Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. All right, I have been looking
Speaker 1: forward to this segment all day, ever since I read
Speaker 1: this report. It's called Chaos the New Normal twenty Trends
Speaker 1: for the author, Marian Salzman, is a trend expert for
Speaker 1: Philip Morris International. She joins me on the phone from Switzerland. Marian,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I couldn't stop reading this. I
Speaker 1: was trying to skim it, and then I just kept
Speaker 1: getting sucked in. Congratulations. It's so thought provoking. Thank you. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: every time I turn on the TV or listen to
Speaker 1: the radio, I feel like the chaos just gets worse.
Speaker 1: I finished the report before Christmas, and watching the last
Speaker 1: several days, I feel like the chaotic swirl is just intensified.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, and so much of what you talk about
Speaker 1: in this report is manifesting, as you say, every time
Speaker 1: we every time we turn an out. Uh, let's start
Speaker 1: with I'm trying to figure out where I've been sort
Speaker 1: of debating with myself where I want to start. Um,
Speaker 1: let's start on on sort of this human level. Because
Speaker 1: you start out by talking about sort of how we
Speaker 1: interact with each other. We talked about this at my
Speaker 1: house all the time. You know, get your head out
Speaker 1: of your phone. Um, but also start connecting with people
Speaker 1: who you are close to physically. Uh, and in a
Speaker 1: physical way. Tell me about that. Well, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: start off with in a physical way. When you even
Speaker 1: use the word the verb we talked, I talked to someone.
Speaker 1: Did I talk to them with my mouth? Did I
Speaker 1: talk to them with my fingers? Did I face time
Speaker 1: with them? Did I simply send it simple character tweet
Speaker 1: or text message? So there's a UM. We have many
Speaker 1: many more relationships in our daily lives and far fewer
Speaker 1: intimate relationships. Um, we've kind of disum, We've used computer
Speaker 1: to sort of disintermediate between ourselves and the people were
Speaker 1: closest to. So you could take I could take a class,
Speaker 1: I could take an m b A without ever going
Speaker 1: face to face with a professor or another student as
Speaker 1: a colleague. So you're seeing people desperately try to offset
Speaker 1: that with things that are high touched, like the heavy blanket,
Speaker 1: which makes you feel slattled. Adults sort of asking one
Speaker 1: another to hug them, which has a whole other obvious
Speaker 1: implication in this time because of me too and everything else.
Speaker 1: And I just thought this story today of the Pace
Speaker 1: University he too problem. Um, I think that we're desperately
Speaker 1: seeking the physical warmth of another human. We're not so
Speaker 1: good at dealing with people face to face anymore, and
Speaker 1: do you and what do we do about that? Look?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so simple to say, wind back the clock.
Speaker 1: Wasn't it easier to live in the seventies? And we
Speaker 1: put on rolls codd glasses and we forget everything that
Speaker 1: was wrong about those times and we sort of um
Speaker 1: idealized what was. I think the reality is that we
Speaker 1: probably need to differentiate between friends, fans, and followers. Friends
Speaker 1: are people you really know, family, or people that you're
Speaker 1: either really related to or really involved with. But it's
Speaker 1: it's that the the tug of the heart. I think
Speaker 1: we need to um kind of clear away all these
Speaker 1: followers that we accumulate. I mean, you know, an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old girl may well have to three thousand followers.
Speaker 1: You sit down with her, you don't she doesn't know
Speaker 1: very many of them at all. Most of them are
Speaker 1: people who know people who know people who think maybe
Speaker 1: they should know her, so they friend her. She accepts
Speaker 1: that it's even worse on Instagram and of people liking pictures,
Speaker 1: So I definitely we need to re insert. I would
Speaker 1: almost call it simplicity, simple meals to face meals, um,
Speaker 1: simple conversations, face to face conversations. It's, you know, growing up,
Speaker 1: the thing I hated the most was when your mother
Speaker 1: drove you to school. You were stuck in the car
Speaker 1: having a real conversation. So I think we need to
Speaker 1: move backwards to some of those. Yeah, absolutely, Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about meals for a second, because I loved what
Speaker 1: you wrote about, because we've talked about it so much
Speaker 1: on this show, this idea of plant to plate. There's
Speaker 1: a simplicity element there. Obviously, people being more concerned about
Speaker 1: what's going into their bodies. How real is that in
Speaker 1: your estimation? Because you know, we talked so much about Wow,
Speaker 1: that's sort of a fat or or what have you.
