3. SNACK CULTURE

SNACK CULTURE represents the 'transient sphere' on steroids, catering to consumers’ insatiable craving for instant gratification. SNACK CULTURE thus embodies the phenomenon of products, services and experiences becoming more temporary and transient; products that are being deconstructed in easier to digest, easier to afford bits, making it possible to collect even more experiences, as often as possible, in an even shorter timeframe. The signs are everywhere, from ubiquitous commerce to fragmented (shattered?) media to fast fashion to temporary ownership to Netflix-style all-you-can-eat models. SNACK CULTURE, like PREMIUMIZATION, is not a 'new new ' trend, but definitely one that will continue to thrive next year.

To get you going, here’s a list of fairly random SNACK CULTURE spottings that is sure to grow longer in 2008:

• Food & Beverage | Some numbers on actual food snacks from the New York Times:
  • In just three years, sales of 100-calorie packs of crackers, chips, cookies and candy have passed the USD 200-million-a-year mark, and sales grew nearly 30 percent last year. According to analysts, the market for these pint-size packages could easily double because of their simple appeal: they help consumers eat less without having to count calories themselves. The growing popularity of these snack packs may also be another sign that some consumers have had their fill of supersized food.
  • A report from the Hartman Group found that 29 percent of Americans believed that 100-calorie packages were worth the extra cost. For manufacturers, snack packs are about 20 percent more profitable than larger packages.
  • Some snack makers think even 100 calories might be too much for some diet-conscious consumers. Hershey, for example, now sells 60-calorie chocolate bars. And Jell-O sells 60-calorie pudding packs.
    
• Which then may explain the success of Chicago-based burger joint Minnies, which proves that bigger isn't always better. Featuring a wide selection of Lilliputian gourmet burgers and sandwiches—including traditional favorites such as grilled cheese and Reubens, alongside the more inventive Mykonos (roast chicken, tzatziki sauce and kalamata tapenade) and Thanksgiving Delight (roast turkey, cranberries and wild rice gravy)—Minnies applies nouvelle cuisine portions to casual dining.

• Old-school SNACK CULTURE meets PREMIUMIZATION: in Europe, McDonald’s is replacing bolted-down, yellow-and-white plastic furniture with lime green designer chairs and dark leather upholstery. It is the restaurant chain’s biggest overhaul in more than 20 years and, with its franchisees, it plans to spend more than EUR 600 million euros (USD 890 million), remodeling 1,280 European restaurants by the end of this year.

• Laundry care | Procter & Gamble’s Swash offers students dryer sheets, dewrinkling spray, stain-removing pens, odor-removing sprays and lint rollers that can help give their clothes the look and smell of having been washed without the trouble or expense of actual washing.

• Cosmetics | Take a high-margin product like cosmetics, and cut prices by at least half. Now add online accessibility with customization, community and values. Throw in a pinch of demystifying expert advice, and you've got e.l.f., short for "eyes, lips, face." Launched by New York-based JA Cosmetics roughly three years ago, e.l.f. appears to be turning the cosmetics industry on its ear. All cosmetics cost just USD 1, and customers can create personalized profiles that generate product recommendations and customized looks. e.l.f. currently ships only to US and Canadian addresses, but versions of the site have recently launched for both the UK and Australia. The company 's products are also available in US stores, including Target and a variety of drugstores and convenience chains.

• Automotive | Just like bicycles, a pretty staid sector suddenly brimming with innovation, the small car sector seems ready for a truly global boom. Eco-concerns, design savvy and an (urban) willingness to regard cars as a utility instead of the ultimate status symbol will lead to a neverending stream of small-car innovations. Keep an eye on the company who kick-started most of this: Smart. Since its introduction in October 1998, nearly 800,000 people in 36 countries have purchased a ‘Smart Fortwo’. The new Smart Fortwo was released in Europe in April 2007 and will become available in the US, for the first time, in Q1 of 2008. The vehicles will be built at a plant in France and will be equipped for the US market. The Smart Fortwo will come in three trim levels—a Pure baseline model that starts under USD 12,000, a Passion Coupe that starts under USD 14,000 and a convertible that starts under USD 17,000. Consumers can place a USD 99 refundable reservation for a production model on the smartusa.com. So far, more than 30,000 reservations have been received.

