A Place for One

American Demographics, Nov 1, 2003

But there is a flip side to this apparent selfishness that cuts across age and gender lines: the desire for some sort of community to replace the traditional family structure that fewer and fewer Americans are living in each year. As a result, "people are defining 'family' much differently now," notes Cynthia Evans, senior partner in the marketing and media group of Mediaedge:cia. "What is interesting today is that with single-person households, there has become a new definition of 'family.' Today 'family' might mean a person with their pets, or they might consider their aerobics class or their yoga class members of their family." Adds Earle, "time-starved singles today have developed their own sort of quick fix communication connectivity. They're out there instant messaging each other and meeting each other and creating community."

This desire for connection - even if it is not in the context of a traditional family - is rapidly becoming apparent to savvy companies that are using a variety of campaigns to get their customers to not just feel like consumers, but members of a community. Earle points out that hardware giant Lowe's has lately been holding events for women, teaching them how to use tools and make home repairs. These are often single females who live alone and can't rely on the stereotypical "man around the house" for those services, if he ever could be relied on before, considering that the chain estimates that 80 percent of home improvement projects are initiated by women. What Lowe's is doing, according to Earle, is selling this community experience in the same way that everyone from Starbucks to companies that sell boutique adventure travel packages do. "This is going to be the big trend for the next 25 years, and it's going to be singles driving it. When hard times hit, families cut out these luxuries, whereas singles won't," says Earle.

Another facet of what might be termed the commodification of warm and fuzzy feelings is the growing use of what Earle calls "yoga copywriting" to sell everything from credit cards to online dating services which, largely thanks to the power of young singles, have lost virtually all their stigma as the last refuge of the desperate and dateless. "This is the sort of thing that appeals to people before they become elite and affluent: when Citibank uses slogans like, 'don't let your checkbook balance you,' they are tapping in to this belief among young singles that says, 'I can be successful but can also be holistic and balanced about who I am.'"

Almost unbelievably, however, the targeting of singles has only just begun to emerge in the food marketplace. While the George Foreman grill is a great example of a product targeted at people who live alone and value convenience, Earle says her focus groups routinely complain about the dearth of single-serving products.

The growing power of single-person households is affecting not only mating rituals but also marketing campaigns, which are just starting to show more positive portrayals of singles using products such as toilet cleansers that were once considered - by Madison Avenue at least - the sole domain of housewives, with large households to run. Given their penchant for spending whatever it takes to create the sort of feelings of community and connectedness they might not otherwise get in their homes or apartments, members of this demographic are beginning to show that they have the potential to remake the streetscapes of much of America as well.