaries and the popularity of HBO's True Blood.

Besides the serious bacterial dangers of human bites, it can be a mode of HIV transmission that's not covered in most sex ed classes.

Decorative contact lenses

A look made popular by Lady Gaga and YouTube, circle lenses create a big doe-eyed appearance and have become popular among teenage girls. Doctors worry that the lenses - illegal to sell without a prescription but easily bought online - carry risks of blinding infections and damage to the cornea.

ADHD prescription drug abuse

The same drugs being used to treat attention-deficit disorder are being freely shared by some teens on college campuses and high schools to give them an edge at preparing for exams. Not only is the stigma gone, but kids who have the prescriptions are the go-to favorites during finals.

If your child uses ADHD drugs, warn him/her against sharing. If your child doesn't, make it clear that these are serious medications with side effects, not study aids.

Tobacco escalation products

Many teens are convinced that, unlike cigarettes, smoking a hookah or chewing tobacco is not harmful. In fact, hookahs do use tobacco (referred to as Massel) which comes in a variety of flavors - including apple, strawberry, and coconut - intended to create a "graduation strategy" so that kids get hooked by starting them with milder tasting, flavored substances. This trick is also used with a product called "Snus", a non-chew, no-spit oral tobacco that's available in sweet and fruity flavors. Using Snus lets teens stay under the radar at school and still get their nicotine fix, because it's stuffed between the lip and the gum.

Make sure your teens know that these products have their own dangers, as well as leading to nicotine addiction.

Tanorexia

Even though exposure to tanning beds before the age of 30 increases a person's risk of developing melanoma by 75 percent, this real danger is dampened by television shows that depict it as trendy and fashionable. One study of university students found that more than 90 percent of tanning-bed users know about the risks of premature aging and skin cancer but continue to tan because they think it looks good.

Tattoos

Tattoos are extremely popular among teens. Though most states have laws prohibiting minors from getting them, they are poorly enforced. Recent data suggest that more than one-third of U.S. adults under the age of 35 now sport at least one tattoo. Outbreaks of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) skin infections among tattoo recipients have been related to sloppy infection-control practices. And tattoos are estimated to account for more than twice as many hepatitis C infections as injection drug use. Other infections, including HIV, can also be contracted through tattooing.

If your kids insist on tattoos, make sure that they go to a licensed practitioner.

Piercings

Besides traditional ear piercings - which carry the standard risks of infection, allergic reactions to nickel, and scar formation - kids are piercing other body parts, including their nose, naval region, lips, eyebrows and tongues, as well as areas hidden from parents, such as the nipples and genitals. Bacterial infections are not uncommon, as are risks of hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV and tetanus. Deformity and scarring can be permanent.

Make sure your kids are aware that needles wielded by anyone but a health professional or certified technician can be lethal weapons.

Tech use at night

Do you know what your kids are doing in their bedrooms at night? It's likely they're texting their friends, chatting on Facebook, or playing video games. The high-tech bedrooms of many teenagers are anything but dark and quiet. They often go to sleep listening to their iPods, and exchange text messages late into the night. In fact, this seems to be typical teenage behavior. No wonder they're tired in school.

Encourage your child to make it a habit to completely unplug well before bedtime.

Texting while driving

There have been reports of teens getting into serious car accidents texting while driving because they keep their hands and eyes on their cell phone keys, rather than the steering wheel. The practice is widespread and getting worse. According to a 2010 survey by AAA and "Seventeen" magazine, 86 percent of drivers age 16-19 admit to risky driving habits, up 25% from a 2008 survey. On average, those who texted sent 23 text messages while driving in the past month. Sixty percent of teens say they drive while talking on their cell phones, up nine percent from a 2008 survey.

Make sure your teen drivers have headsets in the car so they can take needed calls and keep their hands on the wheel.

Noise exposure

According to published research, about 12.5 percent of American children between the age of 6 and 19 have measurable noise-induced hearing loss. Exposure to harmful sounds can injure the delicate hair cells in the inner ear. We have a fixed number of cochlear hair cells, and they don't regenerate, so it's important to prevent damage in the first place to reduce the need for a hearing aid later in life.

To protect their hearing, teens should turn down the volume from headsets, televisions and car radios, and set the top volume level on their MP3 player to a safe level.

A Famous Baby’s First Word? Hint: It’s Not Mama

By Stuart Elliott

Published: February 21, 2011

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IN a dictionary of brand names, you can find “Clicquot Club” beverages, pronounced “KLEE-ko”; De Cecco pasta, pronounced, roughly, “Day CHECK-o”; and Chico’s, the retailer of women’s clothing, pronounced “CHEE-ko’s.”

