Microtrends

Does your humanities council try to spot trends? It’s an enjoyable exercise and often relevant to our constant quest for audiences and constituents.

I’ve been reading Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes by Mark J. Penn (2007). It’s based on the idea that 1% of the American population equals 3 million people, enough to be a viable market. Penn describes 75 of these trends, and you can pick and choose the ones you want to read about. For example, as humanities councils we might be interested in Social Geeks, Wordy Women, Non-Profiteers, Neo-Classicals, or America’s Home-Schooled. I myself will admit to membership in Caffeine Crazies and Powerful Petites.

But let me mention two microtrends I found especially intriguing: Long Attention Spanners and Impressionable Elites. The first microtrend suggests that while Americans’ attention spans may be shrinking, there is a segment of the population that wants and requires “more depth, more information, real answers to more of life’s questions.” For example, the best-selling books in 2005 were more than 100 pages longer than ten years before, according to Penn. (By the way, I counted—the Harry Potter series totals 4,100 pages.)

As for that second trend, Penn posits that the “elite,” which he defines as the wealthiest and best educated of our society, are the folks most easily swayed by the cult of personality. The “masses” (er, non-elites?) care more about addressing the issues, for they have more to gain and lose. Now a Clinton strategist, could Penn have predicted the demographics of his own political future?