RH: Let's talk about your various research methods.
VA: My method is to actually get out there on the highways
and back roads, stop at small towns, and hang out. I eat a lot of pie in
local cafes, listen to what people are talking about and ask questions
about what's happening. I steal a lot of notices off bulletin boards. I
basically try to see what's important in people's lives.
MM: When we travel, Larry [Samuel, the third member of the
team] will ditch us to hang out in a bar. He'll stay out late to see what
people, especially young people, are doing: what they're smoking,
what they're drinking, what they're wearing, how they're dancing.
I'm the media maven. I watch TV, go to movies, read magazines,
listen to music. And I'm a yakker, so I like to talk to people, ask
them why they're doing what they're doing.
VA: We have a huge network of people all around the world
that we call up to find out what's happening. We just try to gather as
much information as possible.
MM: Then we get back together with all this data we've
asssembled, and we exchange ideas around a particular topic we
want to write about or work on for a client. We begin to see patterns
emerge, and the subject begins to build upon itself.
RH: So a lot of "futurism" depends on simply observing what's
happening in the present.
VA: We're total cultural voyeurs. We're nosy. That's what the
three of us have in common; we've always been curious about why
people are doing what they're doing. We don't think of ourselves as
"futurists." We're "now-ists." We're looking at what's happening now,
maybe trying to link that to something that may happen in the
future, but basically just tossing up these signs to people. "Read these
trends," we tell clients. "There's more to them than what's on the
surface. They have underlying values."
MM: We're interested in the manifestations of those values.
We put together the trends we see bubbling up and gather them
under "signs," an umbrella term for the total manifestations of a
given value. When we were trying to decide how to organize these
signs in our book, we decided on chapters based on passion points.
How we decide to act on something -- whether to go into a particular
business, whether to be pro-choice or pro-life -- those passions are
fundamental to our activity and affiliation choices. So we broke the
book down into ten passion points, and then into the forty signs that
(using 'futurist' voice) "will change your job, your life, your
world." (laughs)
VA: Those passion points are things like mind, body, spirit,
experience, society, technology. One example of a sign is chi,
which is all about the Easternization of the West. We've been talking
about how the East is moving West for at least five years. You notice
how people are talking about Buddhism more frequently, and Tibet's
become everyone's favorite cause? That's been coming for a while.
RH: Getting what's behind the signs is important. It's one thing to
note cigar smoking is popular among young people, another thing to
extrapolate from that the idea that they want to live
decadently.
MM: So is there a way that you can provide something that
would fulfill that desire in your customer base? It's just another way
of getting at what people really want. Cigars are trendy right now,
but they aren't really that important. They're going to come
and go; but they're an expression of a particular value that will
last.
RH: The signs don't stand alone, though. They interact in
interesting ways.
MM: Sometimes they conflict, other times they overlap and
share qualities. We get asked about that a lot, because it seems
confusing...
VA: How can there be both a passion for technology and a
desire to unplug your lifestyle, or a resurgence in the popularity of
the handcrafted object? It's because each of us is a portfolio of
different passions. You're allowed to have those choices.
MM: You could go into somebody's home, and they might
have a 200 year-old library table with a state of the art computer
sitting on top of it. The complexity of our lives allows us to be as
diverse as we choose to be, and our culture is likewise very
diverse.
RH: If you were conducting business as usual in the early weeks of
the brouhaha over Clinton's alleged sex life, what would the impact
be on your work? I can imagine that there would be a lot to see in
the media, and a lot to overhear on the road, but are events like that
distorting?
VA: These kinds of events in our culture are giga-stories. And
they provide a trampoline for us to jump on to get a conversation
started. In the cab, we can ask the driver, "So, what do you think
about the First Lady on TV this morning?" And he has some amazing
insight, and we learn a whole new way of thinking about the
situation.
RH: In these situations, TV news generally has so little real
content that it quickly becomes a case of "Stay with us until we
actually learn something." But that air time is loaded with cultural
data.
VA: It's been really interesting to watch this. When we were
getting ready to go out on the road, our publicist told us, "Now, when
they ask you a question on the radio or TV, you can acknowledge
that question, and then use it to segue to one of the three points you
want to make about your book." And this just enrages me; it cuts off
the spontaneity and the possible divergences we could go on. So now
I'm watching the interview with Mrs. Clinton, and she's a master at
that technique. Ask her if President Clinton has discussed his
relationship with Monica Lewinsky with her, and she'll say, "Yes,
we've had long discussions, and I'd just like to say that..." and I see
her following the advice that I'd been given.