• Fast Fashion | Snacks, cars, magazines…. And fashion, of course! If you need to explain SNACK CULTURE to colleagues who may not totally get it (yet), discussing the success of the Zaras and H&Ms of this world will probably do the trick. Whether it’s fast fashion’s fast moving product cycles, low prices, or SNACK-style ‘wear-only-a-few-times'. In fact, shopping for clothes increasingly resembles shopping for groceries.
  
  The numbers are impressive: H&M’s turnover in 2006 was SEK 68,400,000,000 (EUR 6.8 billion). Currently, H&M has 1,400+ stores in 28 countries. Most of its future expansion will take place in the USA, Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK and Canada. In 2007, H&M opened first-time stores in Hong Kong and Shanghai, with a Tokyo store planned for fall 2008. Zara is part of Spanish Inditex, which also includes fashion chain Bershka. Zara’s turnover (EUR 5.35 billion in 2006) accounts for two-thirds of Inditex’s turnover (EUR 8.2 billion in 2006). For the next years, the focus of Inditex’s expansion will be on Europe (outside home market Spain) and on Japan and China. Zara had 990 stores in 62 countries at the end of last year, and expects to have added another 130-140 before the end of this year.

• Media | Described as "Rocketboom for Wall Street" and "Squawk Box meets Saturday Night Live", Wallstrip offers stock advice in a format that's second nature to viewers who watch YouTube instead of CNBC. Wallstrip's daily videos are taped in New York, hosted by actress Lindsay Campbell, and feature one public company in every 3-minute online show. Wallstrip was founded in October 2006, aiming to be both sassy and serious while teaching a new generation of investors to pick their own stocks. The show was created by Howard Lindzon, who runs an investment firm and hedge fund in Arizona and a venture capital fund in Toronto. Following Lindzon's personal investment philosophy, the focus is on stocks at all-time highs, like Apple, Google and Toyota, analyzing why they're strong and whether they'll continue to increase in value. 'Man on the street' interviews add to Wallstrip's informal vibe. The show has been voted one of the top podcasts on iTunes, and is also distributed via social video sites like Revver and YouTube. With enough VC backing to wait and see how its own value will develop, Wallstrip is in no hurry to chase advertising revenues, focusing instead on building a dedicated following of valuable eyeballs.
  
  Wallstrip perfectly fits what Wired Magazine touted as 'snack-o-tainment' earlier this year (yes, that inspired us to come up with SNACK CULTURE). People are becoming accustomed to consuming large amounts of 'bite-size' content rather than the longer-form stuff of traditional media. Online video clips, the iPod Nano, pay-per-view TV shows on iTunes, short games played on handheld devices, the list goes on. From Wired's article:
  
  “Music, television, games, movies, fashion: We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips—in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. Today, media snacking is a way of life. In the morning, we check news and tap out emails on our laptops. At work, we graze all day on videos and blogs. Back home, the giant HDTV is for 10-course feasting - say, an entire season of 24. In between are the morsels that fill those whenever minutes, as your mobile phone carrier calls them: a 30-second game on your Nintendo DS, a 60-second webisode on your cell, a three-minute podcast on your MP3 player. Like Homer Simpson at the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, we are capable of devouring whatever is in front of us—down to the plastic crustaceans—and still go fishing for Colbert clips at 3 am.

• OK, so one more: 20 Minutes, which distributes more than 2,3 million copies every weekday in Spain, France and Switzerland. Forget free newspapers that want 1 hour of your time; 20 minutes is all consumers need to get their daily fix.

