5 Behavioral Needs Brands Must Understand About Their Customers

In 2012, brands are so caught up in catching up to the digital age that they can easily lose sight of the fact that they are working to meet their customers’ most basic needs. Despite the fact that brands are now communicating through blogs, videos and social media, the simple goal of reaching consumers and selling products or services remains unchanged. Both brands and consumers can benefit when brands tap into the 5 basic human needs.
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Going Solo: How Living Alone Is Breeding Enlightened Consumers

Earlier this year, The Atlantic published an article that asked, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The title was attention getting right? That, coupled with the commentary about the negative effects of social technology on brain, led me to think about how technology would affect societal breakdowns ??– impacting the ways in which we live and beginning to alter our cultural values.
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Leveraging Digital Subculture To Track Gen Y Consumer Trends

Digital tracking is my job as a forecaster, as well as monitoring the movement of each subculture and the sources that influence them. I find that most of my time is spent analyzing the movement of these subcultures from a digital point-of-view. Understanding these digital subculture groups and focusing on every aspect of their lifestyle includes monitoring their digital engagement with music, brands, events and followers. Fashion is a form of identity; through digital tracking of the American subcultures we have found the trends-to-watch.
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How Luxury Brands Create Connected Retail Environments

During L2 Think Tank’s “Commerce: E, M and F” session, Donald Chesnut, Chief Experience Officer, SapientNitro presented a talk on “Connected Retail: Optimizing the Customer Experience from Attraction to Transaction.” As the web and consumers evolve, the lines between the physical and digital are increasingly blurred, they’re either being enhancing one another or distracting from one another.
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10 Tips For Brands To Reach Online Consumers

For many fashion start-ups, traction is often the biggest challenge in the early stages of digital branding. To serve some advice for reaching consumers, Third Wave Fashion and sister group OS Fashion co-hosted an NYC meetup featuring a handful of the brightest marketing minds. Below are the top 10 tips for executing the best digital marketing strategy for your company.
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The Future Laboratory Publishes U.K. Consumer Study

Before you create a marketing strategy, you need to understand the consumers you are trying to reach. U.K.-based management consultancy The Future Laboratory published its latest Consumer Attitudes Audit in June, which surveys U.K. consumers to uncover new trends and consumer behavior. Prepared by its research division, Future Poll, the team questioned 2,000 U.K. citizens about a wide range of topics that affect spending decisions, including:
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Video: How To Identify Digital and Tech Trends

Video: How Wired magazine identifies digital and tech trends

There are so many amazing conferences these days that it’s impossible to attend every one. So far this year, there’s been SXSW, Innovation Summit, Mashable Connect, Lucky FABB and “Disruptive by Design,” Wired magazine’s first-ever conference, held in New York City on May 1. The publication “gathered a dynamic audience of today’s thought-leaders for groundbreaking discussions on disruptive business practices, ideas, and innovations.”
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5 Truths of the Digital African-American Consumer

Did you know that there are 27 million African Americans online, spending an average of 32 percent of their time online with buying power expected to exceed $1.2 trillion dollars in 2012?

In May 2011, Google partnered with GlobalHue and Ipsos OTX MediaCT to conduct proprietary research in the African American market. They collectively designed and implemented a study that look closely at the online consumption patters of American American consumers. The research that resulted, was the “5 Digital Truths of the African American Consumer.”
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