New for 2007: first person plural

Amid the crush of New Year¹s auguries, one stands out for its sheer ecstatic optimism. Cultural anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff (at right) predicts the tyranny of “My” and “I” in branding will go the way of Saddam Hussein. MySpace gets to stay, but not so lesser ego displays. And what's to supplant this raging me, me, me? “The ‘I-We’”, he tells AdFreak. Haven¹t the haziest how this zeitgeist thing works, but Blinkoff and his tea leaves seem to. “It's about all of us together: I connect individually; you connect individually,” he divines. Happy 2007 indeed. Whatever Blinkoff and his pals at Context Based Research Group are drinking, it¹s not tea. But we’ll take some—while pondering whether the iPod and Nintendo’s Wii should be rebranded the Uspod and the Wei.

—Posted by Laura Blum

January 2, 2007 | Permalink