Product Description

"The ideas in his book will help you see the world in a new way."-Bill Clinton


"Mark Penn has a keen mind and a fascinating sense of what makes America tick, and you see it on every page of Microtrends."

-Bill Gates

In 1982, readers discovered Megatrends.

In 2000, The Tipping Point entered the lexicon.

Now, in Microtrends, one of the most respected and sought-after analysts in the world articulates a new way of understanding how we live.

Mark Penn, the man who identified "Soccer Moms" as a crucial constituency in President Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, is known for his ability to detect relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture-microtrends that are wielding great influence on business, politics, and our personal lives. Only one percent of the public, or three million people, is enough to launch a business or social movement.

Relying on some of the best data available, Penn identifies more than 70 microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, and family life that are changing the way we live. Among them:

• People are retiring but continuing to work.
  
• Teens are turning to knitting.
  
• Geeks are becoming the most sociable people around.
  
• Women are driving technology.
  
• Dads are older than ever and spending more time with their kids than in the past.

You have to look at and interpret data to know what's going on, and that conventional wisdom is almost always wrong and outdated. The nation is no longer a melting pot. We are a collection of communities with many individual tastes and lifestyles. Those who recognize these emerging groups will prosper.

Penn shows readers how to identify the microtrends that can transform a business enterprise, tip an election, spark a movement, or change your life. In today's world, small groups can have the biggest impact.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174037 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Features

• Hardback

From Publishers Weekly
From "Soccer Moms," the legendary swing voters of the mid-1990s, to "Late-Breaking Gays" such as former Gov. Games McGreevey (out at age 47), Burson-Marsteller CEO (and campaign adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton) Penn delves into the ever-splintering societal subsets with which Americans are increasingly identifying, and what they mean. For instance, because of "Extreme Commuters," people who travel more than 90 minutes each way to work, carmakers must come up with ever more luxury seat features, and "fast food restaurants are coming out with whole meals that fit in cup holders." In a chapter titled "Archery Moms?", Penn reports on the "Niching of Sports": much to the consternation of Major League Baseball, "we don't like sports less, we just like little sports more." The net result of all this "niching" is "greater individual satisfaction"; as Penn notes, "not one of the fastest-growing sports in America... depends substantially on teamwork." Penn draws similar lessons in areas of business, culture, technology, diet, politics and education (among other areas), reporting on 70 groups ("Impressionable Elites," "Caffeine Crazies," "Neglected Dads," "Unisexuals," "America's Home-Schooled") while remaining energetic and entertaining throughout. Culture buffs, retailers and especially businesspeople for whom "small is the new big" will value this exercise in nano-sociology.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"A striking window into 'Hillary's Brain'." -- Politico

"Culture buffs, retailers and especially businesspeople for whom "small is the new big" will value this exercise in nano-sociology." -- Publishers Weekly

"Delightful and fast-paced....A breezy, entertaining consideration of niche groups within America." -- Business Week

"If small is still the new big, then the biggest book of the moment is Microtrends...Penn sifts the sociological sands to come up with a fine-grained view of where we're headed." -- Information Week

"Read it for its dozens of social insights that could well be turned to profit." -- The Economist

"Riveting....imaginative....Penn's thesis is that change in today's world is driven by small trends that are started below the radar ... . " -- Financial Times

"Sound and cleverly written....will undoubtedly appeal to marketing analysts and armchair sociologists, as well as fans of Megatrends and Malcolm Gladwell." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Stuffed with smart, offbeat tidbits....Penn and his co-author, E. Kinney Zalesne, deserve credit for leavening their facts and figures with humor and pop-culture asides." -- Bloomberg

"The strength of the book lies in Penn's analysis of the implications and opportunities of each microtrend." -- USA Today

"Unrelentingly fascinating....Microtrends is a diligently researched tome chock-full of counterintuitive facts and findings." -- The New York Times

Review
"Mark Penn is more than a high-powered Democratic pollster: his data helped transform the Clinton presidency...." (The New York Times Magazine )

"Mark Penn has a keen mind, and a fascinating sense of what makes America and the world tick, and you see it on every page of Microtrends." (Bill Gates )

"Unrelentingly fascinating . . . a diligently researched tome chock-full of counterintuitive facts and findings that may radically alter the way you see the present, the future, and your places in both . . . Microtrends is the perfect bible for a game of not-so-trivial pursuits concerning the hidden sociological truths of modern times."
(The New York Times )

"A trivia-lover's dream...Penn adroitly manages to convey the relevance of such minutiae to the world at large."
(USA Today )

"Mark Penn has a remarkable gift for detecting patterns and identifying trends. The ideas in his book will help you see the world in a new way." (Bill Clinton )