Connecting more, faster with more gratification - the internet mapping project.
Trendwatchers ahoy! According to the main port of call for future stuff - Trendwatching, apparently we’re currently steaming through a sea of “NOWISM”. Good grief , er… what? Well Trendwatching defines this as:
NOWISM | “Consumers’ ingrained lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”
In our society, where it’s taken for granted that our basic needs are met, our focus is increasingly on hyper-speed convenience, freeing us up to hunt down more and more fullfilling or extreme experiences. We can’t be bothered to walk into town to do our shopping, but we think nothing of stag weekends in New York or diving in the Maldives. And this whirl of instant gratification is being turbo charged by the our constant participation in the internet and mobile communication. Being plugged in is training our minds to want results within milliseconds and expect endless upgrade treats and shiny new goodies to delight us daily.
This has some interesting repercussions for future products. No longer do we collect things, paying special attention to quality or maintainability. Today’s customers want things now, and are be bored of them 2 or 3 months later when the next upgrade comes round. Will tomorrow’s customer’s interest span be compressed still further, or will there be a backlash – a wish to return to longevity and stability? There is an obvious tension between all of this manic gratification and the environment and I suspect that we’ll continue to go faster whilst harking back to slower days. The cleverest company will be able to square the these things in a way that gives people quality with long term relationship combined with good ongoing experiences in a guilt free way. Like Apple, but greener.
So in summary then, what does it all mean? All this online info-lust and instant commerce… will we all become “Now-ists” enslaved to the Chinese Government? Or will we make it through to a brave new sustainable “Later-ism” when we can all settle down afterwards with a nice book? Why not take a few seconds to delve into the phenomenon of NOWISM with this excellent an informative briefing by Trendwatching – and then come back and tell us what you think…
