Mindshare North America Releases Annual Culture Vulture Trends Report

NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Brands, be warned: consumers are gaming the system, shedding logos, and unbundling more than just TV. Those are just a few of the findings from Mindshare North America's annual Culture Vulture Trends Report, an annual review of the biggest consumer shifts and trends forecast to grow over the next year.

Mindshare NA, the global media agency that is part of WPP, uses a proprietary research approach for Culture Vulture, which includes a survey of 2,000 North American consumers. The report does a deep dive into behavioral trends and insights—with hard data on what people want, the new companies and technologies that are meeting those needs, and how brands can find a role to play.

The full 2015 report, which features advertiser implications and recommendations, can be found here: http://www.mindshareintheloop.com/home/2015/1/26/culture-vulture-2015-trends-report.

A top-line overview of this year's top 10 trends and insights are below.

I. Outsourcing Control: With so many distractions and challenges to impulse control, consumers want brands to help them outsource that control. The percent of Americans who "...would like a trusted company to help simplify my daily life" has increased from 31% in 2012 to 42% today.

II. Sensorialism: One solution to fragmented audiences and split consumer attention this year will be multi-sensorial experiences—psychologists have found that using more of our senses increases engagement and memory of content. From virtual reality to 4D and more, brands can use creative media in new ways to stimulate consumer senses.

III. Internet-Enabled Intimacy: A combination of consumers feeling safer in the world, Millennial trust, and more digital connection has helped technology fuel more intimacy between strangers and friends alike. It's not just about social media; more and more tech is letting people physically share information and feelings from afar.

IV. Age of Shallow Knowledge: A third of Americans feel pressure to stay up to date on the latest news, but don't have time to read all the articles they want. To cope with that, people skim the surface. 47% of Americans "prefer to browse the headlines rather than read detailed information."

V. Marketing Is A Game: More and more consumers have grown savvy to everyday marketing tactics, and now they're gaming the system. For instance, 31% say "when shopping online, I'll intentionally leave items in a 'shopping basket' in hopes of receiving a discount from the store..."

VI. Unbundled: Consumers are unbundling more than just TV. As people expect more products and services tailored to their needs, unbundling is extending into technology, auto, food, and more—consumers are customizing what they want, and leaving the rest behind.

VII. Rise of Good Intentions: Not only do people want to contribute to good causes, they also want to make their good intentions widely known online (think the Ice Bucket Challenge, #givingtuesday, and more).

VIII. New Narratives: A smarter, more educated consumer means a growing market for content with more substance. Different narrative approaches are trending too – witness the shifting character perspectives in the movie Gone Girl and the TV show The Affair.

IX. The New Conspicuous Consumption: Consumers are changing how and what they say about themselves with the products they buy. And the appetite for wearing big logos is waning—36% of U.S. consumers say they dislike wearing brand logos of any kind.

X. The Long Tail of Commerce: Commerce is changing in deep and profound ways. It's not just the rise of mobile payments—think drone delivery, 3D printing, and a consumer base that seems unaffected by the recent spate of data hacks among the likes of Target, eBay, and Home Depot.

Culture Vulture is Mindshare's global cultural trends program that sets out to identify macro and micro trends that impact the marketing and communications strategies of the agency's clients.  The North American version utilizes a Mindshare proprietary survey, Mindshare's proprietary network of "leading edge" consumers in cities across North America, and third party resources (including government data, syndicated sources and behavioral data).

For more consumer trends and insights throughout the year, check out Mindshare NA's accompanying Culture Vulture video series.

ABOUT MINDSHARE 
Mindshare is a global media agency network with billings in excess of US$31.4 billion (source: RECMA). The network consists of more than 7,000 employees, in 116 offices across 86 countries spread throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.  Each office is dedicated to forging competitive marketing advantage for businesses and their brands based on the values of speed, teamwork and provocation. Mindshare is part of GroupM, which oversees the media investment management sector for WPP, the world's leading communications services group. Visit us at mindshareusa.com or MindshareInTheLoop.com and follow us on Twitter @mindshare_NA and facebook.com/MindshareNA.

ABOUT GROUPM 
GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom and Maxus, as well as Xaxis and Catalyst. Our primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP's media communications agencies on behalf of our clients, our stakeholders and our people by operating as a parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients and our companies. Discover more about us online at www.groupm.com.

CONTACT:
Julie Gomstyn
Associate Director
Mindshare North America
[email protected]  
212-297-7148

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150126/171287

SOURCE Mindshare North America

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