From the department of “you heard it here first,” a few observations.

First, the personal laptop PC is dead. Not a big insight, really. We all kind of know this with people buying tablet devices, though its basically a zero-sum gain with folks spending their time on one device over another. I’m seeing less and less laptops out in the world; consumer PCs in general are a dying breed. Just look at the recent earnings reports of some of the largest PC manufacturers for hard evidence of category turmoil. At a recent conference I attended I saw exactly two laptops in sessions, along with a smattering of tablets devices and smart phones.

Second, and more importantly, the conference’s rooms were filled with attendees writing on “writing tablets.” Yellow legal pads and blank notebooks such as Moleskine. Most of the people were hand writing! I thought I had been transported back twenty years. I noticed people were not just writing long-hand, but also drawing symbols and related graphical mnemonics to represent information they were taking down. Learning was non-linear and more holisitic using personalized cognitive script. 

On my return to the office, I mentioned this to a colleague and she said lately people in her graduate program at Duke have switched from laptops to paper tablets to take class notes. I find this fascinating. What’s up?

Have we hit a ceiling with electronic devices as information sources? Is the recent proliferation of managing social media returning us to the locus of self in order to process more critical information processing situations? Are we just bored with ‘things?’ Whatever it is, I’m keeping an eye on this…

Television shows tend to follow a cycle.  In the nineties there were several shows with the same concept circling around a group of friends like “Seinfeld, “Friends”, and “Will and Grace” that were popular and thrived in their time.  Then came the forensic crime investigation shows like “CSI”, some of which still air today.  I believe that today we live under two reigns, the mockumentary and the supernaturals.  Between “The Office”, “Modern Family”, “Grimm”, “True Blood”, and “Once Upon a Time”,  the same type of shows dominate networks as well as top the charts for prime-time television.  Shows like “Terra Nova” are too diverse and therefore too distinct for audiences.  I believe this is why most shows see the chopping block.  As viewers, we find a rut and become obsessed with the same type of shows. Maybe one day television will become dominated with pre-historic survival shows and “Terra Nova” might have made the cut.

Check out information on other shows that were cut here.

The Sony SmartWatch is out and links to Sony Android phones (and some others) while on Kickstarter, an E-Paper Watch called the Pebble didn’t just raise the $100,000 it was seeking, it raised over $10 million.

While we’re being inundated with the idea that Smart devices will be everywhere shortly, the idea of adding functionality to the watch (and a new notification screen to the phone) seems like an actual innovation we should have seen long ago. It will be interesting to see how many other seemingly mundane devices will follow.

Upper Class passengers are being served very special ice in the shape of Branson’s head. The new cube was created over six weeks by four designers using detailed photographic techniques and laser scanning technology. An interesting use of this technology, but if you’re going to do something big, might as well do it right.

Luke Miles, head of design for Virgin Atlantic Upper Class says, ”We’re delighted to be able to offer our Upper Class passengers access to the newest, longest bar in the sky, and what better way to celebrate this than giving passengers the opportunity to share a drink with the face of our business?”  Though it’s an odd way to go about it, Virgin Atlantic will definitely be remembered. Though I find it somewhat creepy, I had to add a picture.

The price tag shocked a lot of people, partly because Instagram’s valuation in February 2011 was $20 million with an M, but there is also a large contingent of people who see the service as a novelty. The retro filters and hearts obscure the fact that Instagram is a consumer data gold mine.

Elsewhere and for a measley $200, Matt Richardson has created a device that is a simple illustration of how that sepia toned skyline actually does hold searchable data and maybe why Facebook was willing to pay fifty times Instagram’s previous valuation.

Richardson’s device is the Descriptive Camera. Point, click, and rather than producing an image, the Descriptive Camera prints out a short text description. It uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourced “artificial intelligence” network to produce the text.

The Descriptive Camera is more thought experiment than actual product – it takes five minutes to print each description – but he talks about the possibilities on his website. It’s not hard to see how all of those Instagram photos could be automatically appended with metadata, which Facebook can use to show smarter, more targeted ads.

“As we amass an incredible amount of photos, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage our collections. Imagine if descriptive metadata about each photo could be appended to the image on the fly—information about who is in each photo, what they’re doing, and their environment could become incredibly useful in being able to search, filter, and cross-reference our photo collections. Of course, we don’t yet have the technology that makes this a practical proposition, but the Descriptive Camera explores these possibilities.”

