Research Chefs Association is the leading professional community for food research and development. Its members are the pioneers of the discipline of Culinology - the blending of culinary arts and the science of food. I recently attended their conference on the Future of Food, where...
I have been busy with SXSW lately and taken a pretty long break from writing. Unlike so many in the professional and personal blogosphere I'm too overwhelmed with sessions, pitches and expos at SXSW that I can't really find "the thing" that broke out or defined the...
The only other generational topic receiving as much attention as the young Generation Z or Homeland generation is the Millennial parenting cohort raising them. Still held back in life by economic setbacks and lengthy educations, Millennials are nonetheless a family-loving generation and will eventually go for the...
In America there is a sweeping shift in values towards more family diversity and we are starting to see this reflected in commercials for consumer goods. The shift reflects cohort changes (effects isolated to single generations) as well as period effects (change over time in an entire population)....
Haul videos is the latest craze in You Tube videos. It's pretty much the internet equivalent of girls chatting about their latest shopping loot.
I decided to write a post on haul videos for three reasons. For one thing they signal the confluence of various trends that interest me as a futurist, which I will dwell on in this post. Secondly, when I don't write I work with user generated content for Bazaarvoice, so I see the enormity of consumer reviews on a daily basis. Thirdly, I have a preeteen daughter and have seen the pull these girl created instructional videos have on her and her friends. Personally I think these You Tube hits look incredibly boring and don't quite see the allure, but in a world saturated with advertisement and questionable forms of consumer seduction, I see this as the equivalent of the trusted older cousin coming back to show her finds after a shopping spree. Very innocuous in other words.
Do you have a tween at home? A kid grown tired with your pre-packaged, PG rated stuff, yet who’s still too young to be allowed to choose products and entertainment for themselves? Well, guess what – they’re making their own choices and you’re not the only...
Generational experts Strauss and Howe argue that the kids from the Silent generation (born 1924 -1942) were the most gender-polarized in the 20th century until they became radicalized in the early 1960s. From Shirley Temple's sausage curls to eerie robotic wives in their squeaky clean Stepford homes, girls and women fit neatly into the gender stereotypes until they rebelled against them as grown women.
So how did the princess business become so successful half a century later? After an era when de-genderization of toys was the ruling meme among early childhood advocates, feminists and savvy parents, the toy distributors got busier than ever dividing up their stores into pink isles and blue isles.
