Americans embrace mass transit; get stuck in

The number of Americans using mass public transport has reached the highest levels in 50 years.

Ah, excellent. What responsible, green citizens you might think.

Think again. For the most part this is happening for selfish (and perfectly rational) reasons - people are trying to offset rampant increases in the price of gas.

Gotta save $ for dinner, movies and jeans. Feel uneasy… might loose my job soon.

Sure, global warming’s on the airwaves, but for most it remains a fuzzy, distant threat. Maybe even a false alarm?

Fact: until global warming becomes a national disaster, most people won’t pay much attention.

Another fact: science tells us that by then it might be too late, irreversible. Death by heat.

So what to do?

Indies morph into “power brands”

It’s been hard to miss the headlines: Liz Claiborne, VF Corp and other industry biggies are slashing their bloated brand portfolios to focus on “power brands”.

(Ironically, many of these power brands weren’t so powerful 10 or even five years ago: Kate Spade, Juicy, Seven, etc. Go, indies, go.)

The media usually cites ongoing retailer consolidation and the rise of private label brands as the main drivers behind all this axing of the weak brand siblings.

But the biggest driver is today’s fast-moving, empowered consumer, who finds less and less resonance in big, soulless retail stores with merchandise to suit.

Enlisting activist consumers to change the world

Cultural Creatives (basically, Apple customers) are an interesting bunch because they are leading indicators of where things are headed.

This group is driving the move towards values-based purchasing (Steve Jobs recently took action to keep them happy by vocally going green).

Cultural Creatives and values-based purchasing are a big deal.

Gary Hirshberg, President & founder of Stonyfield Farm, knows this (”the notion that consumers check in their values when they visit a store is ludicrous” - from Lohas 13).

To Mr. Hirshberg, “marketing is education, not selling; it’s a chance to share your values”.

He’s walking the talk by launching ClimateCounts, a handy way to educate consumers and give them a quick read on how companies score on the “green meter”.

Movements like this - if they take off - can be powerful and affect real change.

This is the new marketing/way of doing business. Check it out.

Primacy of lifestyle forcing verticals to mesh

Here’s another example of how the move towards lifestyle by increasingly empowered consumers is pressuring vertical players to reconfigure their businesses:

“The consumer has moved away from sports-specific footwear to more lifestyle, athletic footwear,” says Matt Powell, a research analyst at market-research firm Sports One Source. “Retailers at the mall who had an athletic heritage are having to follow.”

The excerpt is from today’s Journal, citing the reason for Athletic-footwear retailer Finish Line Inc.’s proposed $1.5 billion acquisition of Genesco Inc.

This deal, like most M&A transactions, looks like it is being done for reactive vs. proactive reasons (partnering with a rival is better than going out of business).

I bet it’s in part because the folks involved failed to appreciate the importance of an empowered consumer seeking - above all - to fulfill his/her lifestyle.

Looked at through the “lifestyle lens”, “verticals” (silos) seem to make less and less sense…

So it’s worth asking, what can you do in your business to help the consumer self-actualize? That’s really all he/she cares about!

Verticals meshing as lifestyle moves to the fore

WWD ran an interesting piece last week called ‘Lights, Camera, Action: Showbiz Moguls Become Fashion Players’. The story is about Hollywood big-wigs taking a shine to investing in the fashion business and what impact this might have.

One of the more interesting quotes:

“I have always believed that the process of managing an artist and a brand are similar,” agreed David Schulte, president and CEO of eyewear firm Oliver Peoples Inc., who was previously with The Firm. “The barriers between the two businesses have been broken down. The world is now about the lifestyle of the consumer: what he or she wears, consumes, listens to, [where she] travels to, etc.”

One benefit of Hollywood’s incursion into fashion (via equity stakes vs. endorsements) might be a more imaginative approach to product development, marketing and retail.

My guess is that we’ll start to see more bleeding between traditional industry verticals as companies reconfigure to cater to an ever more powerful, lifestyle-driven consumer.

(I added a BoL (”business of lifestyle”) page to this blog a few weeks back, in case you missed it).

Safeway creates ‘lifestyle’ markets

While we’re on the tantalizing subject of UK food retailing, here’s another lifestyle tag (also pillaged from today’s Journal):

Safeway Inc. has converted about half of it’s 1,755 stores into ‘Lifestyle‘ markets with wood floors, on-site bakeries and high-end private-label brands… it expects to convert all its stores by 2009.