But numbers themselves don’t lie, people do. What’s even worse is when certain numbers are removed wholesale from data sets. You really don’t see this happen in market reseach studies. If so, the data is usually incorrectly defined when collected, and the collection is usually redone. But it sure does happen with the U.S. government. Especially, it seems, with really important numbers they share with the general population. Bellweather benchmarks numbers of how the country is doing.

A great example is the official unemployment rate. Big news nowadays given the sluggish economy; big news in a presedential election year. Up until 1994 reporting was, give or take, a number representing the percentage of those not in school of legal and unretired work age who were unemployed. Then, for whatever reasons, the method for calculating this number was changed, overnight, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They removed what was termed “discouraged workers.”

Take the U.S. unemployment number (chart, right). The red line (U.3) is what the goverment says is going on, the official number that is reported., i.e., the monthly headline number we all read. The gray line (U.6) includes “short-term discouraged workers,” those seeking full-time employment, but only employed part-time, i.e., the ‘under-employed’ that was once only Christmas help and jobs for schoolkids. This number is not included in unemployment statistics, nor is it reported. A big difference. The blue line (SGS) includes “long-term discouraged workers” defined as “those who have looked for work in the past 12 months, but are not currently looking because of real or perceived poor employment prospects,” i.e., those who’ve tried everthing they know, and don’t know what to do. Or, in other words, lots of my freinds who have been out of work for a while. This number is not included in unemployment statistics, nor is it reported. A huge difference that is baffling.

A great place to dig and find the numbers that may better reflect what’s really going is “Shadow Government Statistics.” Sure, it may have a bit of an anti-government conspiratorial tone, but offers food for thought…

Watch Neil DeGrasse Tyson educate Richard Dawkins on the importance of understanding context when “teaching” others. Tyson makes a wonderful point about the difference between information and persuasion.

If you are not familiar, Madewell is J.Crew’s sister company. Madewell embraces a hybrid urban, Americana, chic aesthetic; it’s all gauzy tops, textured patterns, and classic jeans. If I remember correctly, the company made a big splash on the retail scene about 3 years ago and has steadily accrued a crowd of dedicated fans ever since. But Madewell is setting its sights on something larger than urban buzz.

To promote their tailored jeans, Madewell is sending a Pop-Up store to untapped frontiers.To bring the jeans to the people, Madewell has outfitted a 1978 Airstream trailer with a denim bar, a braid bar, and dressing rooms. The trailer is currently on a tour of America, hitting some major cities but also stopping in little towns were no brick and mortar Madewell stores exist. Shoppers are encouraged to hop on board, slip into the perfect jeans and experience the expert quality and cut of Madewell denim.

But here’s the catch: you can’t buy that perfect pair on deck. So what can you do? You can take a picture of yourself in the jeans to post to Facebook, search the area surrounding the trailer for golden tickets, and get a free ‘do at the braid bar. You have to purchase the jeans online or in a store. What a brilliant way to engage consumers through multiple channels: online shoppers get a chance to really experience the jeans with no commitment to purchase; in-store shoppers get the full retail experience but are driven to the website for purchase; and those who have never experienced the Madewell brand are given a personal, customized introduction. Plus with the added social media and in-store incentives, Madewell is committing a grand feat of brand channel cross-pollination. For more information on the Airstream activites click here.

A force of approximately 80-90 million strong in the US, with an estimated $200 billion in purchasing power, Millennials are not an audience to be taken lightly. Understanding Millennial consumers’ mindsets, values, and purchase patterns and behaviors through creative and innovative Millennial-specific market research methodologies is essential to the success of most mainstream brands and products.

Our white paper, W5 on Millennials, outlines key characteristics which affect their attitudes toward and interaction with products and the marketing surrounding them, as well as how W5 approaches gaining a true understanding of how to effectively communicate and connect with them. Here is a snapshot of this force by the numbers:

24% of Millennials say that ‘Technology use’ is what most makes their generation unique, the #1 answer (Pew Research 2010)

50 median number of text messages teenagers send every day (Pew Research 2010)

48% of Millennials who say word-of-mouth influences their product purchases more than TV ads. Only 17% said a TV ad prompted them to buy (Intrepid Study 2010)

47% of 16-to-24-year-olds are employed, the smallest share since government started recording data in 1948 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011)

46% of Millennials say they’ve had vigorous exercise in the past 24 hours

45% of Millennials highly associate their lives with simplicity, compared to 51% of Gen X and 58% of Boomers

44% of Millennials say that marriage is becoming obsolete, compared to 35% of Boomers who feel the same way (Pew Study 2010)

43% of 18-24 year-olds say that texting is just as meaningful as an actual conversation with someone over the phone (eMarketer 2010)

