How Companies Learn Your Secrets. Flexible Dwelling That Adapts With Your Changing Lifestyle. International food chain Dunkin’ Donuts has recently announced a multi-year advertising agreement with NBA star LeBron James to endorse its products in China. In addition to the sweet glazed treats, the company will also introduce savory shredded pork donuts to cater to local tastes. Nigel Travis, CEO at Dunkin’ Brands Group, explained that: Donuts are a very flexible product. You can do savory donuts, you can do donuts with shredded pork – that’s in China. We also have a range of other savory products that we have been testing and introducing country by country. Currently, Dunkin’ Donuts has over 150 stores in China and plans to open another 100 stores in the next two to three years. Both LeBron James and pork-flavored dough treats seem to be highly popular among the general population in China, and could be a winning combination for Dunkin’ Donuts.
Dunkin’ Donuts. Sustainability in Hair Care. S 12 Consumer Trends for 2012. Introduction | This year, much as in previous years, some brands may be staring into the abyss, while others will do exuberantly well. And while we can’t offer any help to defaulting nations or bankrupt companies, we do believe that there are more opportunities than ever for creative brands and entrepreneurs to deliver on changing consumer needs.
From Canada to Korea. Hence this overview of 12 must-know consumer trends (in random order) for you to run with in the next 12 months. Onwards and upwards: In 2012, department stores, airlines, hotels, theme parks, museums, if not entire cities and nations around the world will roll out the red carpet for the new emperors, showering Chinese visitors and customers with tailored services and perks, and in general, lavish attention and respect. Read RED CARPET in full (including examples from Hilton, Starwood and Harrods) Read DIY HEALTH in full (including examples from Jawbone, Ford and Lifelens) Will coins and notes completely disappear in 2012?
Re-framing well-being « The Futures Company. Futures_Perspectives_(Reframing_well-being)_020712.pdf. The Fate of Civic Education in a Connected World. News Centre. S 12 Consumer Trends for 2012. Expect crowd-based problem solving to fuel endless innovations in 2012, especially as for consumers, contributing will be more effortless than ever.
In 2012, count on the crowdsourcing trend to continue to shake up business processes and spawn endless innovations. After all, being given a chance to contribute, or to be a part of something bigger than themselves, will be forever popular with people. However the reality is that most consumers- while they might want to contribute- find that it’s too difficult or too much hassle. Which is why you can expect to see more IDLE SOURCING initiatives in 2012: products and services that make it downright simple (if not effortless) to contribute to anything, from pinpointing roads in need of repairs to finding signs of extraterrestrial life. Two IDLE SOURCING examples that show the way:
The Higher Education Bubble Begins To Burst. The Higher Education Bubble Begins To Burst Check out this New York Times article on the beginning of the bursting of the higher education bubble. In the 2012-2013 school year enrollment in for-profit and community colleges dropped. Now enrollment in 4 year non-profit colleges has begun dropping too. A Wall Street Journal article makes similar points. Some colleges will close. Others will shrink. The prestige racket will claim fewer victims. The number of kids turning 18 has begun to contract. I expect to a substantial shift toward online learning in order to save costs, speed up education, and get far greater convenience.
The rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs) will let most students watch higher quality lectures than they can watch at which ever university they attend. Most print newspapers in the States have only a five-year life span | Media. Most print newspapers in the United States will be gone in five years according to a new academic study. The report, Is America at a digital turning point? , is due to be released next month by the University of Southern California's Annenberg centre for the digital future. But the centre's director, Jeffrey Cole, has released its highlights, which are based on 10 years of studies.
He says: "Circulation of print newspapers continues to plummet, and we believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium – the largest and the smallest. " He argues that only four major American dailies will continue in print form: the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. At the other extreme, local weekly newspapers may still survive. Cole says: "The impending death of the American print newspaper continues to raise many questions. Will media organisations survive and thrive when they move exclusively to online availability? Save Food from the Fridge by Jihyun Ryou. Although we seem to think and talk about food almost constantly, do we really know how best to preserve it or do we leave this responsibility to technology?
Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Jihyun Ryou feels we no longer understand how to treat food. Her Save Food from the Fridge project involves placing certain foods on a group of "knowledge shelves" outside the fridge. Perhaps through a better relationship with our food we may be able to waste less and conserve more energy. The ethylene gas produced by apples keeps potatoes from sprouting. And by removing the apples from other produce, the other fruits and vegetables do not over-ripen quickly. Storing root vegetables vertically keeps them fresher longer. The glass funnel is used to keep the sand moist. The umpteen tiny holes on the surface of an eggshell allows odors from other foods to be absorbed, so keeping them out of the fridge will ensure their tastiness. + savefoodfromthefridge.blogspot.com.
251na2. Lloyds takes back £2m of bonuses paid to executives. 20 February 2012Last updated at 14:44 Lloyds is the first UK bank to reduce bonuses following a worse-than-expected performance Lloyds Banking Group has confirmed it is cutting £2m from bonuses paid to 13 executives, including the former chief executive Eric Daniels. Mr Daniels will lose £580,000 after his original £1.45m bonus was cut by 40%. Bonuses for another four directors will be cut by £190,000 to £260,000, while a further eight executives will receive about £100,000 less. They are being penalised for the bank's mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI). In theory, PPI covered repayments if borrowers were unable to keep them up, promising help during illness or unemployment, but in many cases, those taking out the policies would not have been eligible to claim on them. Lloyds has been forced to set aside £3.2bn to cover compensation for those customers who were mis-sold PPI.
The cut will be made by reducing the amounts already awarded in deferred shares. Results. SimCity and Urban Planning/Natural Disasters. A key aspect of planning, both in real life urban planning, and in SimCity, is natural disasters. Natural Disasters in real-life Urban Planning[edit] Many cities are constructed in places subject to flood, storm surges, extreme weather or war. City planners can cope with these. If the dangers can be localized (for flood or storm surge), the affected regions can be made into parkland or greenbelt, often with lovely results. Another practical method is simply to build the city on ridges, and the parks and farms in valleys. Extreme weather, flood, war or other emergencies can often be greatly mitigated with secure evacuation routes and emergency operations centers.
These are relatively inexpensive and unobtrusive, and many consider them a reasonable precaution for any urban space. Many cities also have planned, built safety features, such as levees, retaining walls, and shelters. Some planning methods might help an elite group to control ordinary citizens. Natural Disasters in SimCity[edit] 276na5. The Oil Silo Home: A Vision For Post-Petroleum Living. When Eric Tan and his partners in the architecture collective PinkCloud set out to design a sustainable living space, they knew they wanted to avoid new construction. So they started looking for existing structures that could be repurposed. “We set out to find an object that was abundant, large enough to fit a few families, and available for cheap,” says Tan. The result is the Oil Silo Home. According to Tan’s estimate, there are 49,000 spherical oil silos at refineries worldwide.
They’re currently used to store liquefied petroleum gas. Each Oil Silo Home is divided into three separate units--one designed for a young couple, another for a family of four, and a “multigenerational” unit for six. PinkCloud designed the Oil Silo Home to create more energy than it uses, with solar panels, natural lighting, and passive heating and cooling. If the idea seems far-fetched, well, perhaps it is. The Gaming-For-Good Trend [Need To Know: SXSWi] As we all begin to look forward to the interactive section of South By South West in March, PSFK has identified five key trends that readers should be monitoring during the festival. One of these trends, we have coined ‘Gaming-For-Good.’ Fueled by the ability to connect and gather players from across the world and motivate them to participate by injecting competitive aspects and rewards into structured play, games are growing up and being seen as agents of change.
The ability to scale enables these platforms to prompt positive action and overcome challenges on both an individual and societal level with implications for a growing number of areas from science and medicine to education and the environment. Whether improving health, fundraising for charity or solving previously unsolvable problems, games are encouraging personal and social good.
One pertinent example of this trend that continues to come up in our research is ‘Using Gaming To Leverage Collective Manpower.’ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Jane McGonigal shows how games make us resilient | Geek Gestalt. AUSTIN, Texas--If you want to lose weight or overcome the effects of asthma, Jane McGonigal thinks she has a solution you might not have considered: a game. At the South by Southwest festival here this week, the world-famous game designer formally launched her latest project, SuperBetter, a project that is designed to help players attack any of a wide variety of personal challenges. It's not a quick fix. McGonigal and her team built the game with a sense of reality: nothing important happens overnight. But commit to taking on challenges, and a game like SuperBetter can help just about anyone tackle issues that have cowed them for years. For McGonigal, SuperBetter is not just an intellectual exercise. And return from the injury she did, not only to her blossoming career as a leading designer of intricate social, multiplayer games but to writing--she penned the bestseller "Reality is Broken"--and to launching a startup built around her new creation.
That's really cool. 7 Gamification Predictions for 2012. Conventional wisdom has it that sales people love competition. They want a challenge, beat their friends and colleagues, and be on top of the leaderboard. And sales managers constantly use carrots and competition, because this is what “motivates" sales agents.
But is this true? We know that sales reps have to make money for the company. . #1 Competition is the opposite of collaboration. When we consider the reason why we start companies, it’s because together we can achieve more than as individuals. . #2 Only a handful of people compete. If you’ve used competition in the past, have you also crunched the numbers? Want to limit aggression? Practice self-control! Public release date: 8-Mar-2012 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Lucy Hydelhyde@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300Association for Psychological Science Feeling angry and annoyed with others is a daily part of life, but most people don't act on these impulses.
What keeps us from punching line-cutters or murdering conniving co-workers? Self-control. A new review article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines the psychological research and finds that it's possible to deplete self-control—or to strengthen it by practice. Criminologists and sociologists have long believed that people commit violent crimes when an opportunity arises and they're low on self-control. A psychological scientist can deplete someone's self-control by telling the subject they're not allowed to take one of the cookies sitting in front of them.
. [ Print | E-mail AAAS and EurekAlert! Review of ConsumerShift. The most important change happening in the minds of consumers today is a shift towards post-modern values systems. ConsumerShift is a comprehensive cartography of the emerging consumer psyche. Andy Hines notes five key themes at the core of these changes -- Authenticity, Connection, Anti-Consumerism, Self-Expression, and Enoughness.
Consumers in the emerging new culture increasingly view their purchases to be a form of self-expression and a reflection of their personal values. Perhaps the most impressive element of the book is the range of intellectual frameworks that Hines incorporates to develop a meta-model of client psychology. ConsumerShift touches on over two dozen different theoretical models in understanding consumer values and psychology.
This breadth can be a bit overwhelming at times, but it also confirms that Hines has done his homework. Hines’ clearest contribution is the New Dimensions Values Inventory. Engaged Consumers: Shifting from a passive to active orientation. How Whole Foods Became The Luxury Brand Of Millennials. America’s definition of luxury is changing. Quiet, exclusive, and socially pedigreed extravagance is giving way to a new generation of affluent consumers (read: Millennials) who have grown up with a new definition of luxury that will forever change the way we market upscale goods. As the founder of Pavone, an integrated ad agency that specializes in food and beverage marketing, I’ve had the chance to observe these changes up close and personally.
The trend is especially relevant to me because it seems to have become most distinctive in the food and beverage industries. As a Baby Boomer, luxury is about designer labels and rarefied retail temples like Neiman Marcus. These outlets are full of lithe, headless mannequins, invisible cash registers, and generically attractive retail associates who all adopt the same quiet and impossibly dignified manner.
Whole Foods’ retail model has turned this blueprint on its head by reinventing the way well-heeled consumers think about upscale goods. FuturistSpeaker.com – A Study of Future Trends and Predictions by Futurist Thomas Frey. Hayley Shaw (TheRiskExchange) sur Twitter.