The weekly trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology puts out an annual “double issue” in July focused on the future of aviation and space industries.

This year’s article on the future of civil aviation includes the observation: “A hundred million people spend more time in the virtual world than in the real world.”

A hundred million? That’s better than one out of 70 of the 6.8 billion humans on the planet at the end of 2010.  Deduct the 4.3 billion too young, old, poor, or rural for internet access and that 100 million who spent more waking hours in virtual space than temporal space comprises one out of every 25 people in the planet: World Internet Access.

Not just any one out of 25. These netizens reside in wealthier nations and tend to be better educated than the national average.  In other words, these teens to thirty-somethings are many of the managers, technologists, educators and bureaucrats of today and the next few years.

AvWeek’s article discusses the future of air travelers.  Netizens who are comfortable viewing each other, chatting, and reviewing documents online are far less likely to travel from New York to Jakarta for a business meeting.  The tipping point at which Business Class slides beneath the waves is already in sight.  The future is EasyJet (leisure travel) rather than Air France.

It affects more than travel patterns. Living in the virtual world revolutionizes consumer behavior.  The same week Borders went bankrupt, Amazon announced 50% quarterly profit growth.

We can’t find any quotable stats, but in wired markets like Europe, North America, Australia, and Europe we’d bet that the majority of this year’s new businesses will be internet ventures.

What does all this mean for marketers?  Those of us who don’t radically alter what we sell and how we sell it are looking at a tipping point of our own.

This wordless café sign in a stairwell on a Fukuoka alley may reveal an earthquake fault under Starbucks’ business model.

In Japan, as in America, Starbucks stores are so pervasive and consistent that they define the coffee urban experience.  That sounds great…at first glance.

A small café like this one is often a one-man operation run by a young owner who knows the young adult audience by being part of it.  Gaze at the sign for a moment and think about what the guy pulling espressos upstairs was thinking when he designed it.   Such a place doesn’t advertise.  The sign is its only way of attracting customers. What’s message did he choose to bring them in?

We think the sign says “not Starbucks” in no uncertain terms…and we suspect that this message attracts young consumers who think Starbucks coffee tastes fine but find the Starbucks experience boring because it is and (in their adult years) has always been the same.

In the café biz, Starbucks is a high-overhead retailer. They need a premium price to pay the rent.  Us packaged goods guys know that coffee is coffee – the price premium derives from the experience.

For a growing number of consumers, ecology and economy converge to replace Crystal Geyser with refills from the tap and Starbucks Ventes with coffee from home in a vacuum travel mug.

Judging by our employees and friends, the chic new consumer trend is minimalism.

There’s more to it than saving a few bucks. Many of the minimalists are not hurting over the price of gas for their Audis.

It’s a pattern of social behavior.  Profligacy has become…thinking hard here…what’s a word that combines “dumb” and “impolite”?

Astute brand managers have developed a positive response to this social pattern in new products and brand-refresh programs.

We call it “minimalist brand affect”.  Simpler looking packages.  Simpler sounding names.  Package and promotional copy that stresses functionality.  Products and packages that are more functional.

A product like the Honda Element combines minimalist affect and enhanced functionality to sell to this influential (and growing) segment without depending on price-cutting.

In a slowing economy, knee-jerk price-cutting is a losing game. In the end, you can’t win because, when the other guy’s sales are hurt, he’s going to respond in kind. Everybody’s margins shrink, nobody’s volume grows. For many marketers, minimalist brand affect is a better solution.

Derived from the verb onegau (“to pray or beg”), the Japanese word onedari means “please” in ordinary conversation.

In girl-boy relations it means pleeeeeease, as in I really, really love that Hermes scarf.

We’ve just run across a clever Japanese retailing website called Oneda – where a wife or girlfriend can select an item (cosmetics, jewelry and golf apparel are popular) and email an onedari message to her guy – who with one click can buy and ship it to her.

Cleverest of all, it’s a mobile site – to browse on her cell phone screen on the subway, with her friends, or alone in her room.

A great marketing idea (so many goods, so little time) that, thankfully for us American guys, hasn’t appeared as an iPhone app yet.

More details in this article in Japan Pulse (a lifestyle blog of the Japan Times):

Shopping site lets you ask nicely | Japan Pulse

It seems like only yesterday when billionaires collected newspapers like The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Tribune, Rocky Mountain News and London’s The Times/Sunday Times like children collect stamps. Important media brands enhanced an owner’s social status while they churning out profits.

As it turned out, the old publishers knew the business better than the buyers. They saw the category collapsing under the relentless weight of internet competition. The handwriting on the wall said, “the only readers left will be habituated old people; not an audience many advertisers want to pay for”.

Presumably driven by the historic political influence of big-city newspapers, Rupert Murdoch was a frequent buyer. In the U.S. he bought The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, The New York Post, and a handful of smaller papers. In London he bought The Sun, News Of The World and The Times/Sunday Times. In Australia Murdoch owns the major paper in every big city.

News has always been available from other sources, but a newspaper was a brand. You used it every day; it was familiar, trusted, comfortable. But as faster, personalized, internet news channels appeared, newspaper brand value collapsed. The giant presses and fleets of delivery trucks became expensive liabilities. Newspapers are hemorrhaging money. What to do?

