The Millennials And Main Street Are Driving The Economy
Great illustration why Wall Street and Madison Avenue is no longer hip.
Forbes published a set of key trends that will impact marketing in 2022 back on January 14th.
Here are some of them…
** Long-term influencer-based relationships will drive the marketplace… translated… the spokesperson will drive the brand
** Conversational commerce will take over… translated… messaging channeled through an app while shopper is shopping
** Experiential E-commerce will explode… translated… online retail that transports the shopper into the brand experience
** The rise of Interactive content will replace website text… more Ecommerce
** Intent monitoring… translated… predicting when the consumer is ready to buy along their linear line of decision-making is what will drive sales growth
** The increase in influencer marketing vs. individual decision-making… translated to endorsement marketing
** New virtual reality tools and apps will take over promotional offers… transporting consumers into a high-tech reality
My bet is that author of the article… who is not cited on the Forbes website… continues to work from home and is likely a recent graduate, geek, socially restricted, journalism major.
Forbes is so far out of reality that I plan to ensure my investment advisor has stopped subscribing to it.
Right now, Wall Street and high tech are tanking.
The visions of commandeering the marketplace and becoming more and more and more immortal is a mirage.
The investors finally figured out that linear line of logistical evolution was false.
Many continue to think that Millennials are still living on Facebook with few working a career and many still single and moving back with home with mom and dad because they cannot find a job.
It’s no longer hip to live in New York City or San Francisco or LA.
The Millennials are renting the U-Hauls to tow behind their electric SUVs and set-up their homesteads in places like Burlington, Durham, Nashville, Richmond, St. Petersburg, Des Moines, Waco, Sante Fe, Bend and Boise.
More than 60% of Millennials are now married and have kids. In the next 5–8 years, that percentage is predicted by Parents Magazine to hit 80%.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1st Quarter release, there are now more Millennials living in the suburbs than in the rising cost past-trendy intown communities.
I know that this next Stat is hard to believe, but it’s very true… More Millennials are members of a PTA than are members of Twitter!
There are rumors that Elon Musk discovered those same stats after his offer to purchase Twitter for $54.20 per share.
As I write this blog post, Twitter is currently trading for $35.91 per share.
Some sources are saying Elon Musk is offering more than $3 billion to Meredith Publications to purchase the rights to the brand name “Family Circle” as a new name replacement for Twitter.
Here we are post-Pandemic facing an even more powerful truth … High Tech has reached the Menopause of market maturity and Wall Street is coming to terms with the unconventional truth.
The desk top went to the laptop to the iPad to the smartphone and back all over again. Access to the Internet is now everywhere.
The mobile telecom scream 5G so much over and over and over again that now 5G now generates commentary beginning with Gee-Whiz!
If High Tech has reached senior adulthood what’s next?
High touch is exploding right now in House & Home.
White is no longer bathing the walls of the designer homesteads. Instead the color palette is exploding along with patterns and graphics on everything from counter tops to kitchen cabinets to appliances to furniture to wallpaper to outdoor landscaping.
There has always been a rumor that those with mental conditions get locked up in all white rooms.
In reality, that is exactly what happened during the Pandemic.
And it’s not just the Millennials screaming free me from the holding cells… the GenXers and Boomers and Seniors are screaming the same thing too!
If you think about the last time that the West discovered Indian and Persian patterns it was following a time of personal lock-downs from wars and even… drum roll please… a past Pandemic — the 1950s Asian Flu Pandemic.
Yesterday evening, one of the financial gurus in Washington — a woman — was featured across multiple news networks with commentary that an economic recession is NOT likely to surface.
And the rationale she shared hovered around a very simple fact.
“The Millennials are at the same place where Baby Boomers were back in the 30–40 years ago coupling, forming families, buying houses and furnishing them. And there are more Millennials than Baby Boomers.”
I don’t want to sound like a preach banging a bible on a pulpit, but the pre-Pandemic marketplace is not coming back.
It is obvious that those at Forbes who not only wrote, but published those future trends are living in the past.
So what is likely to happen?
The #1 trend that I posted back in the Fall of 2021 leading into 2022 as that “Brick and Mortar Retail” was coming back.
Not only will is Brick and Mortar Retail coming back… so too will be independent, non-corporate brands.
The last blog I posted showcased the number of Indie Coffee Houses that are expanding and the number of Starbucks struggling.
Just in the last week, another set of retailers that includes Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohls and even Walmart are pulling back on their projected sales.
You don’t have to be a mathematician to understand two key drivers of what will next surface.
#1 … Millennials have needs to furnish those homes and clothe those kids
#2 … Millennials co-author their brand experiences and if the retailers aren’t willing to do it, they will take on the challenge themselves
The High Tech evolution is out. The Hometown, Brick and Mortar revolution is about to break!
That woman on the news networks was smack on target.
It ain’t Wall Street nor the Silicon Valley that will drive the future of the U.S. economy… but Main Street!