• Surprise | Infusing SNACK CULTURE with a dose of surprise, Singapore beverage company Out of the Box caters to consumers who respond to "What would you like to drink?" with a non-committal "anything" or "whatever". The company has launched two complementary brands: Anything and Whatever. Anything is fizzy and comes in six flavors (Cola with Lemon, Apple, Fizz Up, Cloudy Lemon and Root Beer), while Whatever is non-carbonated (Ice Lemon Tea, Peach Tea, Jasmine Green Tea, White Grape Tea, Apple Tea, Chrysanthemum Tea). The surprise part? Consumers don 't know which flavor they're getting until they take a sip. Cans are simply labeled Anything and Whatever, and the list of ingredients is limited to generic wording. Judging from the buzz on Singapore forums, teens immediately got the concept and are loving it. Surprise fits SNACK CULTURE well, as it satisfies the desire for the thrill, for discovery. Worth bringing a surprise to market in 2008, even if it's just a one-off, and even if only for creating a buzz.

• People | SNACK CULTURE applies to more than consumption of goods and services. Consider Adult FriendFinder, the ‘casual encounters’ site now claiming more than 19 million active members. (Real world) sex too has now become something that can be instantly gratified, with the help from millions of other ‘willing and able’ participants. The ‘rate before you date’ features add a level of TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY, too.

Note: not everything will come in bite-size format. If only for the mass-scale infrastructure that is needed to jet off countless ‘sun snack’ travelers, or to ship those millions of containers loaded with SNACK CULTURE goods and ingredients. So in addition to the ever-smaller, we’re seeing the ever-bigger. In fact, 'biggest of the biggest' is going to grab quite a few headlines in 2008. Check out:

• The Emma Mærsk was named in August 2007 at Odense Steel Shipyard, Denmark, and at 397 meters long, 56 meters wide and at 11,000 TEU*, she and her sister vessels** are the largest container vessels in the world. EMMA MÆRSK, and three of her sister vessels, are visiting the following ports: Algeciras, Bremerhaven, Hong Kong, Ningbo, Rotterdam, Suez Canal, Tanjung Pelepas, Yantian and Xiamen.
• Singapore Airlines debuted the first of its new A380 airplanes last month. Singapore Airlines has configured the aircraft in a 471-seat layout, even though it has the potential to hold 853 people in full economy class configuration.

* TEU stands for 'twenty-foot equivalent unit'; a measure of volume based on the size of a container that is twenty feet long by eight feet wide by eight feet high.

** There will be a total of eight of these mammoth ships, with the last one due for delivery to Mærsk Line in January 2008.

Oh, and then we haven't even discussed SNACK CULTURE infiltrating banking (ING Direct, anyone?) or hotels (from Ginger Hotels to Yotel to Qbic)... Needless to say, we’re truly looking forward to your transient, SNACK CULTURE innovations in 2008. Let us know, so that we can include them in our 2009 overview ;-)

• SNACK CULTURE meets 'Instant Gratification 2.0': the growing number of sophisticated SEE-HEAR-BUY services that enable consumers to instantly purchase anything virtual they see or hear. Best example to watch in 2008: the iTunes WiFi Music Store. How it works: when a user hears a particular song playing at his or her local Starbucks, he/she can instantly find the artist, album and name of the track on his iPhone or iPod Touch. By tapping the Starbucks button in either device's main menu, the current song shows up, as well as the last ten songs played. They can be purchased and downloaded instantly via Starbucks' wifi connection.
  
• Amazon.com's just-launched Kindle, a digital book reading device, is going after the same market for the written word, with books and (international or niche) paper-based magazines as the most desirable 'must have right now' items. (We're not sure about charging for otherwise free blogs, though ;-)

• However, taking the SEE-HEAR-BUY trend one step further is Midomi; anyone who's ever had a song stuck in his or her head (and who hasn't?) but was unable to place the title or artist is bound to think Midomi pure genius. Users need only sing, hum or whistle a few bars into their computer microphones, and this online search engine can match the tune against its ever-growing musical library. The customer then has the option to purchase the track and can connect with others who share the same musical interests. Currently available in six languages and with more than two million licensed music tracks and a growing collection of user-created files, Midomi still has lots of potential for further enhancements, such as allowing for customers to call Midomi and download songs directly to their mobile devices.

So... Who's going to build similar SEE-HEAR-BUY services in 2008 for looking up movies, television shows and even commercials by just saying a few lines? And how will these instant gratification services further shape expectations among demanding, INFOLUSTY consumers? More on this in our January 2008 Briefing, which will highlight the EXPECTATION ECONOMY. Stay tuned ;-)