By MARK PENN with E. KINNEY ZALESNE
From The Wall Street Journal Microtrends Column

With all the stimulus ready to go into more broadband, bigger tax cuts and infrastructure, some of America’s most expensive societal investments are also on the decline and in need of a bailout — getting married.

Marriage in America is on the rocks. People skirt the issue, talking about how career women delay marriage until it’s too late, or about how men marry younger the second time around. But the truth is, except for the highest-income Americans among us, fewer and fewer of us are getting married at all.

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By MARK PENN with E. KINNEY ZALESNE
From The Wall Street Journal Microtrends Column

With so much attention on psychological marketing these days — finding new ways to tap into people’s heads — perhaps the single most neglected trend out there is the move towards more hard-nosed information-based shopping and purchasing.

While elites were busy shoveling money into Madoff’s black box these past few years, strapped consumers have been poring over product spec sheets, third-party reviews and expert blog sites. This past holiday season they watched every dollar. A special kind of consumer has taken a major role in the marketplace — the new info shopper. These people just can’t buy anything unless they first look it up online and get the lowdown.

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By MARK PENN with E. KINNEY ZALESNE
From The Wall Street Journal Microtrends Column

Just as more people in China are working for firms that are privately owned, more workers in America are waking up to find themselves working for companies that are — at least for now — state-owned.

This new class of workers and executives in newly state-owned businesses is getting a crash course in what and what not to do as a quasi-government worker. Risk is out. Bonuses out. Off-site conferences out. Job security in. Paperwork in. Accountability in. Political limelight in.

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By MARK PENN with E. KINNEY ZALESNE
From The Wall Street Journal Microtrends Column

For most of this century, con men and hucksters preyed on the uneducated and the elderly who couldn’t read the fine print. Some still are.But now we learn that the real mother lode for con artists is not composed of uninformed dowagers who were left an estate they don’t know how to manage, but rather the Impressionable Elites* of country clubs, and the rarefied hedge fund managers of Wall Street and Greenwich.

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We recently started a regular Microtrends column in The Wall Street Journal online. Here’s the one from December 10. 2008.

The Mattress Stuffers
December 10th, 2008
By MARK PENN with E. KINNEY ZALESNE
From The Wall Street Journal Microtrends Column

As the financial crisis swept across the nation these past few months, one of the first microtrend groups to emerge is the New Mattress Stuffers — people who have lost their trust in the financial world, and are preparing for the next meltdown.

Just as 9/11 created a vast industry in building security, so the recession could create a big industry in personal financial security — a new kind of survival kit. New Mattress Stuffers don’t care about the 10% interest rate on GE preferred stock that Warren Buffett snapped up; they care about making it through if hard times get even worse. As a result, firms which can offer ironclad guarantees of safety will appeal to this new group. These are people who have lost their faith in the housing market, the stock market, their bank, their big corporate employer, their auto company, and their last president. What is left but themselves?

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By E. KINNEY ZALESNE

Are you starting to see Microtrends everywhere you look?
A few weeks ago, TIME Magazine profiled atheists who’ve started a Sunday School — to pass their atheist orientation on to their kids. In an era of “pervasive religiosity,” as we talked about in the book, atheists are a counter-intuitive force – a small but passionate group, bonding together to affirm and advance what’s important to them. The Sunday-School Atheists may even number in the millions. A perfect microtrend.

Or on January 15, the Washington Post had a front-page story about young, college-educated couples who buck the trend and raise kids early. How counter-intuitive, in a nation where the average age of first-time childbearing for college-educated Moms is 30, and rising. Everyone – from employers to religious leaders to marketers of everything from home mortgages to baby products – might want to pay attention.

Since Microtrends came out in September, one of the most gratifying things we’ve heard is that the book not only shines a light on new commercial and political opportunities — but it also gets at the heart of human complexity and variety. Too often, people get pigeon-holed based on their gender, race, or ethnicity. If you look or talk a certain way, people think they know everything else about you, too. But if you look at microtrends — defined more often by preference than by happenstance – you can begin to really see the richness and breadth of the people of our great nation.

And hey, did anyone catch that TIME Magazine named “Cougars” the Top New Word of 2007?

Stay tuned to this site for 1) new microtrends, 2) updates on the microtrends in the book, and 3) most importantly, YOUR microtrends. Go spot some, and send them in. Then vote for your favorite. Each month, we’ll have a little prize for the best micro-trendspotter out there.

Thanks for reading the book, and for joining the ranks of Microtrenders.  Enjoy microtrending!