Mr. Murdoch plans to put The Times/Sunday Times behind an electronic paywall. Only paid subscribers will have online access. The company predicts a loss of more than 90% of its page views in the first few paywall weeks. Its online advertising income goes out the door along with them.

Why won’t a paywall work? Because news is timely information, and the same information is instantly available online. The Times’ logo and a few well-regarded columnists can’t possibly affect the outcome. Even if Mr. Murdoch (as he has suggested) succeeds in persuading other publishers to attempt paywalls, the information that is news will still be on the web in the blink of an eye.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Last week’s lame business page flapdoodle focuses on a GM memo instructing the company’s employees, dealers, and salesmen to use Chevrolet rather than Chevy.

Fighting the headwinds of deflation, GM is making hard branding decisions (like dropping Pontiac) to rebuild comprehension and trust in American and overseas consumers. Asking its employees and dealers to use consistent and slightly more respectful language to refer to the brand makes sense.

The memo doesn’t suggest in any way that GM hopes to convert consumer usage from Chevy to Chevrolet. Being smarter than a turnip, GM managers know it’s impossible to replace a brief, handy word with a longer one in everyday usage.

But as headwinds cut newspaper and magazine revenues, seasoned business page reporters have been replaced by cut-and-paste turnips who think “cute” is journalistic acuity.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

It’s getting harder and harder to be surprised by new wrinkles the internet springs on those of us laboring in the salt mines of marketing.

A recent article on nytimes.com touches upon what may be a life-altering trend for sellers of personal goods like clothing, jewelry, cosmetics and (think about it!) food.

What’s happening?

A raft of new websites offer consumers an opportunity to customize such products at little more cost than buying mass-manufactured goods.

Two forces converge at these sites…younger self-assured consumers whose world has always included internet retailing and – critical in these capital-constrained times – eliminating the continuing cost of buying and maintaining a diverse size-and-pattern inventory of finished goods. If it’s made to order, it’s made after the order comes in.

The article’s selection of these sites includes blank-label.com (shirts), gemvara.com (jewelry), laudividni.com (handbags), fashionplaytes.com (children’s clothes), createmychocolate.com (candy) and meandgoji.com (granola).

These are small businesses invented and operated by young entrepreneurs. For a look at how a big company does it, check the NikeiD athletic shoe line at NIKEiD.

Read the full article at:

Prototype – Putting Customers in Charge of Designing Shirts – NYTimes.com

Judged by the total value of its shares, Apple is now the #3 company in the U.S.A.

Many analysts expect it to pass #2 Microsoft soon. (Exxon-Mobil is a strong #1.)

Marketers should be popping our buttons with pride. Apple is a triumph of innovative new products and intelligent, courageous marketing.

Courage? You bet!

In 2001, the computer industry snickered when the first Apple Store opened in Tyson’s Corner VA. Competitors’ responses ranged from “a site for consumer research” to “maybe they can’t sell them through normal retail channels”.

Today, there are nearly 300 Apple Stores, 70% in the U.S. and 30% overseas, with annual sales topping $7 billion (out of Apple’s roughly $40 billion).

iTunes is a similar example of the company’s marketing moxie. While it looks obvious today, nobody imagined negotiating a flat 99 cents per track with the world’s hostile-to-downloads record companies in 2003.

Our point? It takes more than great products to create a blow away company. It takes the brains and guts of marketers like you who read this blog.

For more details on Apple’s financial value:

http://www.smartmoney.com/Investing/Stocks/apple-may-soon-be-americas-largest-company/

Half the bulk and half the cost of many packaged goods SKUs is packaging that’s intended to persuade and be thrown out. We have no excuse for continuing to waste money and materials that way.

To make packaging simpler, use less of the Earth’s dwindling supply of trees and petroleum, and (no trivial benefit) spend less to produce, ship and recycle, young designers have come up with a new wave of ideas.

For example, shoemaker Puma has adopted this slick, minimal packaging system.

It consists of a flat cardboard insert that folds into a box and a reusable bag that holds the thing together and provides a carrying handle. The components can be shipped flat in a carton of unboxed shoes. The system is more attractive, cheaper and less bulky than conventional shoeboxes – and in our opinion will suggest to the consumer that the shoes it contains are similarly clever in design and efficient in function.

For details, check this article on the Big Think website:

http://bigthink.com/ideas/19986

How’d you like to be the EADS new product guys who spend 15 years developing a breakthrough product that required the largest capital investment in history?

Manufacturing glitches delay the program by several years. When you finally launch the A380 (at 500 tons, the biggest airliner on the planet) financing is nearly impossible; airline passenger revenue has tanked; and the hub-and-spoke travel pattern for which the mega-hauler is intended has lost out to “point-to-point” low-cost carriers.

You’ve delivered 20 planes against 200 orders (the company needs to deliver about 1,000 planes to break even) but half of your customers want to cancel. You can’t steamroll them, because they’re the market for the company’s other airliners.

The answer is obvious. Fold it. Take your losses. Move on.

It’s the risk-reward ratio at work. Sometimes a game-changing product makes heroes, sometimes it makes goats. In this case it’s goat city.

But EADS is controlled by national entities like France and Germany and thus answers to politicians.

For political reasons, they’re unwilling to pull the plug even though it’s obvious to everyone in the aviation industry that canceling the A380 is the only way the company can survive.

Think about working for politicians the next time you start to whine about your company’s empty suits…