42% of teens say the primary reason they have a cell phone is for texting. Safety was second at 35% (Nielsen Study 2010)

41% of Millennials have made a purchase using their smartphone

40% of Millennials think that blogging about workplace issues is acceptable. Compared to 28% of Boomers (Iconoculture 2011)

39% of Millennials have a tattoo (Pew Study 2010)

38% of Millennials count themselves as Democrats, 28% Independents, 26% Republicans (Brookings Institution Study, March 2011)

35% of employed Millennials have started their own business on the side to supplement their income (Iconoculture 2011)

33% of Millennials live in cities and 14% live in rural environments

32% of Millennials say they don’t like advertising in general, compared to 37% of the general population (Experian Simmons Study)

31 the age of the oldest Millennials in 2011

29% of Millennial workers think work meetings to decide on a course of action are very efficient. Compared to 45% of Boomers (Iconoculture 2011)

28% of Millennials have a gun in their home (Pew Study 2010)

27% approximate decline in email usage among those ages 12-34 over the past year (ComScore Study 2010)

26% of Millennials say they are not affiliated with any religion (Pew Study 2010)

23% of Millennials think they will still be with their first employer after two years (8095 Live survey 2011)

21% of Millennials say helping people in need is one of the most important things in life (Pew Study 2010)

20% of Millennials are Hispanic. Millennials are more racially diverse than any generation before them (U.S. Census Bureau 2011)

19% of Millennials have voted on American Idol (Pew Study 2010)

15% of Americans ages 25-29 who had never been married in 1960, compared to 55% in 2011 (U.S. Census Bureau)

14% of the Millennial population is African-American (Pew Study 2010)

12% (only) of Millennials disagreed that they should pay more for higher quality items (Intrepid Study 2010)

11% of Millennials have boomeranged back to their parents house after graduating from college because of the recession (Pew Study 2010)

8% of 18-29 year-old internet users have used a location sharing service such as FourSquare (Pew Study 2010)

7 average number of jobs a person will have by age 26 (Intrepid Study 2010)

6 # of text message sent by those ages 13-18 every waking hour (Nielsen Study 2010)

4 average number of times that Millennials eat out per week (3.39 per week to be exact), more than any other generation

Looking for a week in Europe this summer? Don’t want to get stuck in overcrowded hotels, cueing for expensive meals served by less then caring staff? Looking to “get away from it all” but meet a cross section of interesting gregarious Europeans? I have the perfect solution, travel to Nowhere.

Set in the northern Spanish wilderness, Nowhere is an arts festival. But it’s quite different than the usual wine and cheese gallery stroll throught Le Marais or a day at the Tate Modern.  Instead, Nowhere is descibed as “an experiment in creative freedom, participation and cash-free community, conceived, built, experienced and returned to nothing by you.” If this intrigues you, you may end up having a very different summer vacation.

A complex, overwhelming methodology for many, segmentation allows you to identify and define those who are likely to benefit from your products and services, while at the same time identifying those who are not viable prospects. (Check out W5 on Segmentation for a comprehensive explanation.) The video opens with a story about Howard Moskowitz and his realization that food categories exist on a horizontal plane rather than a vertical hierarchy.

Howard’s task was the find the perfect level of sweetness to create the perfect Pepsi. While analyzing what seemed to be an endless amount of data, it became clear there would be no nice, clean bell shaped curve determining the ideal level of sweetness. In fact, there was no obvious pattern at all. Instead, there were various sweetness clusters. This lead Howard to his ‘ah ha!’ moment, they had been asking the wrong question. “You have been looking for the perfect Pepsi, you’re wrong. You should be looking for the perfect Pepsis.”

This thinking was so revolutionary that it took Howard a while to actually convince food companies to quit chasing the perfect product and instead chase the perfect products for each of the customer groups. This realization is at the heart of segmentation, and is why there are 52 different types or toothpaste, mustard, water, etc. 

The video goes on to talk about Howard’s big breakthrough with Prego and the discovery of chunky spaghetti sauce (a style that was non-existent at the time, yet preferred by 30% of the market). Prego created their chunky sauce and rapidly stole market share from Ragu and pulled in about 600 million dollars from their chunky sauces.

Segmentation research has never been more valuable. Companies today face an increasingly diverse and growing population, fragmentation of media channels, and a volatile and competitive economy. In this environment, mass marketing is an inefficient option for communicating with consumers. Segmentation is the foundation of marketing. The stronger the foundation, the higher you can build, and the more you can achieve.