Societies all over the world are changing at a rate faster than ever before, affecting virtually all levels of social, political, and economic life. Markets are going through similar processes, moving increasingly from mass products to products designed for niche markets and highly discerning consumers. Hence it is crucial to understand the dynamics and the effects of social change. These insights need to be transformed into innovative products, marketing, and communication strategy. Equally important, understanding social change must become an integral part of management culture in order to effectively pilot companies through the turbulence of change. SocioConsult uses a socio-cultural approach designed specifically for the purpose of assisting companies in the management of social and economic change. Created by Cofremca (France) and SINUS (Germany), two of Europe's leading agencies in strategic and marketing research, SocioConsult draws on nearly two decades of experience. It combines the best of Europe's know-how and research methodologies (i.e. 3SC and Everyday-Life Research) to address the needs of companies operating within complex markets both nationally and internationally.
With my European colleagues in RISC, we conducted in 1981-1983 the initial cycle of an ongoing program called "Anticipating Change in Europe" (ACE). In this program, we have compared all the information available to us on change in society and among consumers in Europe. We have drawn certain conclusions from this. One particularly clearcut conclusion is that we are on the brink of a tremendous surge of innovations, that there is a powerful call for innovation, but that innovations are finding it difficult to break through.
With my European colleagues in RISC, we conducted in 1981-1983 the initial cycle of an ongoing program called "Anticipating Change in Europe" (ACE). In this program, we have compared all the information available to us on change in society and among consumers in Europe. We have drawn certain conclusions from this. One particularly clearcut conclusion is that we are on the brink of a tremendous surge of innovations, that there is a powerful call for innovation, but that innovations are finding it difficult to break through.
I want to dwell here, focusing on the case of France and drawing upon observational data accumulated by the 3 SC system (COFREMCA System for Monitoring Socio-Cultural Change). I shall begin by attempting to describe, in very broad terms, recent socio-cultural trends in France, and to give some idea of the way these trends affect relations between the French and their government and politics. In the second part, I shall briefly outline some of the challenges to government that have been identified by a number of strategic analysis units.
To face this situation our team has worked for several years to perfect a system designed to detect and to monitor socio-cultural trends. The system presently functions as a syndicated service.
Advertising as a means of action on human behaviour is quite typical of our age; however, the assumptions we make, the theories we develop in that field, the research we are currently conducting to test the impact of advertising are still deeply affected by attitudes and concepts which have been bequeathed to us by the last century. This discrepancy, I believe, tends to decrease the effectiveness of advertising and to impede communications between the creative people and the research people. We are now working at COFREMCA on the realisation of periodic quantitative surveys which appear to us both as a valuable tool for readjusting advertising strategies and a progressive means of adapting more closely our approaches and our theories to the advertising realities. In the first part of this expose I shall recall in outline what makes the originality of our age in the field of affecting man's actions. In a second part I shall try to point out in what way our concepts relative to advertising action are still marked by those of the 19th century. Finally, I will evoke one type of quantitative periodic surveys which should facilitate a further development of these concepts.
This paper will deal with these "maladjusted'' companies and methods of helping them to overcome their problems. v i In the first section we shall attempt to pinpoint the source of maladjustment inherent in company structures and in the mentality of the directors and executives. In the second section we shall examine two Instances of readjustment. In the third section we shall point out, by using Information drawn from the first two sections, where we think It desirable to adapt our methods to assist the company In readapting.