Getty Pitches Army of "One Life"
There's little weirder than the psycho-adverto-mysticism of Getty Images' "MAP Reports" (or "[what] Makes A Picture Reports"). Pitched mostly to commercial photo buyers, these reports combine a shamanistic entrail-reading of search trends of the Getty image archive with conceptual forecasting that borders on the nonsensical. Consider this passage from the latest MAP, entitled "One Life" (excerpt here):
In domestic life the MAP Report reveals a resurrection of the 'cocooning' trend but this time in the form of 'belief shelters' where the home becomes a 'sanctuary' rather than an expression of aspiration, and advertisers begin to feed a growing sense of the 'spiritual'. For younger men who don't have space for spirituality but are genetically disposed to discovering their 'inner den', the belief shelter will take the form of 'macho minimalism', a spartan living space devoid of everything except widescreen TV, games console and minibar.
Creative Review does an admirable job mining the full report for a few gems and many more absurdities — for example, tired of multi-tasking? Try "mono-tasking." Lots of other industrial-strength hooey, but nothing that should endanger your belief shelter.
