Hipsters Will Save Our Economy
In a rather striking article this week, Forbes recognizes hipsters as possibly the one demographic group that’s still happily consuming, at least in the retail sector. The article argues that while hipsters – here very broadly defined – might not make a lot of money now, they are a huge, powerful consumer group, and marketing dollars spent to capture them now will likely pay off in the future. Not to mention the fact that, even today, retailers which cater to the “creative class” are thriving while the rest of the retail industry struggles:
The gaming world merged with reality this week at the Paris auto show with the unveiling of the GTbyCITROËN. The sportscar is the first ever car to be specifically designed to bring the virtual and real worlds together. The French car maker partnered with Polyphony Digital Inc, the creators of the Gran Turismo series to stretch their creative vision.The exterior design of the car is a modern look at a racing coupe. The concept uses sharp body lines and dynamic shapes to communicate performance and speed. In the game version the car is powered by a zero emission fuel cell and electric drivetrain. There’s no word on if the physical prototype runs. For now the ‘Citroën GT’ represents one automaker embracing the gaming world and testing out how to potentially integrate it into product development.
Photomake is a very cool web service that will translate line drawings into solid objects. Like a 2 dimensional version of Shapeways, the site makes it really easy to create unique objects. All you have to do is draw something, scan it – or even take a photo of it, upload it to the site, and in a few days you’ll have a custom item. They offer a bunch of different subsrtes including 17 different colors of acrylic, styrene and plywood. People have been making all kinds of interesting objects with photomake, like jewelery, furniture and art sculptures.
Why Microsoft’s Gates/Seinfeld Went Viral and ‘I’m a PC’ Ads Didn’t
According to Visible Measures, which charts online video viewing trends and has measured the videos associated with Microsoft’s $300 million ad campaign, the Seinfeld/Gates ads are squashing the “I’m a PC” ads by a margin of 4.3 million viral video views. Both ads had about equal video placements (about 75 each). Visible Measures points out that while the Seinfeld/Gates clips came out two weeks earlier than the “I’m a PC” ads, Seinfeld/Gates drew twice as many viewers their first week in market than the PC ads did. After two weeks in market, Visible Measures says, “Seinfeld/Gates was still collecting more than 700,000 views per day, while the ‘I’m a PC’ clips had tapered off to less than 50,000 views per day.” Why might this be? Microsoft sparked a dialogue in the Seinfeld ad that isn’t there in PC ads.
Now a neuromarketing study finds that viewers aren’t zoning out, but actually pay attention to ads when hitting their fast-forward button. “Our conclusion was that people don’t skip ads,” said Carl Marci, cofounder and CEO of Innerscope Research. “They’re just processing them differently.”
October 13, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Thanks for the tip on Photomake
February 5, 2009 at 4:18 am
so true about hipsters and the economy! people always ask me how hipsters get hooked up with all this free booze and shit. i tell them it’s because retailers know that hipsters are the trendsetters of mainstream culture… so whatever hipsters are buying, the suburban teenager hanging out at the mall will probably want to buy eventually too.