Loofah! Love this ad.

Found it on Fast Company. Viral video for Method. To the point but really fun. Chemical residue is lurking but aren't those bubbles so cute? Loofah!

The Death of the Average American

In Adage there's an article about the death of the average American. It's called "New U.S. Census to Reveal Major Shift: No More Joe Consumer."

It's about how fragmented our society is. It indicated that no household type will neatly describe even one-third of households, in the two largest states (CA and TX), the nations traditional majority (white non-Hispanics), will now be the minority, and finally, no racial or ethnic category describes a majority of the population.

WOW.

That is awesome and fascinating news to me. To lose "average American" from our cultural lexicon is monumental in ways that I am not even able to wrap my head around now.

The interesting thing is, while the article says that the census will be missing the average American, I think it's more correct in saying that we're missing Joe Consumer. I think based on this news, for the first time, we are becoming even more American. Isn't that what we, as a country are based on? The blurring and convoluting of demographic norms. Isn't that our founding ideals? And now finally, in 2010, we are truly beginning to see those ideals play forth in a way that embraces, accepts and lives out those notions of diversity, freedom of choice and one nation. I love the idea that we are more fragmented than ever yet perhaps it is our fragmentation that will unite us together.

Maybe this is the beginning of the end of groups of people fighting against something personally negative vs. uniting for something holistically positive. The end of me, the beginning of we. Because we are all so different, we can be confident in our uniqueness and don't have focus on striving toward differentiation. Instead we can move past me, confident in our freedom and expressions of innate individuality and strive toward a greater "we". It makes sense because my generation and the generations under me are part of something decidedly more philosophically and morally cohesive as they are the beneficiaries of what previous generations were fighting against.

The implication for marketers are huge. We have little to fight against and everything to unite for, positive change and the expectations of big corporations to stand for something bigger than their bottom line and to show transparency will only be demanded more.

So maybe I am projecting my own visions, idealistic as they may seem into this one census but I think its possible and hope you do too!