I have had this theory, which is not earth-shattering, but it’s been buzzing around like an aimless fly looking for a lovely place to land. Today I found a great spot.

Maslow tells us that we’re needy. We require basic daily sustenance needs (food, sleep, sex, etc.) met first before we can move on to filling voids of friendship, self-worth and many other “non-survival” needs like my fav, creativity. If you review Maslow’s hierarchy, I’m guessing that I’m somewhere in between his “Esteem” and “Self-Actualization” buckets. Reinvention, here I come. Or, mid-life crisis? I really don’t care about the label, it’s the mindshift and behavior that is pulling me towards change.

So, here’s my theory . . . over the past few years I’ve become increasingly annoyed, discouraged and trapped. Everything in this modern world is so easily abundant that it has become painfully empty. If I want a steak dinner, I can have it brought to my house in about 20 minutes. If my favorite pair of shoes look a little worn, I can get another pair in under a day. If I don’t like my house, I can sell it in a few weeks. (Okay, I may not get top dollar but I can still unload it and move on whenever I want). There is very little in my life that is created by me from my own hands. I didn’t kill the cow (for the steak dinner or the shoes) and I didn’t build the house. Easy come, easier to go.

The abundance of just about everything seeming endless. Have you seen your options for gum lately? Who knew there were so many recipes for chewable spearmint. We no longer function in what I call “survival mode” because the fallout from the Industrial Revolution has handed us everything we could ever want on a platter. So, because we are not killing our own chickens and building our own outhouses, we need to replace this time with something. The main replacements are entertainment and buying stuff: stuff we don’t need, stuff we think we need and stuff we’re told we need. The problem with filling our time with things brought in from external creation is that someone else’s heart and soul has framed that creation. Our hierarchical needs of achievement (no matter how small) — respect, creativity, spontaneity, self-esteem and even morality — are being imported from mass produced promises of happiness. Very little originates from within. The result is that our higher levels are not being met and suddenly we’re wandering around aimlessly, like flies looking to land, confused about why we’re unhappy and unsatisfied.

Like I said, this theory is not earth shattering. I’m sure there are tons of philosophers beyond Maslow that have culled this out into a much more scientific and extensive way.

But today, a lot of what I felt was missing from my theory (however small of a theory it is) got a total shot in the ass. Today, I met Patricia Martin. Patricia Martin has been conducting research over the past few years about cultural shifts. She believes we are not just in a state of flux. We are renaissancing. Well, that’s my morphed term, but the basic core idea is that, just like da Vinci and Michelangelo, we are moving cultural needs to the top of the list. The old civilization, as we know it, is dying. In its place is a shift in relevance. We have been disconnecting from the things that make us feel relevant for so long that it is moving us towards an end. An end to complacency, an end to numbness, an end to static civilization as we know it. Patricia has seen that, when you are faced with an end (she actually uses death as a term) and impending trauma, your creativity is heightened. So, from the current state of disconnection comes the scrambling to become connected. In that effort, we create. Our focus shifts from “being” or just existing to creating with the ultimate goal of living in beauty, placing aestheticism as the highest value and gaining pleasure from all things that make us feel relevant.

Our Gen Yers are 80 million strong. Gen Xers (that’s me, at 37, right smack in the middle) are only 48 million and Baby Boomers are still kickin’ around at nearly 75 million. The younger set are driving this renaissance, there’s no doubt. They don’t want to work 9to5. They don’t want a daily grind. But, they do want to have a job that is meaningful and vital to society. They understand Maslov’s top tier hierarchical needs and are hell bent on meeting them and, not just for themselves, but for all of us.

If we are in a cultural renaissance, this affects everything we do in business and marketing. As Patricia argues, how do you market to groups that refuse to be bucketed into segments? One of my group88 members is a cardiac pediatrician who is starting an ecommerce website for physicians in private practice. I have a friend whose passion is racing cars but you’d never know of his talents in the kitchen. There are engineers who are fond of painting water colors. I’m a career gal who is learning to play the drums and last year made my own jam Amish-style. How the heck do you choose to market to these people who have disparate and varying interests? As a culture we are shifting from the goal of “having stuff” to “doing stuff.” Selling to doers is much harder than selling to hoarders.

Patricia has a few ideas on selling in a cultural renaissance but I have yet to read her book so I will refrain from espousing on more theory. One thing that did stick with me in her discussion today, however, is that we need to pay attention to the rebellion of consumers. Don’t label them or put them into buckets. Don’t create segments for them to hopefully fall into or attempt to categorize them in ways that you see fit. They will rebel, become annoyed, and your business will die.

But dying is not a bad thing. Because, as we now know from renaissancing, a little death is required for rebirth.

Predicting what 2008 will bring is tricky business. It’s an election year, housing is moving on from sellers-market denial, credit card debt continues to eat away at our economic stability, the U.S. dollar has seen better days, old media continues to fight the once-good fight while new media prepares for all-out infiltration and conglomerate air time is continually consumed by the Writer’s Guild strike and Britney Smears instead of our troops.

Armageddon? Not yet. As far as I can tell, turmoil breeds panic for the timid and intrigue for everyone else. The business climate, depending on the business, is at once volatile and filled with opportunity. I see the upcoming two years as less of an end to a decade than a precursor to the incredible shifts that will take place beginning in 2010. Virtual living and working will cause person-to-person business to make room for better online practices and philosophies. To be truly successful in the Web 2.whatever, businesses must synergize online and offline activities. Your business’ relationships, revenue and mojo depend on it. Enough about the decade, let’s just focus on 2008 for now.

Below are WallFly’s top three predictions for the upcoming year. I have to admit they are a mix of prediction and hope. Maybe I should have called them “Business-Fulfilling Prophecies” instead?

