Idea®2006

Some notes about today.

Idea®2006 was held today at Marina Congress center.
I was kindly invited to participate in a panel discussion about future trends in marketing. The following person participated in the discussion:

Marco Mäkinen, strategiajohtaja, SEK & Grey
Anne Lehmuskoski, markkinointijohtaja, Nordea Pankki
Juha Voutilainen, markkinointijohtaja, Markkinointi-Instituutti
+ me

Please see the link for other parts of the program (only in Finnish).
http://www.mark.fi/html/idea2006/

I introduced the idea of "the economy of everyday life", and the importance for understanding mundane consumption as a basis for marketing decisions. I was also trying to point out both paradigmatic and methodological changes this withholds.

The panel was enthusiastic to discuss the theme, and I would say that the 45 minute panel was mainly focusing on this topic. I also got some very positive comments concerning the topic from the audience (500 marketers in Finland attended the event). At least 10 of the participants told me personally about their interest in the topic. Especially ad and design agencies seems to be eager to find new perspectives to more traditional perspectives to marketing.

I got really even more thrilled with the concept of "the Economy of everyday life", "Arkitalous" in Finnish, and discussed the topic with two of the people I highly respect. Professor Kaj Storbacka was really of the opinion that this concept could bring new perspective to marketing. Also Professor Mika Pantzar commented the wording by saying that the content of "economy of everyday life" is in english literature usually referred to as a "moral economy".The concept of moral economy may not be the best one. "Arkitalous" would perhaps describe the domain in better ways. Let us see what we will do about this.

I already changed the title of my book according to this discussion into "the economy of everyday life - designing consumption practice", and feel quite satisfied with this change, although it might have some consequences for the content of the book.

I spoke also at a Vectia Forum (an event arranged by the firm I am a partner of) together with my colleague Heli Arantola, who released her book on customer insight earlier this week. She talked about strategy work, and the needed insight for being agile in competitive environment. I claimed and reasoned that the understanding of consumption practice would perhaps function as a platform for scenario work concerning different forms of consumption. I claimed that practice may be a rather stable platform for having FORESIGHT if one decide to build holistic and historical insight of certain practices in given environments. This is now something I will put more energy on in the future.