The Oracle of Delphi does Wall Street-that may best describe the work of Faith Popcorn.
From her 28th-floor Manhattan office, she makes her living peering into the future of pop culture and selling her best judgments to Fortune 500 companies, including American Express, Eastman Kodak, IBM, and Procter & Gamble. Fortune magazine recently explained, “Popcorn has never claimed to be a scientist. In fact, the main point of her work is that it’s intuitive, visceral, and touchy-feely.”
In the late seventies, Popcorn presciently coined the term cocooning Americans retreating to “haven at home-drawing their shades, plumping their pillows, clutching their remotes.” She also came up with the phrase cashing out to describe the phenomenon of “cashing in the career chips you’ve been stacking up all these years, and going somewhere else to work at something you want to do, the way you want to do it.”
Founder and president of BrainReserve, she has written the best-selling The Popcorn Report and, with Lys Marigold, Clicking. Popcorn certainly has no particular interest in Christianity (“I’m 100 percent Jewish,” she says; “I don’t believe in Jesus Christ the way Christians do, that he was God”), but she knows well the culture Christians want to reach.
To find out where culture is headed, Leadership consulting editor Leith Anderson, pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and senior associate editor Dave Goetz visited Popcorn in her office on 1 Madison Avenue. She was amazingly candid about the disillusionment she has observed in our culture and the resulting opportunities for the church.
The Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World Report recently ran cover stories on churches and religion. Why are the media paying more attention to religion?
Popcorn: The press is simply people (though sometimes they don’t act like it). They are just responding to what interests them and what interests their audience. But the interest relates to the Anchoring Trend, which is the trend of spirituality. I don’t know much about the churches you’re involved in, but in the mega-churches, people are looking for community, not just a church. Which seems counterintuitive. You would think a larger church provides less intimacy. It’s like a village rather than a church.
What will that mean for the smaller church?
I would compare it to retailing. Take Price Club, the megastore. People like to go there and end up buying more than they thought they needed. On the other hand, there is the trend toward intimate, tiny boutiques, bakeries, candy stores-you need that.
So there’s a place for both big and small.
I think so, but nothing in the middle. The middle will probably fall out. The extremes will grow.
To understand the culture, what sort of questions do you ask?
In my seminars, I say, “Don’t ask this question of anybody you live with, but ask people, ‘Are you happy?’ ” Most people will tell you, “Not really.” People, in general, are not too happy. That’s an especially great question for pastors, perhaps more appropriate for them than me. But ask, “Are you happy? What would make you happy? Where would you like it to be better? How would your life be better? What would have to change? Why don’t you think it could change? Why can’t it change? Is it so impossible? What would have to be different?” I find people give two reasons they’re unhappy: their spouse and the money they make. But when you go a little deeper, that’s not true; money and spouse are put up so they don’t have to think about the real reasons. People have a lot vested in being unhappy. This I don’t understand totally. I myself am like this-it’s much more fun to complain than change anything.
Is there a trend that’s immoral?
There’s part of a trend, Fantasy Adventure, that makes me a little worried-virtual reality. Virtual reality will allow you to put on goggles and a glove and walk into a room, a virtual reality room, and travel places. For example, you’ll be able to go to the supermarket or the department store and pick out goods. But you’ll also be able to travel to Europe, or meet Aristotle or Jesus Christ and have a conversation. Based on his work and everything we know about him, they’ll be able to program Jesus. You will be able to sit down and talk to Jesus. Or you’ll be able to talk with your parents when you were 4 years old. The downside is if virtual reality becomes more manageable than life. Ralph Nader once said early on that if we watch more than three or four hours of television a week, we’ll not be paying attention to our environment, our cities, our government. Our average viewership is thirty-six hours a week, and he was right.
You’re based in New York. Do your trends apply to the average American?
To research our trends, we conducted about 4,500, one-on-one interviews for one hour. We did none in New York. New York is a place unto itself. Our real work is to get people to buy product. Our trends are the basis of our work. But the trends are interesting to us only in terms of how we position companies.
But it’s a top-down approach. You’re relating primarily to people with money, the elite.
We say that our work is not about Third-World countries and not about the very poor, but neither is it about the elite. We study the middle class. We see the difference between rich people and poor people as money, not desire. I used the word customization in my seminars, and for years people thought I was crazy. Business executives would say, “What are you talking about? Customized clothes?” “That’s what people want.” “That’s for the wealthy!” they said. But then Levi Strauss made customized jeans. You will see customized everything at mass price. All the things you can’t get to fit-underwear, bathing suits, and shoes-will be customized. You’re going to see laser creation, where you stand in front of something and the item is designed specifically for your shape.
In most churches, women outnumber men. How do women shape religious institutions?
