< Marian Salzman >

slack to the future

By Wendy Cavenett


The future for Australia will be a dazzling collision of cyberlove, gender blurring and precision shopping, according to cultural soothsayer, Marian Slazman. But, as she warns in NEXT: Trends for the Future, we may be too busy gazing overseas to notice.

Advertising in the late ‘90s has become a sophisticated science of persuasion. Coca-Cola is the world’s most popular soft drink (it is consumed 900 million times a day) and despite being more than a century old, has survived the anything goes mantra of the ‘90s by appealing to the consumer paradox of nostalgia and futurism. It’s a marriage of the extremes according to American trendspotter, Marian Slazman and, like the times, reflects an era of confusion as we leave the slipstream of one millennium to enter the uncertainty of the next.

The word next is an important one as far as Salzman’s 13th book is concerned. Co-authored with Ira Matathia and assisted by the “virtual team” of Ann O’Reilly and Christy Lane Plummer, NEXT: Trends for the Future is a veritable travelogue of what we can expect in the “future next”, based on trends emerging in the present.

Predictions include more silicon sex (relationships with our computers including cybersex, on-line pornography, computerised sex toys), lifestyles aligned with new virtual technologies, increased feelings of anxiety and impermanence and even less privacy than we experience now. Relationships are also redefined, health, mind and body purification become more popular while parenting will be touted as the “most important profession of this decade”.

The Big Nexts (the megatrends that will affect everybody) include the decline of America’s global supremacy, the emergence of a true United States of Europe, living life at hyperspeed while craving simplicity and the end of the dominance of the English language.

There are also just plain Nexts, key trends that are “influencing the influencers” and What’s Nexts, reflections and speculations about possible future trends. And there is plenty of cyber-lingo to contend with. Expect to read about such things as message layering, culture swapping, cyberlove, cuspers, gender blurring and precision shopping.

As Director of the Future Brands Group for Young & Rubicam in New York, Salzman is the progeny of decades of feminism and American superpower status. Designer clothes and preened superficiality just aren’t, it seems, part of the equation. Jeans, t-shirt, little or no make-up and dishevelled blonde hair are what this Harvard graduate of 39 considers normal in today’s corporate America. “This is my usual work attire,” she says breezily. “This is what we all wear.”

It’s all to do with honesty, from the way you look to the way you conduct your business. Things have changed, Salzman says, and whether Australia’s corporate elite realise it or not, a jittery public is demanding truth in these uncertain times. It’s the what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach.

It’s also due to the fact that corporate America is “gender blind”.

“You are your brain, your personality and your charisma,” says Salzman. “In America, you don’t need to be a feminist anymore. You’re just a dolt if you are, because … what are you fighting about?”

Credited for being the first consumer researcher to conduct on-line focus groups as a means of prediction, it was Salzman who publicised the “wigger” phenomenon (white kids appropriating hip-hop culture), a trend spotted as a result of her on-line research. She’s even the Wall Street Journal’s futurist darling; they branded her the “leading researcher in cyberspace”, and, although she is variously known as “Mystic Meg” and “the woman behind the crystal ball” in England, Salzman’s reputation as a cutting-edge, global futurist seems to be growing exponentially.

Ad agencies in Holland also know her well. Although tagged the “American barbie doll” by local press, Salzman lived in the Netherlands from March 1996 until June 1997, establishing the Department of the Future for a multi-national advertising agency.

Explaining her catch-phrase “preresearch” to a Dutch journalist, Salzman said: “It’s about crawling inside the heads of people who are the opinion leaders. Or visionary people in corporate life. You have to look at thought patterns, evaluate them and with this data create a scenario that goes beyond the here and now. It’s about making substantial predictions about the extent to which consumers accept innovations, the eventual goal is to predict when and how new wishes can be created and exploited.”

Leaving Harvard in 1981, Salzman spent five years as a “journalistic bum” before becoming involved in the advertising industry. Prior to her work at Young & Rubicam in New York, she was the corporate director of emerging media and consumer insights at Chiat/Day where Matathia also spent 12 years of his distinguished 25-year career in advertising.

