Just before the annual weekend where millions of America inch across the land to celebrate Thanksgiving, Getty Images have released a Map report on a trend called ‘One Life’ – the trend towards living life as an individual. They say:
Ultimately the One Life trend is about focusing on the individual. However unlike the ‘me decade’ of the a ’70s, the ‘greed decade’ of the ’80s and the ‘lifestyle decade’ of the ’90s, the One Life consumer is constantly reminded that consumption comes with a price. Hence the emergence of the ‘confessional consumer’.
These consumers are aware of environmental issues, buy organic, recycle but also drive 4×4s, make the most of trips away on cheap airlines and still just about enjoy the pleasure of upgrade culture. Confessional consumption is conspicuous consumption with added guilt. It’s the psychology of consumers who will open up to friends about their ecological ‘no noes’. They are ‘piecegreen’ consumers who pick and choose their environmental moments.
Creative Review blog has a fun review and break down of the report:
Having spent decades deriding singletons as losers with all the social skills of a rock, advertisers now want to make friends with those of us with just the one toothbrush in our bathroom. And it’s not just because, with no family to support, single people are wont to fill their empty lives with pointless new purchases. Being on your own is now, apparently, an aspiration.
Instead of fretting at your lack of mates or your pathetic inability to attract a partner, advertisers now want you to think of the Single Life as a Good Thing: “The label of ‘loner’ or ‘singleton’ will give way to singleness as a value. Advertising will reach out to those without ties, who can do things that you are not able to do in a couple, as a family or in a group,” claim Getty, who reveal that over half of their top 500 selling images feature solitary people. “We are likely to see imagery around the concepts of peace and quiet as a lifestyle choice enabling thinking time, reflection and freedom from chaotic lifestyles.”
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