Let me talk about business. Female-run companies are employing more people, globally, than the Fortune 500. It’s the only part of the business community that’s growing. These are small companies-three people, five people, thirty people. When a woman runs a company, she runs a company as a family. When a guy runs a company, he runs a company the way he learned in the Army-in a hierarchical manner. Women run a company straight across. They even bring their kids to work. One of my employees, Mary Kaye, and I travel together. She has a little boy, 3 years old. When she can’t get childcare or her husband can’t do it, we take along her son. Try that in a male-run company. They would think you don’t have your life under control. But to me, it seems better for her son to bring him along. What’s good for the kid is good for Mary Kaye, and what’s good for Mary Kaye is good for my company, because it means she’s not worrying.
What do you foresee in terms of people’s contributions to charity?
I see people-at least those who are a little older-worried about the future and interested in giving back something to others. As the big institutions fail us-the government, the courts-we say, “I’m not going to turn my charitable dollars over to Unicef. They’ll probably blow it. They’ll waste it in overhead. I’m going to give directly.” People want to see what happens to their money. Control is going to be a big issue in the decade ahead.
How could the church serve its members better in the area of money?
What people want is financial management. Even poor people need that. Middle-class people need that. But they don’t get it.
It’s a service churches could provide?
Definitely. We just wrote to John Reed, head of Citicorp, saying people want what rich people have: private bankers. Middle-class people really need help: How do I provide for the future of my kids? Should I buy or lease? Churches are not supposed to be interested in money. I think that helping people manage their money would be a wonderful service. And you could probably get them to give you more money in contributions if you did.
Having watched trends for many years, are you more or less positive about the future?
I’m more positive about the individual and much less positive about organizations. I just don’t trust bigness the more I work with it.
Is that because large organizations have power, which corrupts them?
No. It’s because they know only how to delegate. People in large organizations say, “It’s not my job. It’s that person’s job.”
Peter Drucker claims that one of the largest employers in America is voluntary agencies like the church. If you wanted to motivate people to volunteer, which trends would you tap into?
Clanning, making the work like a club. And Egonomics, customizing the work and making it recognized. People need to be noticed doing something right. People often get into volunteer situations that are worse than the worst aspects of the Fortune 500 companies, because they’re given so many rules and regulations.
Given your Cocooning trend-retreating from the world-and your 99 Lives trend-busyness-will people have time for volunteer involvement?
It’s not that people don’t have time. People have time to do whatever they want to do.
How should they be approached?
What are they going to get out of it? Helping somebody through a difficult time, for example, is rewarding. It makes you feel extremely important, especially in this era of non-control. You can’t control anything. When you’re able to control even a little, like when you help out a friend, you feel extremely good.
What motivates people today?
Feeling important. Being appreciated. That goes a long way.
As the boomers age, will that motivation change?
No, I think it is even more important. It’s a chance for, well, salvation-to use your terms. But I mean salvation now, not after you die. All the things you did wrong in the first fifty years, all the screw-ups with your kids or spouses or whatever, you now have a chance to make it up. I hear men say that they were terrible parents; so they get married again when they’re 50 to a younger woman, have another family, and they’re great parents. The man gets another chance.
So there’s an opportunity for the church?
If you’re going to have a successful religious organization, this would be the next ten years to do it.
And if churches don’t seize this next decade . . . are religious institutions going to end up in the same category as the government and big companies?
Well, that’s happened already in some sense, because many people feel churches have taken advantage of them, not given anything back, and not recognized the real problems. But if in the church it became okay to be more aware of what was going on with your consumer-your parishioner, whatever you call them-you would have an ongoing institution that would be healthy and vital and connected.
Do you think the culture is giving the church or institutional religion another chance?
Yes, I do, because we’re desperate. I don’t talk about this much. I think there’s a universal consciousness that the planet is in trouble ecologically-which I think is spiritual. The big organizations are not going to take care of it, because they’re not structured for that. And they don’t know where else to turn. I do think people are really looking again for a more gentle spirituality and more understanding.
One challenge we face in the church is trying to be faithful to the gospel, the truth. Much of the church in Germany, for example, accommodated Nazism.
That was guys getting together in power. It was not about God. I can’t be objective about this, being 100 percent Jewish. It was just more rich guys making deals. This is not a pretty world. That’s why I don’t trust money and bigness. I think most real people don’t.
Did you grow up planning to be a futurist?
I had a very, very strange background. I was raised in China in Shanghai. My father was head of the cid, which is like the cia. He was American military. I went to Sacred Heart (Catholic) schools in my formative years. But I don’t believe in Jesus Christ the way Christians do, that he was God. I believe he existed. He was a healer. But I think there are a lot of healers, maybe not as good as he. I love Christians. I love everybody who’s good. I don’t judge people by their religion. But many are unwilling to see that the world has truly changed in its configuration. I’m assuming that a good church would accept anybody who walks through the door and offer help.
It’s hard to generalize. There are 400,000 churches in the country.
You have ten years to prove yourselves. This is a great time for you, great time. Do you feel it?
1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
