Because they know exactly what they are doing
Today, we are all life entrepreneurs in the "Ich AG", according to the résumé of the 5th German Trend Day
Today, we are all life entrepreneurs in the "Ich AG," according to the résumé of the 5th German Trend DayBy Oliver Classen More and more people see themselves as flexible life entrepreneurs. What does this change in consciousness and structure mean for our social, economic and creative resources? How does such an "I AG" think, work and consume? The 5th German Trend Day in Hamburg provided initial answers to the question "How do we do business in the age of the Ich AG?
The longest entry in the recently published "Dictionary of Scene Languages" is devoted to the term "Warmduscher" and its countless synonyms. Warmduscher (vulgo: spiesser or softie) is the trendy slang term for those contemporaries who are not tough and hip enough to succeed socially and economically. As a result, successful people today consistently take ice-cold showers, pee standing up, and don't care about their environment any more than is absolutely necessary. All others (men) are "seat peeers," "considerate" or simply wimps. According to unconfirmed rumors, you can also recognize this uncool species by the fact that they smoke "mild strain", "because life is already hard enough".
Is the era of the
Cold shower on?
Young linguistic creations like these are seismographs of changing social values. They provide a better indication of what's hot and what's not than fashion. The task is to reduce these often diffuse tendencies to a concise term that can be translated as directly as possible into marketing strategies: This is what the Hamburg Trendbüro and its founder Peter Wippermann see as the central task of trend research. At last year's 4th German Trend Day, Wippermann & Co. presented "Scientification," a communication and product design that, with yogurt names like LC1 and silver-colored cars, is already largely mainstream and thus out of trend.
The latest creation from the Zeitgeistlabor, which was founded in 1992 and is also responsible for the above-mentioned scene lexicon, is "Ich AG," which, according to the above measure and ironically shortened, could mean something like "cold showerers. 350 advertisers, market researchers and marketing managers wanted to know more precisely who and what is behind this flowery designation - and came to Hamburg for the 5th German Trend Day to be brought up to date on the latest consumer wishes and customer needs by nine proven trendsetters.
Intangible qualities
decide
Anyone expecting concrete instructions for action was initially disappointed by Norbert Bolz's opening presentation on the "economy of the invisible" (vulgo: New Economy). Suspected in academic circles of being a pop philosopher, the professor of communication theory expressed the view that the success of brands and products in the future will depend much less on their real goodness than on virtual qualities such as image and style. "The economic system of the West is in the midst of a conversion from substance to function, from the what of goods to the how of communication," Bolz said. He also observes a reversal of the relationship between means and ends: Whereas previously people with business ideas (ends) sought people with capital (means), in post-capitalist society it is the other way around.
This assessment was confirmed by Shobhna Mohn, CEO of Bertelsmann Valley, one of those incubators that try to help startups get off the ground with venture capital and know-how. According to Mohn, young Internet entrepreneurs aspiring to a place in Bertelsmann's business incubator must not only have enthusiasm and "a very unique story" (or business idea), but above all the ability to tell it so convincingly that first the financier and later also the customers can identify with this story. "Mohn's motto for successful new business can be summed up as follows: "Only self-marketing that offers a sense of purpose paves the way to entrepreneurial independence.
For Sebastian Turner of the Berlin advertising agency Scholz & Friends, too, the general trend in society is toward entrepreneurship. The father of the famous FAZ campaign "Kluge Köpfe" ("Smart Minds") describes the signs as overwhelming: In the seventies, the public sector was still the most sought-after employer, in the eighties the blue chips then took over this role, and in the nineties finally the consulting firms. Today, however, up to two-thirds of business graduates want to become self-employed.
As a further indication of the recent change in mentality, Turner sees the indeed remarkable fact that this year, for the first time, there will be more shareholders than trade unionists in Germany.
The galloping economization of the individual is also turning the labor market upside down. The fact that human capital, unlike other forms of capital, cannot change hands is forcing companies to reorient themselves in a way that trade unionists would never have dreamed of, even in a drunken stupor: "It's no longer the customers who are the most important assets, but the employees," says Turner, summing up a development that is being further reinforced by the drop in the pill count.
Even today, a Pixelpark programmer is valued at 10 million marks by the stock exchange. Compared to such sums for young "high potentials," the transfer fees for professional soccer players look downright modest.
Self-invention becomes
to the duty
Trendbüro head Peter Wippermann opened his trend diagnosis, entitled "From Deutschland AG to Ich AG," with a quote from the Schröder-Blair paper of 1999: "We want to transform the safety net of entitlements into a springboard of personal responsibility," it says about the objective of Europe's new social democracy. This political program, which itself sets trends instead of preserving traditions, has far-reaching social and psychological consequences for the individual. While the "soft individualists" (born between 1966 and 1977) still had the option of self-reflection, the "I AG-ers" born in 1978 or later are forced to constantly reinvent themselves, according to Wippermann. In a culture unified by global media and brands, people want to set themselves apart and stand out again. However, the construction of a marketable identity that satisfies the emotional need for originality and authenticity requires sophisticated self-branding. With this thesis, Wippermann varied the general obligation to individualize already stated earlier, which ultimately leads to a "conformism of otherness" (Bolz). This phenomenon is taken into account by those suppliers who try to emotionalize and personalize their mass-produced goods with simple but effective tricks.
Mass customization
Dee Dee Gordon, who flew in especially from Los Angeles, presented two such products that young people use specifically to manage the I brand: the iD Shoe from Nike and the Swiss web fashion store
skim.com, which provides its goods with the individual e-mail addresses of its customers. "Style customization" is what the trend pioneer calls the rejection of prefabricated branded articles and the new fun of self-design. "Just-for-me products are the future - and it has long since begun," Gordon knows from her field research of 500 kids worldwide for her trend agency LookLook. In other words: Consumers are less interested in the products themselves than in communicating about them.
The illustrious audience had already heard a similar formulation of the same finding hours earlier from Norbert Bolz. This repetition allows two conclusions: Either trends like this are so "hot" that they inevitably appear more than once at such a conference. Or trends are born through such formulaic repetitions reminiscent of incantation rituals. Either way, the organizers should be pleased that their "Ich AG" - which is already being quoted without quotation marks from Spiegel to FAZ - has meanwhile found its way into common parlance. After all, the career of the Warmduschers also began that way.
The longest entry in the recently published "Dictionary of Scene Languages" is devoted to the term "Warmduscher" and its countless synonyms. Warmduscher (vulgo: spiesser or softie) is the trendy slang term for those contemporaries who are not tough and hip enough to succeed socially and economically. As a result, successful people today consistently take ice-cold showers, pee standing up, and don't care about their environment any more than is absolutely necessary. All others (men) are "seat peeers," "considerate" or simply wimps. According to unconfirmed rumors, you can also recognize this uncool species by the fact that they smoke "mild strain", "because life is already hard enough".
Is the era of the
Cold shower on?
Young linguistic creations like these are seismographs of changing social values. They provide a better indication of what's hot and what's not than fashion. The task is to reduce these often diffuse tendencies to a concise term that can be translated as directly as possible into marketing strategies: This is what the Hamburg Trendbüro and its founder Peter Wippermann see as the central task of trend research. At last year's 4th German Trend Day, Wippermann & Co. presented "Scientification," a communication and product design that, with yogurt names like LC1 and silver-colored cars, is already largely mainstream and thus out of trend.
The latest creation from the Zeitgeistlabor, which was founded in 1992 and is also responsible for the above-mentioned scene lexicon, is "Ich AG," which, according to the above measure and ironically shortened, could mean something like "cold showerers. 350 advertisers, market researchers and marketing managers wanted to know more precisely who and what is behind this flowery designation - and came to Hamburg for the 5th German Trend Day to be brought up to date on the latest consumer wishes and customer needs by nine proven trendsetters.
Intangible qualities
decide
Anyone expecting concrete instructions for action was initially disappointed by Norbert Bolz's opening presentation on the "economy of the invisible" (vulgo: New Economy). Suspected in academic circles of being a pop philosopher, the professor of communication theory expressed the view that the success of brands and products in the future will depend much less on their real goodness than on virtual qualities such as image and style. "The economic system of the West is in the midst of a conversion from substance to function, from the what of goods to the how of communication," Bolz said. He also observes a reversal of the relationship between means and ends: Whereas previously people with business ideas (ends) sought people with capital (means), in post-capitalist society it is the other way around.
This assessment was confirmed by Shobhna Mohn, CEO of Bertelsmann Valley, one of those incubators that try to help startups get off the ground with venture capital and know-how. According to Mohn, young Internet entrepreneurs aspiring to a place in Bertelsmann's business incubator must not only have enthusiasm and "a very unique story" (or business idea), but above all the ability to tell it so convincingly that first the financier and later also the customers can identify with this story. "Mohn's motto for successful new business can be summed up as follows: "Only self-marketing that offers a sense of purpose paves the way to entrepreneurial independence.
For Sebastian Turner of the Berlin advertising agency Scholz & Friends, too, the general trend in society is toward entrepreneurship. The father of the famous FAZ campaign "Kluge Köpfe" ("Smart Minds") describes the signs as overwhelming: In the seventies, the public sector was still the most sought-after employer, in the eighties the blue chips then took over this role, and in the nineties finally the consulting firms. Today, however, up to two-thirds of business graduates want to become self-employed.
As a further indication of the recent change in mentality, Turner sees the indeed remarkable fact that this year, for the first time, there will be more shareholders than trade unionists in Germany.
The galloping economization of the individual is also turning the labor market upside down. The fact that human capital, unlike other forms of capital, cannot change hands is forcing companies to reorient themselves in a way that trade unionists would never have dreamed of, even in a drunken stupor: "It's no longer the customers who are the most important assets, but the employees," says Turner, summing up a development that is being further reinforced by the drop in the pill count.
Even today, a Pixelpark programmer is valued at 10 million marks by the stock exchange. Compared to such sums for young "high potentials," the transfer fees for professional soccer players look downright modest.
Self-invention becomes
to the duty
Trendbüro head Peter Wippermann opened his trend diagnosis, entitled "From Deutschland AG to Ich AG," with a quote from the Schröder-Blair paper of 1999: "We want to transform the safety net of entitlements into a springboard of personal responsibility," it says about the objective of Europe's new social democracy. This political program, which itself sets trends instead of preserving traditions, has far-reaching social and psychological consequences for the individual. While the "soft individualists" (born between 1966 and 1977) still had the option of self-reflection, the "I AG-ers" born in 1978 or later are forced to constantly reinvent themselves, according to Wippermann. In a culture unified by global media and brands, people want to set themselves apart and stand out again. However, the construction of a marketable identity that satisfies the emotional need for originality and authenticity requires sophisticated self-branding. With this thesis, Wippermann varied the general obligation to individualize already stated earlier, which ultimately leads to a "conformism of otherness" (Bolz). This phenomenon is taken into account by those suppliers who try to emotionalize and personalize their mass-produced goods with simple but effective tricks.
Mass customization
Dee Dee Gordon, who flew in especially from Los Angeles, presented two such products that young people use specifically to manage the I brand: the iD Shoe from Nike and the Swiss web fashion store
skim.com, which provides its goods with the individual e-mail addresses of its customers. "Style customization" is what the trend pioneer calls the rejection of prefabricated branded articles and the new fun of self-design. "Just-for-me products are the future - and it has long since begun," Gordon knows from her field research of 500 kids worldwide for her trend agency LookLook. In other words: Consumers are less interested in the products themselves than in communicating about them.
The illustrious audience had already heard a similar formulation of the same finding hours earlier from Norbert Bolz. This repetition allows two conclusions: Either trends like this are so "hot" that they inevitably appear more than once at such a conference. Or trends are born through such formulaic repetitions reminiscent of incantation rituals. Either way, the organizers should be pleased that their "Ich AG" - which is already being quoted without quotation marks from Spiegel to FAZ - has meanwhile found its way into common parlance. After all, the career of the Warmduschers also began that way.
