Adults are the new kids?

Interesting observation on Godin’s blog today.

Godin’s post concerns the fact that adults are increasingly oriented towards buying things that please them, rather than things that are necessarily useful or functional.

To extend the thought, children, or at least childish impulses, govern a majority of purchasing decisions.

For younger, single people, it’s because they aren’t burdened by children, and they want their grown-up toys, or they still yearn for the comforting experiences of youth. For parents, it’s more direct: They’re buying for their children. And for retired empty-nesters, it’s because they can afford to be self-indulgent once again.

It strikes me that this obvious-but-subtle observation, which I’ve made myself before, has deeper implications than one would think on first glance.

Consider: What do kids like?

• Shiny. Give a kid a bland, dull toy, and a shiny, glossy toy, and the kid will gravitate towards the shinier toy.
• Bright. With the current trend in automobiles towards matte finishes, I wonder if this is a case of putting the cart before the horse? Or, to consider the question from a different perspective, look at the trends in home decorating, away from duller, more neutral colors, to a wider-range of tougher-to-match, but totally unique color schemes.
• Individualized. Kids always have their own preferences about how they want their food prepared, how they wear their clothes, how they decorate their personal belongings. If you see a kid riding a factory-fresh bicycle down the street, you can rest assured that it won’t remain such very long.
• Convenient. I needn’t say too much more here: we can all see the trend towards providing pre-packaged, single-serve food as we walk through the supermarket. Kids don’t have the patience to invest time in meal preparation, and increasingly, neither do adults.
• Multi-purpose. Kids like toys they can use in more than one context, and recoil from things that impose rules or distinct behaviors on them. To wit: Legos. Enough said.

We in web design already know these things. We call it Web 2.0. But the larger marketing community hasn’t quite caught on yet, despite the current trends towards mass-customization. Marketers are still trying to instill desire, rather than listening to needs and wants.