This is the first in a series of ten posts commenting on trendwatching.com’s “10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010.”

The first of the ten crucial consumer trends is ‘Business as Unusual’ and it touches on three major themes: sustainability, moving with the culture, and doing things differently.

This year, prepare for ‘business as unusual’. For the first time, there’s a global understanding, if not a feeling of urgency that sustainability, in every possible meaning of the word, is the only way forward. How that should or shouldn’t impact consumer societies is of course still part of a raging debate, but at least there is a debate.

Sustainability. We hear this word so frequently it risks losing any personal meaning beyond being a buzzword for the trendy movement of the moment. Especially for those of us who live in urban environments, do we actually know what sustainability means? And unless our job has something to do with creating and/or legislating sustainable businesses or we just happen to have the ear of an influential public servant, how do we participate in this debate?

The EPA has an informative website on sustainability that includes a page on Urban Sustainability & the Built Environment. This talks mostly about building “green” buildings. Unless you are a developer and you are going to build a sustainable building, you could buy a condo in one. Providing you can afford to. Otherwise you’re stuck renting in one of the decidedly un-green buildings that grew up in the city over the past couple of centuries or so, depending on what city you live in.

A lot of people talk about sustainability in the context of food and farming. In his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan visits and describes in detail Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm, a utopian example of sustainable farming which I found truly inspirational. But if you don’t happen to live within driving distance of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, building your eating habits around this idealized sustainability is going to be difficult, if not impossible.

How do we bring all of this heady information down to a personal level that makes it possible for us as consumers to actually act in a way that is both meaningful to us and helpful to society and our world? A few of us might be inspired to actually go out and get one of those aforementioned jobs or we might decide to buy a plot of land somewhere to create our own farm, but otherwise, as consumers we can’t really create sustainability so much as support it through the choices we make.

I think it comes down to educating ourselves on what the sustainable options for us actually are and then exercising our support for businesses who have committed to sustainability with our wallets – the one way that it is possible for each of us to make a difference and exercise any influence, however small we think it may be.

Meanwhile, in mature consumer societies, companies will have to do more than just embrace the notion of being a good corporate citizen. To truly prosper, they will have to ‘move with the culture’. This may mean displaying greater transparency and honesty, or having conversations as opposed to one-way advertising, or championing collaboration instead of an us-them mentality. Or, it could be intrinsically about generosity versus greed, or being a bit edgy and daring as opposed to safe and bland.

Move with the culture. What is the best way to identify what culture is doing? Whose culture are we talking about? And how do companies move with it? And since we, the consumer, are ostensibly “the culture” what does this mean to us and what is our role?

At a bare minimum, I think this is about companies making an effort to be un-boring, but I also think it’s about being genuine. Consumers are so jaded and tired of being overly marketed to and manipulated that they’ve tuned everything out. It takes more outrageous and clever ways to get our attention and, beyond that, to get us to consume whatever it is that they’re selling. But it also takes communication that we don’t readily see through and something that actually resonates with us in some way.

One of the more prevalent, but frequently more successful, ways of doing this is creating more than a brand, but a community. Taking a product, associating it with a particular lifestyle or personality, and then building a cult-like group of followers who are engaged enough in the community that they continue to consume. Lululemon is one particularly successful example of this. I’ll admit it, I’m hooked on Lululemon. I do like their products but I also like being part of their zeitgeist. And I – who does marketing for a living – am more jaded than most. Snaps to Lululemon.

As always, the future is unevenly distributed: one only needs to look at the Googles and the Amazons and the Zappos and the Virgins of this world to get a feel for ‘business as unusual’. So not surprisingly, the trends in this briefing all touch on doing things differently, driven by changing consumer preferences and desires. Time to study and learn from those brands that you think are already mirroring today’s more diverse, chaotic, networked society, and then outdo them.

Doing things differently. Ironically, in this age of fast communication and virtual everything, a return to “old fashioned” ways of doing things actually seems modern and different. I think that’s only because it appears “unusual” to apply the human touch to a business practice when so many other experiences we have – from banking to shopping and beyond – are devoid not only of human contact but also of human decency, that all-too-forgotten quality that surprises us and gets our attention when it actually surfaces. Sad, but true. And businesses who possess this quality and act on a human level are the ones that will get not just our attention but our dollars – a critical differentiator in this economy. Also ironic is the way that our “networked society” keeps each other in the know about these businesses through social media, blogs and other methods of communicating that are anything but old fashioned.

Also, I think consumers are tired of being taken for granted. There was an amusing article in the New York Times several months ago discussing the fact that trendy NYC restaurants actually had to start providing – gasp – customer service. Gone were the days when everyone would give their left nut for the table by the kitchen at the restaurant so trendy that no one had any clue what sort of food they actually served. I’m exaggerating – a little. I’m sure that even in New York there are places who have always known how to treat the people who provide their bread and butter. Or maybe they’re just nice.

In 2010, businesses will have to shake up their game if they want to keep market share and ensure the stream of income they get from consumers. No longer will they be able to get away with doing things the way they always have and continue to expect us to patronize them. They have to give us a compelling reason – even if it’s just that we think the bartender who works Tuesday nights is hot – to get us to part with our hard-earned cash at their particular establishment. An important aspect of the whole ‘business unusual’ trend is that companies need to find unusual ways to keep us engaged; they can’t rest on their laurels and take us for granted.

Consumers are returning to a mindset of thinking and caring about what they spend their money on, even if they still have lots of it. It’s about making a choice and a conscious decision about what it actually means when we whip out our credit cards to make a transaction. Business unusual will be about understanding this and delivering to consumers the products and services to which they can make a personal, ethical and emotional connection.

Next week: Urbany

Source: www.trendwatching.com. One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide.