prophets of boom

A truly internationalist marketer must become a radical change agent in his or her company — arguing the facts and helping steer strategy toward where the world is so “inexorably” headed. Among many other things, marketing is, of course, about keeping in mind the size and purchasing power of your target markets and the context in which those markets operate. 

Accordingly, here are 10 facts and 10 ideas a truly “internationalist” marketer might want to keep in mind during these next early years of the 21st Century:

10 FACTS TO PONDER (over and over again):

1. The world’s population in 2007 is about 6.6 billion, and expected to hit 9.1 billion by 2050.

2. Almost all population growth will occur in the developing world, by contrast to today’s most developed countries, where in most regions population will remain unchanged.

3. Even if you do not count the population growth in the 50 least developed countries, the population of the rest of the developing world is expected to rise from 4.5 billion to 6.1 billion between 2005 and 2050.

4. The population of 51 countries or areas, including Germany, Italy, Japan and most of the successor States of the former Soviet Union, is expected to be lower in 2050 than in 2005.

5. The elderly population in developed countries has already surpassed the number of children (age 0-14) and by 2050 there will be two elderly persons for every child. In the developing world, the proportion of the population aged 60 or over is expected to rise from 8 per cent in 2005 to close to 20 per cent by 2050.

6. For the first time in history, 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, with the world’s urban population at least doubling again, if trends continue, by 2050. There are already 22 mega-cities in the world, with populations over 10 million. There are now 411 cities with populations over 1 million.

7. By 2050, the so-called E7 “emerging” economies (China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey) are estimated to be between 25%-75% larger than the combined economies of today’s developed leaders, the G7 economies (US, Japan, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada).

8. By 2050, per capita income in China is estimated to already have reached half the U.S. level — with a market size 3.4 times the size that of the US.

9. India already has a “consuming class” (owning products such as TVs, scooters, and increasingly computers, etc.) market size estimated at between 300 million and 450 million, with that number set to continue to grow rapidly.

10.  Already, over 50% of Internet users are NOT based in North America or Europe, and yet 80% of the world’s population is still not yet online.

So what does this mean?  The world is changing SIGNIFICANTLY.  Never before have we simultaneously encountered a shift in the locations of the people and business who buy products and services, a shift in how much they have to spend, and shift in their stages of life.  A truly "internationalist" marketer must not only be reaching out to new markets and new populations in previously under-appreciated parts of the globe. A truly "internationalist" marketer must be re-tooling the entire marketing strategy and arguing to their colleagues that anything short of re-structuring the company in a radical way for the radically different world to come is cowardly surrender and oblivious denial in the face of an onslaught of reality.  But wait, there's more to think about...

10 IDEAS TO PONDER (if you wish):

1. Consumers (individual or business) who share similar tastes/needs are increasingly likely to exist irrespective of national borders. These are the new nations, the new global tribes. Luxury brands have long understood the trend to which others will now have to fully adapt.

2. Global companies have the opportunity, through the technologies of corporate intranets, video-conferencing, (and relatively soon, immersive virtual reality), to much more easily share marketing knowledge across borders and markets, with key marketers sharing best-practice techniques and strategies more quickly and more intensively than ever possible before.

3. All of the global population estimates are based upon the idea that there is not dramatic increase in the human life-span this century. If any century portends possibilities to defeat death (or at least defeat chronic disease and to slow down the aging process), the 21st century, with all of the medical innovations occurring at the moment, is it. 

4. The history of energy innovation has shown that usually the next great energy source has not been a key source in the preceding era and has usually come about during a massive upturn in energy demand and usually presages an even bigger jump in economic growth as a new cheap source becomes widely available.  Oil took off out of the blue from the mid-19th century on.  It may not be the current crop of renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.) that will replace it. And, although we cannot guarantee it, clean-tech energy innovations that change the economic story this century are likely on the way.

5. Advances in information technology and computing power make conceivable, if not guaranteed, that some form of artificial intelligence will come into being in the next few decades — able to evaluate situations, make recommendations, and, even, create new, innovative solutions and strategies that no one (no human) has ever thought of before... or perhaps would be capable of thinking.

6. Major environmental changes due to global warming (including some changes not yet predicted or even predictable) will affect the global economy greatly. Just as one example, roughly one in 10 people in the world (over 600 million) live in coastal zones 30 feet or less above sea-level — with the 10 countries with the most people likely to be effected including China, India, Japan, and the US. The melting of Greenland's ice sheet alone (albeit not currently predicted to happen immediately) would itself contribute an estimated global sea-level rise of 23 feet. 

7. Consumers all over the world are increasingly sophisticated and concerned about the social and environmental implications of their actions and the actions of those who businesses they support. It is not hard to conceive that, over time, their concern and sophistication as it ratchets up and as it becomes completely mainstreamed will leave not one industry and not one company untouched. 

8. Consumers are evolving into so-called prosumers, both consuming and creating value at the same time.  More than 50% of U.S. 21 year-olds have already created content on the web. And, the evolving technology is only going to make full participation by people in personalizing, designing, interacting that much more attractive and easier. 

9. The “culture wars” are not over. Obviously on a global scale we have an ongoing clash of civilizations, particularly with the Islamic world and the West... but the fundamentals underlying various nation’s domestic battles (particularly religious vs. secular, or “melting pot” vs. “mosaic”) over the long-term show no sign of abating.

10. Prognosticators are usually (or at least very often) wrong about their specific predictions, but often right about the nature and scale of the coming change.  

I hope the 10 facts and 10 ideas listed above at least got readers thinking about how the only prediction safe to make at this moment is that big — very big — changes are coming our way.  For companies to focus on doing the same-old-thing because it has worked in recent decades is a mistake of (probably) epic proportions. There is not one area in which game-changing forces are not at work. Whether it is dramatically shifting and expanding markets, or dramatically shifting contexts in which those markets have operated, or the injection of truly disruptive technological innovations, if you are an “Internationalist” marketer and you are not seeking to move your organization — dragging it, kicking and screaming, if necessary — into the new transformative era now unfolding, then you are simply not doing your job. At a period such as our own with so much in flux, if you are not an agent of change and a prophet of boom, then you are an agent of denial and a professional purveyor of wishful thinking. 

James P. Clark is founding chairman of the World Technology Network (www.wtn.net), a global association of over 1,000 of the peer-nominated, peer-elected most innovative people in science and technology and related fields elected annually through the World Technology Awards. He also runs Cogito Strategy (www.cogitostrategy.com), a consulting firm focused on co-creating innovative solutions for and with businesses, non-profits, and philanthropists. The current main theme of his work and subject of his most recent presentations is “How the 21st Century will be Different than the 20th and How it Won’t (and How We Think About the Future and How We Don’t)”.

Contact James P. Clark at jpclark@cogitostrategy.com