Speaker 1: But this faux meat movement, however you want to describe it,
Speaker 1: seems to be taking root. How do you assess it?
Speaker 1: So it's it's a real interesting um bifurcation away because
Speaker 1: on one thing, we want everything to be very very natural,
Speaker 1: We want to eat um. The fewer ingredients. The better.
Speaker 1: We want to know where the lamb that we're eating,
Speaker 1: if we choose to eat meat, where it was farmed,
Speaker 1: where it was butchered, where it was packaged, where it
Speaker 1: was processed. On the other hand, all these fox solutions
Speaker 1: that are plant based, we fundamentally believe it's better for
Speaker 1: ourselves and better for the planet. So it's a real
Speaker 1: um meltdown, and I think it's it's why you I
Speaker 1: was at an event recently where they were sampling the
Speaker 1: Beyond Meat burger and it was such a long line
Speaker 1: of people who wanted it, and the most positive thing
Speaker 1: they could say about it was, oh, it tastes like
Speaker 1: real meat. But the other morning I was at Dunkin
Speaker 1: Donuts in Charleston Beach, Rhode Island, and there they offer
Speaker 1: a Beyond Meat sauceage. So here's this place, completely conventional
Speaker 1: mainstreaming trying to convince, you know, every Joe and every
Speaker 1: Jane to make that switch to plant based. I do
Speaker 1: think plant bases is rising. I think there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a pushback and people are going to still embrace their
Speaker 1: cleaner meats. And I also think that the next wave
Speaker 1: things to be watching for is this real commitment to
Speaker 1: clean food, food with very few ingredients. Food that is,
Speaker 1: you get what you you know what you're getting and
Speaker 1: you enjoy what you're getting, but that's what you're getting.
Speaker 1: And I think that and at the same time, what
Speaker 1: is the foodie is going to change and evolved. I
Speaker 1: mean it used to be the being a food emant
Speaker 1: being very very experimental. Now it may mean that you're
Speaker 1: slow cooking that home cooked meal, right. Uh. And talk
Speaker 1: to me about this youth movement, you know, Greta Thunberg
Speaker 1: obviously has captured so much attention. Uh, divisive in a way,
Speaker 1: sort of surprisingly speaking to some of the other trends
Speaker 1: that you outline, But you know, the youth movement does feel,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, uh, refreshing and something we've seen
Speaker 1: before over time, and yet there's an urgency about it.
Speaker 1: Then maybe I'm just showing my age as a mid
Speaker 1: forties guy that that does seem a little bit new
Speaker 1: in a good way. You know that that there is
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency out there. You know. I feel
Speaker 1: like that movement really started with Malala, and I don't
Speaker 1: think we can underestimate that there was a beginning. I
Speaker 1: think what Greta has done in the last twelve months
Speaker 1: is really, um, make all of us feel pretty guilty.
Speaker 1: If she can do it, why can't wait? If she
Speaker 1: can stand up to institutions and authorities and educators and
Speaker 1: adults and say this has to change, we all pay
Speaker 1: lots of lip service to wanting to leave the planet
Speaker 1: a better place for our children and our grandchildren. But
Speaker 1: the reality is she's the child, and she's setting the example,
Speaker 1: and I think, um, that makes a big difference. I
Speaker 1: also think that today's hyper connected, social media infiltrated world,
Speaker 1: she becomes a role model. One of the things I'm
Speaker 1: starting to see as a fad are you know, parents
Speaker 1: who want their kids to be greta lighte meaning lately
Speaker 1: activists just activist enough to get into a good college,
Speaker 1: activists to build a good network. So there's Greta light movement.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a real phenomena, especially
Speaker 1: maybe in your immediate listening area, in that sort of
Speaker 1: try state area, connected looking at your traffic report, thinking okay,
Speaker 1: these are parents who right now are in the throes
Speaker 1: of college admits that they wish they had a Greta
Speaker 1: right absolutely absolutely, well, I could talk to you first
Speaker 1: much longer. Unfortunately we've got to go. Marian Salzman, come
Speaker 1: back and join us. I loved reading this. I'm going
Speaker 1: to share it with my family, put it out on
Speaker 1: Twitter as well. Uh, congratulations to you. Very thought provoking