• by Karl Greenberg , December 11, 2008

It is rather hard to hear the words "next year" without feeling a sense of cold fear. It can't be good, can it? War, recession, maybe depression (including the economic kind).

Amid this daily landslide, trendspotter Marian Salzman, Porter Novelli's chief marketing officer, has tried to hammer out predictions in stone--well, maybe sandstone.

Among them, Chicago will be become the new style-setter for leadership trends and values for the country and the world, because of President-Elect Obama. Of course, the corruption scandals vis-à-vis Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich may alter that.

Salzman says there's opportunity and peril in the maelstrom: opportunity for players to take advantage of trends and peril for those who ignore the less visible ones. In the health care crisis, for instance, Salzman sees opportunities in personalized products that can screen for a variety of syndromes--and for retail services such as Walgreens, including clinics in some stores.

"Marketers of all different sizes and scope will find opportunities, in personalized medicine, such as DNA screening."

She adds that the "female economy" cannot be ignored by marketers, since women may be jettisoning the sport of shopping. "Women, historically, are the ones who turn shopping into sport, and now that they are giving it up, there's a huge drop in the retail sector, particularly in apparel and accessories," she says.

She says that marketers will also need to begin considering those born between 1955 and 1964--whom she calls "cuspers"--as a different generation, not part of the Boomers. "This is the generation after the 'greed is good,' 'Gordon Gecko' era. And marketers need to recognize that these consumers don't want new cars or luxury items unless it's something associated with an important and symbolic moment, such as a watch associated with a 25th wedding anniversary. Consumption for the sake of gloss is gross."

She says that, rather than travel, such tail-end boomers are likely to go back to school for a week, "immerse themselves in learning, more than take a cruise or even visit a foreign capital. 'I'd rather grow my mind and test boundaries.' They are not going to be materialists, and they are less interested in trading up."