Now, a purveyor of baby products, well known overseas, wants its brand name to be on more American lips — and said properly, too. The brand is Chicco, pronounced “KEE-ko,” which is owned by an Italian company, the Artsana Group.

A campaign for Chicco, now under way, invites parents to enlist their offspring in the pronunciation lessons: Make a video clip of your baby saying “Chicco” and it could appear on a billboard in Times Square.

The campaign also includes print advertisements, content on a section of a Web site (chiccousa.com/timessquare), online ads, outreach through so-called mom bloggers and a presence in social media like Facebook and Twitter.

The campaign, from the Artsana USA division of Artsana, carries the theme “If you say it right, it makes you smile.” The budget is estimated at just under $5 million.

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The campaign is being created by the flagship New York office of McCann Erickson Worldwide, part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The McCann Erickson Italian operation, based in Milan, is the agency for Chicco in other parts of the world.

The campaign is among many that have tried to school American consumers on the correct pronunciations of the names of brands, particularly those of foreign origin.

Radio listeners of a certain age may still recall commercials to introduce a Spanish sangria, Yago, pronounced “Eee-AH-go,” which were built around the repeated recitation of the name.

“It wasn’t like we needed McCann to launch us,” said William Hasse — pronounced, by the way, “HASS-ee,” rhyming with “Lassie” — who is the vice president for marketing at Artsana USA in Lancaster, Pa., as the Chicco brand has been in this country since the mid-1990s.

Rather, “McCann helped us to discover we had very low spontaneous brand awareness,” he added, especially among a crucial target audience of first-time parents.

It was time to tackle that challenge, Mr. Hasse said, as Chicco has attained national distribution in chains like Babies “R” Us, Target and Toys “R” Us.

One goal is to inform potential customers that Chicco is “a 360-degree master brand,” he added, offering “everything you need for your baby age 0 to 36 months, except diapers and food.”

A related goal is to tell them Chicco is “a brand intent on baby happiness,” Mr. Hasse said, that is “not Chinese and not Spanish.”

“It’s Italian,” he added, “and it’s pronounced ‘KEE-ko.’ ”

The Italian origin is important to convey because of the positive image for baby products from Italy, made by companies like Peg Perego as well as Chicco.

Chicco’s strollers, car seats, travel systems, toys, highchairs, portable play yards and other merchandise are priced as a premium brand for the mass market. They cost less than brands like Peg Perego and Bugaboo but more than brands like Graco.

Some videos that have been uploaded to chiccousa.com can be watched in a gallery there. Children shout “Chicco,” chant it, sing it and even dance while singing it.

In many clips, parents, off-camera, can be heard prompting their children to say “Chicco.” Sometimes the children respond by saying the name over and over and over again.

“You couldn’t do that in an ad,” Thom Gruhler, president at McCann Erickson New York, said of the repetition.

“What we’re trying to do is to establish Chicco as a brand from Italy that makes high-quality products,” he added. “When people said ‘Chico,’ they thought it was from China or Mexico or somewhere else.”

The idea behind the theme of “When you say it right, it makes you smile” is that “when the target is let in on the secret,” Mr. Gruhler said, “it’s the ultimate currency.”

“They want to share it and pass it along,” he added. And of course, social media make it easier to do that.

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“Who wouldn’t want to put their kid up in Times Square and then post it to every social network Web site?” Mr. Gruhler asked rhetorically.

The videos will run on a giant billboard on the new American Eagle Outfitters store at Broadway and West 46th Street. The LED screen is displaying the Chicco clips twice an hour, Mr. Hasse said, at 15 and 45 minutes after the hour.

A company called Aerva is providing the technology by which the consumer-generated clips migrate to the billboard from the Web site. The videos began running on the billboard on Feb. 14 and are scheduled to continue through March 13.

The print ads are in publications like The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Magazine and People magazine. The online part of the campaign is on Web sites like babble.com, babycenter.com, cafemom.com, huffingtonpost.com andmommycast.com as well as sites that are part of the Glam.com network.

Universal McCann, a sibling of McCann Erickson New York, is handling the media part of the campaign.

Spending to advertise Chicco in major American media totaled $2.45 million in 2008, according to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP, then fell the following year to $688,000.

Last year brought an increase, as ad spending totaled $2.7 million through the first nine months of 2010, Kantar Media reported, compared with $611,000 for the same period of 2009.

Why social tribes are more potent than social networks

Feb 28, 2011

By Dr. Bob Deutsch, Brain Sells

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In today’s socially-mediated world, marketers must place greater emphasis on understanding their audience as people rather than simply describing them as “consumers.” Simply satisfying consumers’ immediate wants and needs creates a commodity, not a brand.

Marketers need more. They want to impress a brand footprint across all media channels, platforms and touch-points. To build a social brand, marketers should not waste time asking what consumers like, need or want; they should discover who these people really are. This requires research techniques that can elicit stories about how people feel about their world and the larger world. The subtext of these stories define people’s identities, not their interests.

This modification in perspective will help marketers have a hand in sculpting the changes that are shifting the ground under their feet. These changes include:

- From person-as-viewer to person-as-participant, to person-as-creator-of-content

- From brand-to-person communication to person-to-person conversation

- From information-gathering to experience-gathering. -From brands to “me-as-brand”

Given these fundamental changes, marketers would benefit by creating one additional change:

- From social networks to social tribes.

Social networks are basically free-forming and require no organisation or face-to-face mediation. Hence, social networks allow for the expression of current mindsets, but are not good at conversion or moving that mindset into the field of concerted action. If marketers could help gird the formation of tribes, they would gain a larger return on investment.

Below are the five requirements for tribal formation.

Possession of a unique revelation:

An ideology that in some way rejects the mainstream and is symbolic of an uncompromising idealism and certainty that is expressed with romantic passion and cold logic.

A belief system:

A mythology about how the world works and how tribe members and the tribe can maximise “self” in relation to that world.

Ritual

The creation of recurrent, exaggerated, stylised and condensed behavioral routines that represent the tribe’s ideology and belief system; this helps establish an institutional memory and a sense of “post-icipation” (a feeling that you were “there” even before you were there).

A distinctive lexicon:

A characteristic lingo and a set of emblems that display membership.

In-group/out-group accentuation

A kind of pseudo-speciation that defines tribal boundaries. The “Other” is not like me. Having satisfied these requirements, the motivation for membership is: I am Becoming myself. Belonging gives you a sense of power to overcome and to expand yourself.

Tribe as brand

From the tribe-forming perspective, marketing strategy should be aimed at (a) designing a brand persona that is relevant to the public mind and mood, (b) articulating a brand history exemplifying its complexities and evolution; thereby intrinsically buttressing its relevance to the current communal mindset, and (c) portraying current contingencies as consonant with its history and persona.

In this way, a metaphorical connection is made possible between a person’s “self-story” and the tribe, with each symbolically reflecting the other. This entails three cognitive aspects of belonging that lead to feelings of membership:

Familiarity: The tribe is like me.

Participation and Trust: The tribe likes me.

Power: The tribe is more than me and can help me become more of me.

By coalescing and satisfying longings at the individual, and societal levels, marketers can create a brand idea and a tribal-like belonging to that idea. The result is loyalty to tribe-as-brand is experienced as loyalty to self.

Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Starbucks: An example of two tribes

In the world of products, a good example of tribal differentiation is Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks. Each has a different ideology: it’s just coffee. I want to get in and get out as quickly as possible versus my selection of a coffee is an expression of my temperament and personal style, and I want to be able to relax in a “third place.”

Each has a different belief system and attendant self-identities: the old-fashioned, regular guy, down-to-earth, who does real things versus trendy people, oriented to sensuality and luxury. Each has different rituals: servers versus barristas. Each has a different lexicon: small is small versus small is tall. Most importantly, the two groups of loyal customers express in-group/out-group exaggerations.

Here are examples of what Dunkin’ Donut loyalists say about Starbucks goers, “They spend too much time and money on a cup of coffee.” “They are yuppies, ambitious and never satisfied.” “They like to complicate everything.”

Starbucks loyalists voice symmetrical sentiments about Dunkin’ Donut goers: “They have a cookie-cutter mentality and nothing about them is exceptional.” “Their coffee is as bland and sterile as their customers. I don’t think I’d like those people.”

The same distinctions can and should be made for Tom Ford, Chevrolet, American Express and Sony.

Brands as missions

The present context of the world is conducive to the longing for tribal connections that engage people with passion and purpose. The world is “between mythologies” – it is not what it once was and it does not yet know what it will become. People feel the world is moving too fast and is too unpredictable.

As a member of a tribe, people feel safer and more empowered. Tribal membership aids in the belief that the world is a manageable place and one’s future is assured. If marketers would be mindful of the fact that brands should have a mission that arouse peoples’ tribal fervor, their brands would gain higher repeat purchases, greater loyalty, and greater brand advocacy.