I was going to drop a note about the excellent speech John Grant gave at the Guardian's annual motor industry lunch, along with a nice pic of the man himself. The pic has sadly been shredded by technology, and a slightly longer version of the speech, which was on 'engagement, not selling' can be found here. I was going to say that the speech begged some questions and debate from the floor, but the event isn't set up that way so it never happened
Anyway, in between my thinking about posting and getting round to it, John has also put up this piece entitled 'enough' which really struck a chord with me.
Having recently seemingly had to upgrade just about every piece of tech kit I use, which to be fair isn't a whole heap, I became really aware of a shift in how I felt about it all - it used to be exciting shiny new box happiness, and now it was more a sense of guilt, knowing I will use about 2% of whatever it can do - so much waste, so much stuff I don't need. Maybe it is just a sign of getting old and being more resistant to change than I thought, but I really did feel enough was enough and that I didn't need something slightly shinier, slightly faster or slightly sharper.
As the piece says, "ENOUGH could also be a consumer reaction; the slowing down of replacement cycles, extending the life of a few good things, a creative after market in reconditioning and clever upgrades", which means that Enough could also then possibly be part of a wider or greater desire to recycle/be responsible/sustainable etc - cherish and condition rather than bring and burn every year?
Either way, it opens up a whole host of new markets and product development possibilities.

