Customer Reviews

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

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Would that it were true, but I'm afraid I'm in nearly total agreement with JimR's negative review from December 29, 2007. The book never makes its primary point that we're on the cusp of another renaissance, primarily because it fails to convincingly establish the clear precursors of such an historical shift.

Like most marketeers, Ms. Martin over-claims, subtitling her second chapter "How a Renaissance Begins," and asserting there are five "immutable" preconditions to renaissance. However, on page 3 in her first chapter ("Preconditions for a Rebirth") the author explicitly acknowledges deep limitations to her approach, saying:
"I wanted to plot the process that leads up to a transformation as profound as a renaissance. *But* the differences between two civilizations separated by eight centuries are so great, that I focused on the catalytic conditions that share certain similarities, *instead*." [Asterisks are mine.]

Ms. Martin never says what methodological differences exist between "plotting the process" and "focusing on the catalytic conditions" that produced a renaissance, but she clearly implies the former was too difficult and the latter simpler. Worse, she never describes how she chose which conditions qualified as catalytic. This level of social analysis may suffice in boardrooms when reliable, comprehensive date is scarce, and organizations must move quickly, but it is insufficient for predicting significant historical trends. In addition, the author claims a pattern based on a sample of one, never citing any renaissance besides that of Western Europe in the 14th century. She compounds this profound mistake by conflating pre-Renaissance and Imperial Rome. I'm afraid this is what happens when an ultra-contemporary demographer/zeitgeister makes historical claims.

Nevertheless, "RegGen" may serve as a modest introduction to the life and times of those Americans whom elected to pursue a humanities degree over the last 40 years, and particularly since the advent of the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, even within this narrower scope the reader may be better served by other books.

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.

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.

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.

Patricia Martin has done a remarkable job of due diligence and research for this thoughtful work on where we are in our world. She takes an enormous amount of information that she ferreted out, thinks it through creatively, writes it simply in an engaging manner, and---perhaps most of all---gives us concrete hope for our future.

A remarkable read for all, both as professionals and citizens. We can all find entry points to engage with the process that this positive overview of cultural change illustrates.

Not worth the time to read. The author seems to want to be seen as a futurist giving us a great insight into the current state of the world and the likely near future. However, the case that there is a significant renaissance happening today is never made, in part because the analysis of the precursors of the 1300 - 1600 renaissance period is so weak. If you already know that American's are aware of design and aesthetics today in part due to media and marketing, and that the internet is connecting people in new ways, then there isn't any news here for you.

Patricia Martin offers a fascinating and instructive thesis: we are at the cusp of a new Renaissance, comparable to the one that remade in Europe in the 14th to 17th centuries. This renaissance is being powered by the death of the old verities and the need for a new context for life. Using numerous examples from popular culture, business, technology, the arts, and spirituality, Patricia lays out the fundamental values that distinguish the people who are creating a new aesthetic. Then she discusses how these values will affect many of our basic social structures. What separates this book from the pack is Patricia's broad inclusion of so many apparently disparate themes, themes that suddenly take on new meaning as they're juxtaposed in this context. Her optimism is contagious, as is her firm belief that the Renaissance Generation isn't an age, it's an outlook. (Full disclosure: Patricia Martin and I were colleagues at the American Library Association in the 1990s and have worked together on several projects over the past four years.)

RenGen gives a great new perspective for the upcoming cultural society. Through statistics, insights, and links, Patricia Martin gives guidance to enlighten any company through the changing times.

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!

Though Patricia Martin may demur, this short book tracks an almost Darwinian evolutionary curve for the human species. And she gets it more right in fewer words than anyone I've read in technical, political, social or other treatments on the same subject. For my book research dollar on the Y, Internet, Wiki or any other name for the sons and daughters of the Baby Boomer generation, her research is exhaustive and well titled with Ren Gen, The Renaissance Generation. But there's a veritable feast of published books and papers on the first generation in human history to be raised on the internet. And the revolution has already begun; Ride the Wave by reading Ren Gen. It's all about new settlers on a rapidly changing landscape.