UK supermarkets seem to be waking up to the fact that humans are a wild and varied species:

Supermarkets “have come to the understanding they can’t put cookie-cutter stores out there anymore,” says Sandra Skrovan, a senior vice president at TNS Retail Forward.

Chalk another one up for empowered consumers.

The Whole Foods lifestyle takes London

Whole Foods is taking London… by storm? We’ll see. Here’s an excerpt from an article in today’s Journal:

“The London site [which opened today] is an 80,000-square-foot space in a landmark art-deco building. It will include an oyster and champagne bar, a sushi and sake bar, as well as a pub, first for Whole Foods… Whole Foods is setting up a large deli counter and American-style salad and soup bars. Downstairs, past two spa-treatment rooms, is a sausage-production room where shoppers can watch the butchers at work.”

Just what I want with my Swedish massage, some soup and sausages!

IBC gives birth to BoL

50 days into the blogging adventure and IBC is splitting into two parts… well, sort of.

IBC will streamline and get more focused to offer resources, connections and inspiration to NYC-based entrepreneurs active in the “business of lifestyle” (BoL).

Bigger picture/more oblique BoL-related postings will now appear on none other than the business of lifestyle, a new wordpress blog. (These things multiply like rabbits.)

The designs of both blogs will morph once I get the structure & flow closer to where it needs to be.

Thanks for your patience. I feel like I’ve been jerking you around a bit with all these changes. But it just wasn’t sitting right, ya know?

I’ll try make up for it.

I got ahead of myself again… a stand-alone BoL blog will have to wait, for now.

Building a lifestyle bridge to consumers

People who work in consumer service businesses are by definition closer to the end-consumer than widget-makers, wholesalers and marketers. They come into contact with their paying consumers, every day, so they have to figure out effective ways to communicate, relate and build trust. I was reminded of this as I read a clip from NYT’s Style Magazine by Christine Muhlke called Faith, Hope and Vanity.

Kevin Mancuso, a New York hairstylist, believes that an important part of winning a client’s trust is builiding a kind of lifestyle bridge [my italics]. He says he looks for common ground to comfort that person, “because when you’re having a hands-on service where someone is touching you, it’s an extremely vulnerable place to be.” … If you don’t come across as one of them, he says, “it’s going to be perceived as, ‘How’s that person going to get my style?’”

This consultative, lifestyle-based approach is one that product companies might consider (possibly via strategic partnerships) as a means to get closer to the consumer and also to begin moving from a flat, product-centric brand to one that is more resonant and experience-driven.

Should luxury and designer brands be getting into the hotel biz?

I often think about how product-centric brands can become more experience-driven to increase brand resonance, consumer loyalty and create growth opportunities in new categories.

So I’ve been watching with interest as luxury and designer brands jump headlong into the hospitality business. All this activity, just in the past few months:

“Swatch Group is getting into the hotel game. The company has formed a venture with China’s Jin Jiang International Hotel Management Co. to purchase the 78-year-old Peace Hotel in Shanghai.” (WWD)

“In the next several years, Bulgari hopes to open three to four more hotels, and is looking at properties in Paris, London, New York, Tokyo and Shanghai, among others.” (IHT)

Lifestyle redux

I’m beginning to question my use of the word “lifestyle”. It sounds so frivolous, or like a construct cooked up by some… marketer!

Apparently, the term first appeared in 1939 when Alvin Toffler “predicted an explosion of lifestyles (”sub cults”) as diversity increases in post-industrial societies.” (Wikipedia).

Since then, the term has flourished as a handy frame of reference for both individuals and the companies marketing to them. Wikipedia defines lifestyle as:

“The way a person (or a group) lives. This includes patterns of social relations, consumption, entertainment and dress. A lifestyle also reflects an individual’s attitudes, values or world view.”

I found a shorter definition that’s easier to hang on to: “the individual expression of life”. I like that one… it’s decidedly about me, and the possibilities seem endless.

The fact that we’re in a position to make choices about how we live is a high-class problem. Not so long ago, people were concerned with survival, shelter and little else.

So where do we go from here, now that we’re swamped with stuff?