Recession Schmession

Smart companies will improve relationships, not business plans.

I’m not suggesting you avoid streamlining. We’re all making measured decisions with our cash flow. Just last week I considered not sending out a business mailer for the holiday season. Instead I opted to spend less money at Panera and wait until the new year to hit Staples.

Move your numbers around all you want but if you’re not taking time out to do the following, you are losing ground with clients: a) connecting with your clients on a regular basis (phone, mail, email or events) to increase opportunity for more interaction b) learning when, why and how your current clients interact with you, and applying that knowledge to improving your value and c) feeding your positioning with a menu of competitive activity, impending growth and your customer’s changing climate.

We all know that getting a client takes double the effort versus convincing a happy client to stay, so why do companies continue to neglect clients in the off-season of interaction? Think about your best personal relationships and what makes them tick. Making someone happy in a relationship 90% of the time requires improving their life every day (i.e., taking out the garbage) versus buying an expensive gift one day out of the year (i.e., buying an iPhone). Next time you consider dumping all of your marketing dollars into a big trade show, think about the low-budget things you can do to reach out to clients throughout the year: start a monthly newsletter, make quality control phone calls, talk about how other clients benefit from you, make in-person annual visits or even send out a short quarterly email that shares info on upcoming developments.

Ecomm Grows Up

Utility will emerge from 80 gazillion social media apps.

I’ve seen some pretty useless Facebook applications - from starting a virtual snowball fight to getting hugged by a zombie. How do these strides in web development improve your business? They won’t. But they will change the way users interact with the web and that’s what you need notice. Once users start expecting things from the online world, they want it from everyone - a streamlined user experience, content that takes into account context and a site that understands the concept of easy.

The massive amount of activity taking place among developers for Facebook and now Google’s universal app platform will both increase the size of our kids’ behinds as they play less soccer (or play more virtual soccer) and generate technologies that users will want to see everywhere. If you have a website, start paying attention to the activities happening online. You don’t have to apply them all but you have to understand how it will affect your clients. I’ve advised some clients to skip blogging because it didn’t make sense for them. It’s not about jumping on the latest, new technology - it’s about understanding how all new technology is driving the way we do business.

Marketing Gets Stuck

New media will drive marketing. The stories that stick, win.

I was wondering when some smart marketing guy would take Chris Anderson’s Long Tail and extend it by applying it to branding. The smart marketing guy is Mohammed Iqbal and the essay is The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication, as found on ChangeThis.

One-hit wonders are not only increasingly rare in this climate of targeted success, aiming for them is the same as denying the tastes of various music fans. We are a culture of choice and highly personal demand. One size does not fit all and this philosophy applies to both your products or service and your brand position.

I recently discovered this in my research for finding a market for a Connecticut coworking space, Group88, that I will help manage in 2008. Some of the area professionals liked the idea of getting out of their home-based office to meet with other folks while others had no need for networking at all (I think there’s always a need for networking but I’m partial to the practice). You can’t be all things to all people so don’t even try. You can, however, choose the primary values of your positioning that appeals to your variety of customers. Using new media channels to test an idea and then kill it or expand it will yield higher results than picking one thing and crossing your fingers that it will stick. Don’t egg your basket - add crates and buckets and other things to put all your eggs into.

I have never been tempted to drag myself out of a post-Thanksgiving coma to mingle with the early morning freaks on Black Friday. But darn that Kohl’s if they didn’t have the best deal on digital photo frames. So, there I was, pulling into Kohl’s at 4:15 a.m., and under my droopy eyelids I suddenly notice not 1, 2 or 3 but like 8-10 women strolling out of the store with purchases in hand. The store had only been open for 15 minutes! These gals must have been camped out since 2 a.m. and, obviously, knew exactly what they wanted - my digital photo frame. Dang it!

I parked the car, in the second back lot since the first was a complete nightmare, and strolled into the store. After finding the empty shelf that was home to my digital photo frame and catching a glimpse of the frenzy throughout the store, I split. I then strolled over to Best Buy, which was opening at 5 a.m., and got in the line about 300 people deep. A guy in front of me told another guy that he’d need a ticket or he’d be forced to wait outside and, by the way, they weren’t giving out tickets anymore. Back to the car I went. I’ll spare you the details of the rest of my day, which I now call Black-Eye Friday, for the elbow-throwing crazies who will do anything to grab the biggest deal first.

Have we totally lost our minds? Retailers are pointing to high fuel prices (which are definitely a factor but not always a deal breaker) and the mortgage crunch for pre-blame commentary on how they will have a tough holiday season. Dozens of surveys and reports such as this one by U.S. News predict consumers will tighten their belts and spend less than we have in the past 5 years. Fooey! It’s not the holidays we should be worried about. Consumers won’t spend less between now and December 25. They’ll just jack up their plastic and then, starting January 1, try to figure out how to pay for it. And that’s when we’ll all be in trouble.

I don’t think we’ll have an all-out recession (plus, who am I to predict such things?), but I do think that businesses will be tightening up in every area: resources, marketing, advertising, overhead, employee benefits and anything that isn’t instantly reflective of the bottom line. You will see tons more businesses investing marketing dollars in online within the next two years. This isn’t difficult to predict based on the recent growth in trends and the Googlization of advertising, but I believe more businesses will be open to online for basic cost-saving factors. As long as they can be sure of the return and, with online, tracking the return is as easy as a few clicks and a scan of the data.

You can take all the surveys you want that will predict a slow in spending, and they might be true, but I’m less concerned with the economical effects of not buying Johnny an iPhone in Christmas 2007 versus the after-effects of a nervous economy that breeds less investing and ostrich-like spending in 2008 and beyond.