Selling to the "Singletons"

People who live by themselves today are not alone. That's because 32 million Americans live on their own, including about half of all adults in New York City and Washington D.C. So we should find out what's wrong and push them to get married? Not if you want to make money. As Eric Klinenberg, a professor of sociology at NYU pointed out, these single people (whom he dubs "singletons") are spending more than those who are married. The average singleton spent $34,471 per capita in 2010, according to the federal Consumer Expenditure survey. Married people without children spent $28,017 and the highest-spending married people with children spent $23,179 per person. Klinenberg, who wrote the book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, wrote in Fortune last year that businesses are already targeting this growing demographic:

Home-improvement giant Lowe's (LOW) released a TV advertisement featuring a lone woman who is renovating her bathroom. Iconic car-brand Chevrolet ran an ad in which a single woman responds to a bad date by going for a drive in a Malibu with a female friend. Even DeBeers, which long pitched its diamonds as the embodiment of a couple's romantic bond, has sold a "right-hand ring" for unmarried women who want to treat themselves to elegant jewelry. Singletons are a rising presence -- and American business has only begun to respond.

So how should this affect our communication strategies? Here are a few ideas:

Target market: You often hear candidates running for office talk about middle-class families struggling to survive. But that excludes millions of people living on their own. Forget families or singletons: just call "them" people, residents, or men and women.

Logistics: Some people don't like communal tables at restaurants, but I do. If the goal is merely cosmetic -- i.e. to avoid the embarrassment of sitting alone -- then make sure you have a plethora of electrical outlets for mobile devices. If you want a more social atmosphere, then people at the table need to order together and share dishes. Not easy, but it works at places with great food in the south, like Buckner's Family Restaurant.

Message: Focus on the universal benefits of your product or service. Eat Life cereal because it's healthy and tastes good (not because Mikey likes it). Use this Ocean Breeze soap because it makes you clean. (Great thinking from Kermit the Frog). Even diapers today could be changed by a single man as easily as a married woman. So don't pigeonhole yourself. Use people, instead of family members, to communicate your message.

Do you have any ideas about how to reach, or not exclude, the growing market of people who live alone? Please share them below.

Speak Softly and Post a Lot of Pics

In case you hadn't heard: text is out, photos are in. So in that spirit, I gathered and arranged the photos below to tell a story.

If you can't figure out what I was trying to say, you're not alone. Photos without any context are hard to understand. That's because, as Neicole Crepau of Clipsi.com points out: "civilization thrived when humans moved from pictographs to the written word." The written word, she explains "enabled humans to convey the same information faster and in a much smaller space."

Once language developed, it revolutionized communication, allowing us to learn by reading words. And today, those who read novels have been shown to develop greater empathy and interpret social cues more quickly. In one study, people who read novels were better at reading people's emotions just by looking at photos of their eyes. Now while that study was comparing fiction and nonfiction readers, it still shows the tremendous benefits that the written word has had for understanding images. (For more on this research, check out this article by psychologist Keith Oatley).

So  to sum up: don't give up on text. It's gotten us quite far, and it's here to stay. And if you are wondering what I was trying to say in the images above, here it is: It's sad that the world of writing is dying, and a galaxy of photos is taking its place. (If you didn't get that, I completely understand. I have to work on my pictography:)

The Big Idea? Or The Next Best Thing?

Image courtesy of [hinnamsaisuy]/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

During an industry event I attended in June, I had the pleasure of meeting a successful entrepreneur who had some advice for those looking to start their own companies: pick a business that already makes money.

On the one hand, that makes sense. After all, startups aren't just about having fun and being the boss; they are businesses and need to make money to survive. But on the other hand, the most innovative companies are developing groundbreaking products or services through new and untested business models. No matter how strong the business plan or how reputable the investors, these entrepreneurs can only hope that enough people will be interested in what their companies offer.

The best approach to entrepreneurship is somewhere in the middle between trailblazing and the tried and true. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs today seem to be adopting only the latter approach -- taking successful companies and copying or building off them. Have you seen how many companies today offer cloud-computing solutions, e-commerce portals, and social communities for everyone from artists to physicians? I'm not sure how long a great idea lasts these days, or whether anyone remembers a name, but in the end a startup will only defeat its competition if it has the right marketing and communication plan. The questions that these entrepreneurs, copycats and pivot artists have to ask are all the same: Who are our potential customers? How should I reach them? And what makes our company better than the rest? The answers to these questions are not easy, but they are the key to making money, being a boss, and calling yourself a successful entrepreneur.