Rengen: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer - And What It Means to Your Business

by Patricia Martin

Ideas - and the forms in which they are expressed - are the new currency. Yet many companies, the media, and even the general population mistakenly see America as an intellectual and cultural... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1598691341
• ISBN13: 9781598691344
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Platinum Press Inc.
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A fabulous new view

Patricia Martin weaves fantastic storytelling with right on evidence that something big is happening. With the recent stock market crash and economic insecurity, businesses need a new way to look at consumers. What Ms. Martin brings to the table is eerily on target, presenting a fresh perspective that expresses vital information about today's cultural consumer. RenGen is a must read for anyone who doesn't want to be left behind in this changing economy. I'm looking forward to her future writings that will help shed more light on this coming (perhaps already here) renaissance!

"Joe six-pack" is so over

Patricia Martin has succinctly described the new age of the cultural consumer. The mass-market advertising aimed at "Joe Six-Pack" is largely going to be wasted, much like Joe. My take-away from this book is that the new mass-market is a mass of micro-markets. People's interests have splintered with the advent of the internet: there is so much more to explore, and they can explore faster. Companies that want to succeed will need to sponsor smaller and more focused cultural events, and reach very targeted web audiences. Certainly, mega-events like the Super Bowl will still be attractive to advertisers who like to waste money, but the bigger bang is in the mass of micro-markets in smaller venues.

Hope for us all

For too long I've felt absolutely hopeless about our country's future. Our government leaders are against anything progressive, suppressing science, the arts, social movements, and the reality of global warming. But if I'm to believe Patricia Martin in her Ren Gen book, and I do, I feel hopeful again about America. Bubbling underneath all of this resistance, she says, is a collective creativity that is about to erupt into a new renaissance, and within my own lifetime. Martin not only identifies the conditions that have come together to produce an age of enlightenment, but through careful research explores them, even meeting with the business leaders, artists, scientists, civic planners, and others, who are helping us to evolve in a positive way. We are the renaissance generation, or in her coinage, rengen. Martin's careful to distinguish between a renaissance and a revolution; this coming renaissance, she says, doesn't overthrow past ideas and inventions but builds upon them. Don't call it multi-tasking, call it fusion: Example after example shows how we are drawing upon each other's particular expertise to face our problems, co-mingling our professional fields. This spells excitement, challenge, and hope. In this era of Paris Hilton and Fear Factor, I had come to believe that our society had given up caring about anything intelligent. But Martin cites studies that show more people are reading literature, and going to concerts, lectures, operas, poetry slams, and museums. We are anything but a cultural wasteland, she claims, and has the statistics to back it up. This is the first book or even article I have read to put its head above the smog of despair and see clean air. We're not dead, according to RenGen, but being reborn. And now that I know a creative renaissance is flowering, I'm putting up some scaffolding and painting my ceiling.

RenGen is required (and fascinating!) reading

RenGen is required reading for anyone who wants or needs to understand the up-and-coming generation. Martin presents an entirely different, and well-founded, depiction of this group. Written in an accessible style, RenGen has meaning for just about everyone. Whether you employ or manage this generation, parent them, sell to them, prospect for their donations and time, desire their votes, or socialize with them, you need to read RenGen. It will change the way you think and increase your understanding of those around you.

Be a part of the REN GEN - Buy this Book

Ren Gen explores the social conditions that are giving rise to a second renaissance, and how people in the "knowledge economy" of our times - people in business, education, entertainment and the arts - can recognize and utilize this renaissance wave to their benefit. Drawing on her 20 years of experience in working with artists and corporate executives anxious to understand the cultural consumer, the author draws a new picture of the American consumer as a thinking, expressive individual. RENGEN describes a rising state of mind through which consumers consider important decisions: where to invest, what new businesses and products might succeed, what messages to communicate and which media channels to optimize for successful messaging. Whether you're in business, or whether you just want to catch the latest wave as a part of the Ren Gen movement, I know you'll find this book fascinating -- as well as useful. Look for the term "REN GEN" to become a household word.