Every time I saw the last issue of Time (or was it Newsweek), I almost got sick (literally), because my academic training (Ph.D. from the George Washington University School of Business, admittedly in ergonomics and design/consumer research; not finance or marketing communications) and especially my experience-driven instincts told me that the media are having more fun than they have had in years creating self-fulfilling prophecies.
So now we have an official name for nobody buying anything and corporations twiddling their thumbs...the NEW FRUGALITY. I guarantee you that there will be an exponential increase in the phrase in anything written about marketing, product development, and so forth, academic as well as magazine articles.
Anyway, we are trying to figure out how to change our business message so that the "Nouveau Frugal" don't have us living under a bridge before long.
For us, the challenge is selling our admittedly "non-frugal" User Experience, Design / Design Research, Usability /Egonomics, Consumer Insights and Product Development services to large corporations that are not exactly keeping their collective eyes on the future. Otherwise, we are going to see a lot of new products next year designed by people not qualified to design products, much of this new product development work being out-sourced to cheap (you get what you pay for) off-shore sources. Those of us who have been around awhile know how well that works!
Comments