Book Review: Microtrends ~ The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes

Are you an Impressionable Elite, or a Pampering Parent?
A 30-Winker? One of the Working Retired?
Have you met any Young Knitters or High School Moguls?
Do you know any Wordy Women, or Ardent Amazons?
I'll bet you know a Non-Profiteer...

I've been away for my work for about a week now, a longer stretch than usual, and I've found myself in a bookstore near my hotel nearly every day as a convenient place to be between appointments. On the first day here, I picked up Mark J. Penn's book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes, and found it to be a pretty fascinating read. It's kept me company several times now I have sat at the bookstore's cafe and needed something to page through.

Mark J. Penn is a pollster, and he's the man who identified "Soccer Moms" as a crucial constituency in President Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign. Now he's cultivated his knack for detecting relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture into a very entertaining book which is a mixture of humor and interesting data.

I love trend-spotting. For me trends are behavioral clues to what people value, and how their values may be changing, and in particular I get fascinated with how they affect shifts in workplace preferences. Penn however, makes my fascination with values-driven trends seem like a mere flirtation. In his book he offers up 75 different profiles of the kinds of people we are becoming, essentially saying move over megatrends; the microtrends are more important these days, affecting old "norms" in religion, leisure, politics, technology, work and family life.

How so? Penn claims the numbers prove that only 1% of the [American] public is enough to launch a business or social movement. Makes sense to me; only 1% is roughly 3 million people - I'd go nuts with that many customers in my business, and deliriously happy with far less.

Penn is a numbers and statistics lover, and he points out that most of us aren't, explaining that, "in today's world of the quick post, we increasingly make judgments based on our own world view rather than the underlying facts, which we view as hard to determine." Hmm bloggers, by quick post I think he means us! Penn insists that

"The simple truth is that most of the time we can't see the true patterns of people's lives except through statistics... For most subjects, people rely on a combination of news shows, web sites, magazines, radio, chatter of friends, and their own gut. And given how unscientific almost all of those sources are, most people end up being wrong much of the time about what is actually going on. They are influenced by what looks right, and by what they want to see. They rarely take the time to look at the cold hard facts of what is happening."

So what does he see happening? Here's just a sampling from the book, and I'm sure some of these will sound familiar to you, but maybe not all of them.

• people are retiring, but still working
• geeks are becoming the most social people around
• women are driving technology
• parents think they are strict and tough, but they are more permissive than ever
• our credit is so overextended, going bankrupt is becoming more of a personal finance management tool
• there has been a quiet rise in the Non-Profit Class, making public versus private sector differences seem more and more irrelevant
• for all the greening we preach, we remain gluttons for material possessions
• dads are older, and more involved in their kids lives
• single women are having an increasingly hard time connecting with single heterosexual men
• married couples don't necessarily live together anymore
• people live where they work, and they use virtual tools to keep connected to their families
• we may love numbers, but we hate arithmetic

Again, these are not big generalizations: Penn's intent is to tell us about small but growing groups of people who share intense choices or preferences, often counterintuitive ones. He shines a spotlight on opportunities missed or underestimated by companies, marketers, policymakers, and others. For instance, I thought his book was a goldmine of information for salesmen, retailers and those who would be entrepreneurs.

However I must say Microtrends also disturbed me a little bit, for while the numbers may be telling, Penn does take quite a few liberties with the explanations he offers for them, and there were several instances where I'd be left thinking, this picture is not at all complete. In the end, I just decided I'd enjoy my recognitions and the humor in so much of it.

For more on the author's motivations, visit www.microtrending.com for A Conversation with Mark Penn. When you visit the Amazon.com reviews, many point out that books on trends are doomed to a short shelf life, but I think if you consider the book a catalyst for opportunity knocking you can get much more worth from it than the price you've paid.

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Post author Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business, and she currently writes for Managing with Aloha Coaching, Value your Month, Value your Life. Visit her there, and pick up a feed for your reader. More of the books she has read is on this page: Mana‘o on a Virtual Bookshelf.

And remember, the JJL A Love Affair with Books is coming soon, starting on March 1st!

Comments

[Jen, writer MembershipMillionaire.com]

Sadly, there aren't a lot of people who love statistics and less who are able to interpret them correctly. This sounds like a promising read. I also like knowing about people's behavioral changes. Being able to recognize such patterns can prove to be useful in business ventures.

[dave]

Aloha Rosa! I just put down reading The Popcorn Report by Faith Popcorn, walked over to the computer, checked one e-mail and clicked on your story. The distance between Hawaii and Florida shortens with each day :-) (not to mention that I've come within one impulse the last two times I've been in a bookstore from picking this book up).

I have one comment for Mark Penn's assessment of people and statistics. Perception is reality.

The why and how of a trend spreading has seemingly forever been on my mind's closest book shelf. It all started with The Tipping Point. What causes someone to embrace a product? What causes them to talk about it? How does word get to the connectors about it? How does it spread from there?

I thought the Moleskine trend that spread like wildfire through our online world here a few years ago was pretty neat. But I never felt an inclining of it off line. (other than to see them for sale in the big bookstores). The why of stuff like that is fascinating.

Great topic Rosa. I'll end up getting this book.

[Steve Sherlock]

Gee Rosa, with you spending so much time near a book store that could be dangerous. One, you'll likely come up with multiple options for a review this March. Two, you'll be sure to have read a book one or more of us will want to review this March. Three, if we can keep you away from the computer after you have read a new book, someone else might get a chance to do a review of it. :-)

Thanks for the pointer and keep on exploring. This just added a new book for my growing list to read.

[Emily]

Well, glad you found Microtrends. Sorry you did not see how incredibly banal and trite this book is. Let me direct you and your readers to a review....

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3320/trending_towards_inanity/

and here is just a brief excerpt:

"Mark Penn cannot handle numbers. If this book were turned in as the final to an entry-level statistics class, Penn would not only be failed, but the professor might well retire in shame."

For a nation that enjoys Pop Tarts for breakfast (hey Mark, where is that microtrend?) this book is easily digestible. For people with an IQ above room temperature, the book is...painful.

I enjoy your reviews and applaud your promotion of books and reading, but in this case you sadly missed the mark. (Sorry, Mark.)

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Jen: Statistics probably won't win many votes when it comes to impulsive choices for study, and you can count me among those who struggled to get through my statistics course in college... Now however, I wish I had learned more about interpreting them better than I do, and the statistics teacher who does a great job of sharing statistics how-to will certainly get my applause.

Aloha Dave: Your "perception is reality" take on this is pretty well illustrated through-out Penn's book, for as much as he speaks of "the numbers" as his evidence, we get 75+ instances in which we are left to agree with his analysis of them or not. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't, precisely because as you say, my reality in observing some of these same trends is a bit different.

More serendipity Dave --- The Tipping Point came to mind quite often for me in reading Penn's book, because several times I'd ask myself, but will this [particular trend] really matter, or is it merely interesting?

Aloha Steve: You bring a smile to my face, for I know several of our authors and readers here at JJL are just as *dangerous* as I might be :) How does that song go? If loving [books] is wrong, I don't wanna be right...

Aloha Emily: Call me an author's advocate, for talking about the negatives in books just doesn't appeal to me, and I like books that make it easy for people to talk about our societal influences - in my mind, writing we can question, have a conversation about, and not blindly accept at face value is a great thing and not "painful" at all. The easier they are to read, the better, for in my opinion too many scholarly works entertain the cerebral but do no favors to the education of the vast majority of us.

Now I am not saying that authors should be trite or careless; we should take responsibility for how we influence people. However in reading Ezra Klein's review (thank you for sharing the link) he clearly took Microtrends way more seriously than I did, for while I did write above that "Microtrends also disturbed me a little bit," my final analysis of it was as "a very entertaining book which is a mixture of humor and interesting data." I agree with you and Mr. Klein in that I wouldn't use it as authoritative research: Penn skims each trend he presents and is pretty opinionated, and I think that is very clear to the reader. Personally I feel readers are much more intelligent than Klein gives us credit for.

[Blaine Collins]

Aloha Rosa, Just checking in and found your sharing about Microtrends. Glad for the review and also for the variety of voices that JJL offers, like Emily's contribution, which keeps it real, at least for me.

Tonight, I especially appreciate the fun of the topic. You said, "I'm sure some of these will sound familiar to you..."
Indeed! A few thoughts:

* dads are older, and more involved in their kids lives - LIVING PROOF ... and BOTH CLAUSES ARE UNDERSTATEMENTS!
* parents think they are strict and tough, but they are more permissive than ever - I MAY BE GUILTY, BUT MY SON WOULDN'T AGREE
* for all the greening we preach, we remain gluttons for material possessions - YEAH, BUT ... THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD STOP RECYCLING OR OTHERWISE TRYING TO REDUCE OUR FOOTPRINTS
* people live where they work, and they use virtual tools to keep connected to their families - YES, WORK IS BEST WHEN CLOSE TO HOME, and THANK GOODNESS FOR THE NEW CONNECTION TOOLS; TO ADD, I ALSO SEE A GOOD BIT OF DISTANCE COMMUTING, - IN TOWN FOR 4 DAYS, BACK HOME FOR 3
* our credit is so overextended, going bankrupt is becoming more of a personal finance management tool - SADLY TRUE, AND THAT WAS BEFORE THE HOUSING BUBBLE BURST
* people are retiring, but still working - HAVEN'T THEY ALWAYS?

Keep browsing the bookstores, Rosa. The reviews are appreciated!

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Blaine, you have made my evening! How wonderful to hear from you!

[Dear readers, Blaine is one of our alumni: He was one the founding fathers of JJL and you can still locate his index in our contributors column.]

Mahalo for chipping in to the discussion Blaine, for there IS so much conversation that can be enjoyed within these trends whichever way you debate them, or just have fun with them as you did.

LOVE to the 'Ohana older (but never OLD) Dad :)