A

FAITH POPCORN
1947-

FUTURIST

Popcorn, Please

Decried by some as nothing more than an old-fashioned scam artist, revered by others as nothing short of a miracle worker, professional futurist Faith Popcorn has been credited with coining and pinpointing several trends that marked the decade of the 1990s. Companies such as Reebok, BMW, IBM, Philip Morris, and American Express pay Popcorn and her New York firm, Brain Reserve, millions of dollars to help them create marketing strategies and products, and, when necessary, to revamp old products with a new packaging. Her views on everything from throwaway products ("People just don't get attached to things the way they used to") to boxer shorts ("People think, 'Maybe if I wear them, everything will be alright'") have been quoted throughout the media.

The Way the World Is Going

Popcorn, born Faith Plotkin, started out working in advertizing. By the mid 1980s she had moved to Brain Reserve where she hoped to show her clients "which way the world was going." Her early predictions included "Cocooning," that is, settling at home with fancy and expensive takeout food and a video instead of braving the increasingly mean streets of urban and suburban America. The demand for takeout food boomed in the 1990s, creating an industry worth more than $28 billion dollars by 1994. Other trends that Popcorn has been credited with predicting are "Clanning," the inclination to join up or belong to groups of all kinds, "Small Indulgences," rewarding yourself with small luxuries, and "Being Alive," embracing healthier lifestyles.

Safe-Clicking the Future

The key to Popcorn's success is what she has called "clicking," or searching for the right combination of elements to "future fit" one's life. Once one "clicks," life is filled with all kinds of exciting possibilities and opportunities. It is information about these possibilities and opportunities that Popcorn's clients are willing to pay for. Whether Popcorn will continue to dominate the business and cultural scene remains to be seen. Recently, she has missed on some of her predictions. Critics complain that she merely recycles old trends under new guises and that her predictions are based more on common sense than any real insight into what consumers think they want. But that common sense of what consumers desire, and what they are willing to pay for, is what "clicking" is all about. For the moment, Popcorn is looking beyond the marketplace. By the end of 1994, she and her company were exploring the possibility of offering their services to politicians unsure of how to present themselves to the voters. For Popcorn, the whole of society is one huge marketplace in which everything and everybody is a potential commodity waiting to be bought and sold. The question for her is what makes the product, whether a politician or takeout sushi, "click."