Listen Up! A Revolution in the Making Is Changing The Way We Live And Work.

For nearly half a century, the Yankelovich marketing research and consulting firm has been taking the pulse of the changes and trends that move and shake American businesses and consumers. At the 1994 Spring Seminar, the venerable Daniel Yankelovich addressed the collision between profit and people that was forging a "new contract" with employees. This year, another Yankelovich partner, Ann Clurman, talked about, not a collision, but a revolution that was altering, once again, the way we live and work.

A recognized authority on consumers and generational marketing trends, Clurman is extensively involved with the Yankelovich MONITOR study that tracks values and lifestyles and with the Nickelodeon/Yankelovich Youth MONITOR, a top resource for youth attitudes and beliefs. She drew on both studies to describe a revolution in the making.

"Revolution is not a word that we take lightly," she said. "In fact, in the 29 years of MONITOR, we probably only used it twice. Once to talk about the 'Social Revolution of the 60s' and the other to describe the 'Women's Revolution.' So the fact that we chose the word 'revolution' is very significant as far as we're concerned."

Clurman said the revolution she was going to talk about, "The Consumer Empowerment Revolution," is a fundamental shift in power for the way we do business. "It is what we call the end of consumer dependence which is the way we have been communicating to and doing business with consumers for most of the second half of the last century. It's now a consumer-controlled environment."

In the top-down world that business was used to, Clurman said, business understood how to study people and figure out what they wanted. "The problem is, we can't work that way anymore because a lot of what the consumer wants is beyond our control."

Several factors are driving this change, Clurman said. Today's consumers believe they are smarter shoppers than they were five or 10 years ago. There has also been a precipitous decline in confidence or trust in all authority figures and institutions. And instead of whining about life, consumers are taking control of their lives.

Taking control, she said, can involve many things, from taking your name off mailing lists and using Caller ID in order to avoid telemarketers to going online to gather information before going to the doctor. As an interesting aside, she said, people still prefer to get information from newspapers and CNN more so than from the Internet. "But the Internet has given people the perception of control, whether they use it or not."

The consumer empowerment change that Yankelovich has identified has been 50 years in the making. Since the postwar period, we have moved from a culture of self-accumulation to one of self-absorption to one of conformity. "Now," Clurman said, "we have taken another huge step in autonomy, one that is flipping the power structure and which we are calling 'self-invention.' Instead of just helping people make smart choices, we have to help consumers feel they are participating in the creation of the options."

Clurman said this changing agenda, which is fueled by Gen X "is not about fulfilling needs (the agenda of the Baby Boomers) but about shaping life."

Several things characterize this new culture, she added. "The first is tolerance which means as we become more pluralistic, we are able to give each other permission to create our own world...The consumer is saying, I am setting my own priorities, my own goals."

A second characteristic is smarts. "We think we're very smart," Clurman explained. "We feel confident. We have some experience that it's okay to take some risks. And we think there's so much new stuff out there that if you don't take a risk once in awhile, you're going to miss out on a lot."

Opportunity is another characteristic of this new, Gen X-driven culture. "The opportunity to customize our lives is, of course, facilitated by technology," Clurman said. "You go on the Internet and you only look at what you want. You don't want to wear glasses? Try laser surgery. You don't want to sit in traffic, get EZ Pass...What we're talking about is self-invention, the opportunity to control your life."

The reason why consumers are interested in creating and fixing things to suit themselves, Clurman said, is because "two-thirds of Americans say businesses care only about selling me stuff that already exists and don't care about stuff that meets my lifestyle. The ability to create, to self-invent, doesn't mean everybody is going to do it. But if you have a consumer contingent that is dissatisfied with the existing options, then they -- your best customers -- will be the first to go."

Clurman said there are a lot of things that affect how you communicate with consumers. "We live in a time of paradox. Everything that's good seems to have a bad part, too. Antibiotics cure diseases but breed super bacteria. Little laptops are wonderful for work, but you end up taking them home with you. The fact is, more than 80 percent of Americans think things are getting better and worse at the same time. For example, the higher the market goes, the more steep the plunge is going to be."

Contributing to all of this is stress. "Stress was the curse of the 90s," Clurman said, "and the curse of the 00s right now. Eighty percent say there's more to worry about; seven out of 10 say we have to reduce stress and seven out of 10 also say life is too complicated. For the past 10 years, we've been trying to market things that relieve stress. And we've made no headway."

In part, she said, stress is a result of information overload. Another paradox is that the more information people get, the more they say they have too much information. And yet they also are saying they need more information but can't get it. The fact is "they are overwhelmed by information. As proof of that, go online. There are now over a billion searchable Web pages."

There are many stress factors at play, Clurman said. We're stressed because we are a nation of multitaskers. We have a marketplace that is stressing us because we can't get good service. We are stressed because we think we have to scheme in order to beat the system to make things work out the way we want. We are stressed because too many companies presume a mass mentality -- press 1, press 2, press 3 -- when we're trying to move away from that.

"People today want control and they want simplification," Clurman said. "But they know that to get one, you have to give up the other. So they are going to something called strategic control. To gain control, they're going to jettison or delegate (if they can) as many things as possible in the consumer/business relationship. Basically, people are just walking away from more things, getting rid of what they consider the nonessentials."

Magazine subscriptions are down. A third of the people in the MONITOR study say they have little room in their lives for new friends. Gardening, woodworking, creative hobbies, the stuff of the early 90s are out. "I don't have to do it myself, I can design it myself is what people are saying," Clurman said. "That keeps me in charge."

Along with all of this stress, Clurman said, we are seeing "this extraordinary need to have fun, to lighten up." People are trying to stop overanalyzing everything, learning to compartmentalize, understanding that they can afford to make a few more choices, not sweating the small stuff. "There is too much emphasis on accomplishment and not enough on pleasure for its own sake across all generations."

All of this has implications for communications and marketing people, Clurman said.

"If your product, service, company or whatever is in danger of being jettisoned, you have to push the right buttons to prevent it from happening. You have to listen and respond to individual needs better. You have to work harder at demonstrating accountability and performance. And you must prepare for the shift from choice to creation because that is where your best customers are going to look when they want more control."

Despite what is happening in the consumer empowerment revolution, Clurman concluded, "people still have a need for communities, where we go for guidance and validation and lifestyle facilitation. Seventy percent of Americans have a need to find people they can relate to. And as we become more diverse and more pluralistic, that need becomes greater."

Community is not neighbors or a chat room, she added. And it's not about geography or lifestyle similarities. "It's about the new kinds of things people are looking for, the connections to the way they live today. People are hungry for community. So move it up as a sensibility in your imagery, your language and your linkages. Make them feel they're part of something."

Clurman added that you should "consider the power of communities as business builders. Figure out what's the community you want to own. Then host the party, don't be the caterer."