Wednesday 16 July 2008

Gaining a decade

Gaining a decade... of friends!

Times are changing. The average age for marriage is now around 30 and the average we start a family is around 31/32, approximately a decade after our counterparts in days of old.

So what are we doing with our twenties? Is this decade dedicated to our friends?

Those of us fortunate enough to still be in our 20s will probably have the same lifestyle. We work hard and we play hard. Life is all about our friends; our social schedule is a hectic circus of dinners, parties, coffees, flat warmings and drinks and we flit about like accomplished social butterflies.

Previously their mid-twenties was the age when people started to 'filter' their friendship groups. They made an effort with the ones who counted while the superficial ones slowly fell off the radar.

However the advent of networking sites like facebook, myspace and skype means we are moving from filtering our friends to categorising them.

A friend told me recently about one of her 'friends', adding the disclaimer “but they’re in my outer circle".

Are we categorising our friends like the plates of a volcano – core, inner circle and outer circle – and if so what could this trend mean when thinking about our brands?

Nimi

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It could be that there is a role for brands to help us manage this categorisation (Filofax, for example) - or mark out the different categories (e.g. only drinking certain drinks with close friends).

Or maybe, much as technology is making it easier to have more friends in our lives, it will mean we can accommodate a broader repertoire of brands?