What does it all mean?

Life is change, as is marketing. While job searching, I stumbled upon some compelling, and worrisome, market research* proving we live in exponential times:

• So, you’re “one in a million”? There are 1,300 people just like you in China; 1,100 in India.
• China and India have more honors kids than we have kids. 25% of the Chinese population with the highest IQ’s is greater than the total population of North America. In India, it’s the top 28%.
• China will soon become the largest English-speaking country in the world.
• If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China, China would still have a labor surplus.
• The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38. 1 out of 4 workers today has been employed by the same company for less than one year; more than 1 out of 2 for less than five years.
• The top 10 jobs forecasted for 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. We’re preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that haven’t been invented to solve problems we don’t know we have.
• The U.S. is 20th in the world in broadband Internet penetration. (Luxembourg just passed us.) The 100 million video streams watched DAILY on YouTube.com consume as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000!
• There are 2.7+ billion searches on Google each month. Who did we ask B.G. (Before Google)?
• More than 3,000 new books are published, DAILY.
• The amount of new technical information doubles every 2 years and will
  double every 72 hours by 2010.
• Predictions further out than 15 years are difficult. But, by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.

What does it all mean . . . to marketers?

24/7, we’re emailing, texting, IMing, blogging, forum- and wiki-posting, multi-tasking, outsourcing, ignoring print for online news, reading e-magazines, becoming virtual employees and virtual people (Second Life). Our kids are virtual junkies (Webkinz, Club Penguin with 7 times the traffic of Second Life), shopping online, conducting e-commerce via our mobile devices.
We’re guerilla reporters and videographers. Our social networking is getting niche-ier.

Our work is moving into non-ad activities such as promotions and public relations with the intent to deliver more targeted audiences. Search engine algorithms have changed, including image and video. We’re ALL about “buzz”, viral, WOM marketing.

What does it all mean?

Employee surveys (and social networks) corroborate our basic human needs to: define and redefine ourselves; be recognized for our achievements; seek and provide help to others; find and connect with others "just like me"; validate what we say and do matters.

Marketing, and life, is gridlock, noise, chaos today. So much content (relevant or not), and so little time. I have “socialnetworkitis” (who needs that many MySpace friends, anyway?).

Engagement is key. The more technologically-advanced and fast-paced we become, the more the human race craves the “human touch”, virtually or actually. Marketers beware!


* "Shift Happens", by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod, http://mgblankenship.blogspot.com/2007/12/shift-happens-did-you-know.html