The Australian edition of NEXT: Trends for the Future also includes a chapter entitled “Australia Next” where three “realities” are singled out to watch: the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Australian autonomy and the Asian economic crisis.

“One unique thing about Australia,” writes Salzman and Matathia, “it that many of its truest trendsetters—typically in their twenties and thirties—are not from affluent backgrounds but, rather, have generated their own success through risk-taking enterprise. As many of these trendsetters are in the style, glamour, fashion, media industries, they are apt to live overseas, most often in the United Kingdom. Expect next-generation influentials to stay put, largely because in Sydney, Australia will finally have a suitable stage for their work.”

Of Australia’s global position at the closing of this millennium, Salzman highlights Australia’s need to utilise information more effectively, consolidate long-term economic and social strategies and recognise our own potential as an affluent, highly educated country in a shrinking global market.

“Australians have to recognise that knowledge is power,” she says. “This country is already a very knowledgeable place but knowledge requires discipline and this is a very undisciplined society. So you have the knowledge but not being able to source it means you might as well not have it in the first place.

“For Australian women, it is to recognise that this country has a very sturdy culture and sturdiness is one of the most important things women can bring to the workplace. Also, Australians must realise that dipping into global experiences is really part of education, and, although it’s already part of your culture, I think that people who go overseas to learn more need also to plan to come back if they really want to make a genuine contribution. To go overseas and find your success there and then stay there, I think, is really a mistake.

“And if you’re really passionate about your country, I think you have to recognise also that there has not been a southern hemisphere country that has put itself up as a global alternative. This country’s powerbases must be recognised by its own people if it is ever to make a truly world-wide impact.”

While the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games promise world-wide exposure for the host city and Australia in general, it is the hi-tech communication infrastructure (valued at more than $300 million) needed for the global success of the event that will ultimately benefit the long-term technological aspirations of Australia.

According to the book, approximately 1.5 million Australians (about eight per cent of the population) already surf the internet regularly giving this country one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world. Forty-one per cent of households own a personal computer while the 5.4 million Australian Generation-Xers (29 per cent of the population) from the country’s most educated group. Victoria’s technological initiatives are also mentioned as are the many Australian businesses already on-line. “In the long run, technology will enable Australians to be more prosperous in the international marketplace,” writes Salzman and Matathia, “and the Net will shrink the distance between Australia and the rest of the world.”

Australian style is also highlighted with the prediction that Aussie casual will be embraced with the world-wide dressing down of fashion. With most pop culturalists already heralding the death of the super model, expect Australian stars such as Nicole Kidman and Kylie Minogue—already used by Swedish company Hennes et Mauritz as a billboard model to advertise their lingerie—to interpret and influence Aussie style and then take it to the world.

Of concern is the indecision that plagues the progress of Australia’s autonomy. Melissa Miller, account director at Young & Rubicam in Sydney believes “Australians know what they don’t want, but don’t know exactly what they do want”. Race relations, gender issues, economic security and job satisfaction are other issues that need to be addressed.

So was Salzman surprised by anything she encountered in Australia? “Yes! It’s such a bloody sexist place,” she says without refrain. “I mean, I’ve also lived this way in Holland which is even more sexist, but only just. You must ask yourselves, ‘What game are we playing here?’ You just seem to be gender obsessed. Sexuality is more blatant but it’s also more political and I think that is a very risky thing. This is a culture that is grounded in really old boys, battler mentality—the guys taking care of one another while the little ladies stand behind them and natter on about what they’re gonna serve for tea.

“And I think it’s going to be a long hurdle to overcome. I also think culturally, women have to stop being defensive and start being demanding and that really requires a different thing. It’s not about apologising for being female; it’s about stating what you want out of life and then going after it and getting it. And it’s about almost forgetting about gender. It’s kind of like a race issue. Race goes away when you stop dealing with it as race and just accept it as a difference, not a hindrance.”

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This article orginally appeared in Australian Style, 1999.  Salzman is author or coauthor of 15 books including Buzz: Harness the Power of Influence and Create Demand (2003), The Future of Men: The Rise of the Ubersexual and What He Means for Marketing Today *2005) and NEXT NOW—Trends for the Future (2006).


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