NEWSWIRE: 5/23/17
- Toy stores are selling out of “fidget spinners,” devices that restless children can use to keep their hands occupied. It’s fitting that this toy is exploding in popularity among the very generation that has sent youth ADHD rates skyrocketing in recent years. (CNN)
- More Boomers are joining aging-in-place “villages” that connect active seniors. While previous generations used these villages for their services (like finding a ride to the supermarket), Boomers are now using them for the social component (like finding a bike-riding group or a wine-tasting buddy). (The Washington Post)
- NH: "Intentional communities" are a big Boomer retirement theme. Utterly unlike the old "senior citizen" communities of their parents, these have old-fashioned names ("villages"), encourage members of all ages to join, allow for various levels of membership (no one-size-fits-all), and stress culture, new-age exercise, and haute cuisine in their activities.
- Mars now earns $100 million annually from its “Home Delights” line of wet dog food featuring dishes, like beef stroganoff, that look and smell like human food. These appetizing entrees are designed for today’s pet owners who consider their furry friends part of the family. (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: The "humanization" of pet food is helping to drive huge revenue growth in the pet care industry. (See our note: "The Next Big Thing: Pet Care: The Four-Legged Bull Market.") One Purina food designer created a cat food pâté with brilliantly complementary colors. When told that cats are color blind, he responded: “Dogs and cats don’t push the grocery cart down the aisle--their owners do.”
- Columnist Laura Miller rereads Douglas Coupland’s Generation X and muses about the eponymous generation. Even after all these years, Generation X’s signature traits of cynicism, irony, and melancholy still ring true. (Slate)
- NH: In his new book Bit Rot, Coupland is still inventing neologisms, like “detroitus” (“the fear of Michigan”) and “ebulliophobia” (“the fear of bubbles”). I know, I know, these aren't quite up to the memorable Couplandisms of his original book, like "McJobs" and "bleeding ponytails." Bill Strauss and I wrote a book about young Xers--13th-Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail--that came out around the same time (1993).
- Fully 34% of Millennials will use virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa this year—making them the heaviest users by generation. For Millennials who are used to asking their parents or turning to the Internet for help, virtual assistants are just another practical tool to help them with everyday tasks. (eMarketer)
- Some YouTube personalities are seeing their ad revenue plummet by as much as three-quarters despite their video traffic remaining unchanged (or even growing). The unexpected drop, which has hit niche performers hardest, could be traced to anything from less cash in the system to brands being more selective about which content to sponsor. (The New York Times)
- NH: Falling revenue is rarely due to inadequate quality of content. Look at PewDiePie: More mindless than ever, but this logorrheic Swede still makes over $15 million a year. Rather it is often due to advertiser concerns over "brand safety," the fear that viewers may be seeing their ads on less-than-savory videos. This has caused Google to re-jiggle the filters and algorithms by which they pay for content.
- Australian millionaire Tim Gurner told Millennials struggling to save for a home to stop splurging on avocado toast and coffee, a comment that was not well received by young people. Millennials were quick to point out that their biggest fixed costs—rent, student loan payments, and health insurance—have nothing to do with brunch. (The Washington Post)
- NH: "Let them eat cake," famously misattributed to Marie Antoinette, now has competition: "Let them not eat avocado toast," coined by perhaps the richest Aussie Millennial (age 34, net worth roughly half a billion).
- Contributor Ben Sasse, parent of three young children, offers several tips for parents who want to raise self-reliant kids. While much of Sasse’s advice touches on important themes, Millennials are already displaying many of the characteristics that he addresses (“embrace the pain of work” and “become truly literate,” for instance). (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: Sasse also points out revealing new Millennial habit of turning the word "adult" in a verb--as in "I'm #adulting this evening...paying all my bills." To the amazement of Boomers, who once delighted in discovering their inner child, Millennials take pride in finding their inner grown-up.
- Contributor Zoe Strimpel is not surprised that Boomers are outdrinking Millennials as they enter old age. She makes a solid point: Boomers’ repressed childhoods resulted in decades of party-hardy behavior; Meanwhile, Millennials’ sheltered childhoods resulted in tame (and sober) behavior. (The Telegraph)
- Fully 38% of Millennials with a significant other say that the current political environment has had a negative impact on their relationship, higher than the national average (29%). Many optimistic Millennials undoubtedly struggle to find common ground with partners who support the divisive commander-in-chief. (Wakefield Research)
DID YOU KNOW?
A (Manmade) Diamond is Forever. The gemstone industry is at a crossroads. Consultancy Bain estimates that global diamond production will peak in 2019. Meanwhile, legions of Millennials are waiting longer to get married—if they ever do. But this generational shift brings with it ample opportunities for ring-makers. Among Millennials who are getting married, many are eschewing diamond-laden engagement rings for ones featuring cheaper, stylish colored stones like garnet. Some Millennials are enlisting the help of companies like Diamond Foundry, a San Francisco startup that creates manmade diamonds. These artificial stones check all the boxes for young buyers: They are conflict-free, “Pinterest-perfect,” atomically indistinguishable from natural diamonds, and as much as 40 percent cheaper than the real thing. In the words of 30-year-old Melissa Mock, whose boyfriend proposed with a manmade stone, “I want to know that my makeup isn’t full of toxins, my clothing wasn’t made by children, and my food is free of pesticides…So of course, I wanted to know about the origins of my diamond.”
