From the desk of Patricia Araujo, Strategic Planning Director & Product Development, SMG Iberia

July 28, 2011

There are three characteristics that cover today’s reality in people’s behavior and relationships, building a perspective on the fact they are ingredients of the way we see ourselves and want to be seen!

Coming from the most various sources of data and inspiration, we know and feel that consumers, us, have been changing our behaviors, our habits, our way of being. This change as consumers comes from a deeper change as individuals.

This knowledge and sense that we have comes to us in our relationships, from our grandmothers, fathers, sons, friends…comes to us in research reports, news of the world, social networks statistics. Endless approaches can be found around this big subject of how behaviors and habits evolve and generate new concepts and languages!

Looking at different perspectives, it seems that we have today the same elements as we had 30 years ago…just in a new platform, a new dynamic, faster, technologically has evolved into a worldwide community coming through dozen of screens that stand right next to us! This means that we live with the need to begin new relationships and maintain old ones. Although today, the easy access, the speed and intense feelings increases our need.

This reality is the intensity of the characteristics surrounding people’s behavior – Sharing, Experience, Expectations – being a reflection of self expression in relation to others.

Sharing, Experience, Expectation represent the way a person see his or herself, wants to be seen and the reality of how they actually are seen.

In the base of an experience there’s a sensation that usually gets deeper and lasting in time. In today’s high-speed world, the time that this feeling lasts has been drastically reduced, losing emotional value.

Connected to this change is the concept of sharing. Sharing has gained scale beyond borders and redesigned what we know as sharing. The line between social and private is blurred and left up to individual definition. Sharing through social networks has broadened the meaning of the concept … it is now an exchange dynamic: Exchange of experiences, tastes, habits, photos, personality shapes.

From today’s instant need for gratification and the exchanges that take place as a result, we see an increased amount of expectations of everything around us: on others, ourselves and the brands that help us shape personalities. These expectations define the value of an experience, which is in turn, defined by its ability to be shared itself! At the end, in the social arena, the experience feeds sharing and expectations make themselves known within in the smallest details, influencing the way we see and are seen by others.