What’s Next for an Imperfect World?
[Originally posted on the Huffington Post.] This is the fifth in a series of 14 posts expanding on Salzman’s forecasts for 2013 in her annual trends report, a program of global communications group Havas Worldwide. This year’s book, What’s Next? What to Expect in 2013, was published on 12/12/12 and is available at 120MBooks.com. Salzman [...]
Trendspotting: Weight and See
For a bride with 20 pounds to shed in two weeks flat, the “feeding tube diet” can sound like an answered prayer. Other calorie-counters are administering daily injections of the pregnancy hormone HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), a controversial method that was popular in the ’50s, debunked in the ’60s and is now making its comeback. [...]
Trendspotting: Africa Rising
In March, 77 designers showed at ARISE Magazine Fashion Week in Lagos, Nigeria. In spite of some hiccups—the first two days were canceled because of electricity problems; local models complained about disproportionate pay—the event proved the power of African designs on the high-fashion catwalk. Already, Nigeria has carved itself out as a haven for moviemakers; [...]
Trendspotting: Flying High
Slated to nearly double over the next two decades, the demand for air travel should be enough to add a new, JetBlue-size airline every year, says the FAA. The number of air travelers will grow from 732 million this year to 1.2 billion in 2032, with New York’s John F. Kennedy, Washington’s Dulles, Chicago’s Midway, [...]
Hetail Therapy
This is the third in a series of five. See Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s latest white paper, “Male in U.S.A.,” for more analysis about the state of men in America today. As I continue to do some serious “CSI”-style forensics on gender roles, I’m discovering that—almost a decade after Euro RSCG Worldwide helped introduce metrosexuals [...]
Meet the Gypsetters
After I named ’70s-inspired looks to my “Hot/Not” list for 2011 (they’re going to be hot), a friend pointed me to a beautiful coffee table book called Gypset Style. I love a blended trend term probably more than most people (I’m still hoping my own “Chindia” will take off as much as my “globesity” did), [...]
It’s All a Blur
Today, life is one big blur. At home, my office doubles as art gallery, library and dog playroom. In the kitchen, my palette runs more and more toward fusion (anyone else tried chicken with horseradish and curry?). On vacation in coastal Rhode Island this summer, it wasn’t Hurricane Earl we were worried about but Hurricane [...]
The Power of One
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. There were so many high points of this week’s One Young World summit, which brought nearly 1,000 young people from around the world together in London to address the most challenging issues facing the world today. But if I were asked for one that really stands out, I would say [...]
Social Media Emerges as Community Glue
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. The inaugural One Young World summit that concluded on Wednesday in London wasn’t just a gathering of hundreds of tomorrow’s world leaders. Don’t get me wrong: The energy of the more than 600 delegates from 100-plus countries, the passion of their debates and the progress that their resolutions made toward [...]
Lessons from Legends at One Young World
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. The inaugural One Young World summit under way this week in London is a next-generation Davos: a gathering of hundreds of future leaders from the world’s 192 countries. All under age 30, they’re bringing youthful energy, passion, optimism and creativity to the most challenging issues facing people around the globe [...]
Ten Trends of 20-Somethings
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. With the inaugural One Young World summit kicking off this week in London (my company, Euro RSCG Worldwide, organized it), my thoughts have been focused on the biggest trends among 20-somethings, an increasingly powerful group. In one of my earlier posts, I explained why adults born after 1980 are the [...]
The Power of One Young World
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. Every generation assumes it has been handed the world’s problems because the one that preceded it didn’t quite master the agenda. In the rebellious 1960s, the baby boomers demonstrated noisily against established powers and ideas. But in the case of today’s energetic and engaged twentysomethings—the Real-Time Generation—I think assuming [...]
Generation Real-Time
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. A few years ago I was publicly fretting over the arrival of millennials—young people in the generation after X—in the workplace. I described how these new adults would bring with them a sense of entitlement, a need for constant praise, a habit of multitasking to the point of distraction [...]
How Young People Are Changing the World
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. The opinions of young adults—which today have solidified into values—are not to be ignored. Not only are people in their 20s powerful voices within their communities, but they’re also consumers. These first adults of the millennial generation (roughly, the people born between 1981 and 2000) are bellwethers for a [...]
How Young People Are Changing Multinationals
“Multinational corporations have too much power.” It’s a meme that has been around since the Vietnam era, when bra-burning, festival-going hippies chanted about the evil deeds of “the corporations.” Today, however, it’s no radical fringe expressing the view, and it’s no simplistic view they’re expressing. In the newly released Global Youth Study, 64 percent of [...]
Copenhagen: A Missed Opportunity for the Planet
Copenhagen was a failure. Despite going into it with fairly measured expectations, the agreement, or lack of it, is a massive disappointment and a costly missed opportunity for the planet. What we needed from the Copenhagen summit was a global, binding and fair climate agreement, and we came out of it with none of those [...]
Is It Over Yet?
creativecommons.org/by alancleaver_2000September is a month of reckoning. We just observed two anniversaries that have had a profound effect on the American psyche: the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the fall of Lehman Brothers. While there’s no comparison between the loss of life in 2001 and the loss of wealth in 2008, the recent juxtaposition of [...]
