For years, America's green movement was perceived as fringe. But over the last several years, and in particular 2008, the issue took off. Suddenly, it was all over the local and national news. Political candidates of both parties were talking about it. People were trying to find out what they could do to be greener.

We were no exception. Here at Taylor, we felt this green groundswell in several ways. To do our part, we instituted an aggressive recycling program and focused on containing energy costs. But we also noticed this change in emphasis in the research we conducted, as clients tried to find ways to identify consumer expectations for companies' green products and green business practices. Earlier this year we established the Green Report Card, a self-funded online study measuring the green brand image of major U.S. corporations.

"Green Is The New Black," some said.

And now, there seems to be a new green: texting while driving.

Texting isn't new, driving isn't new, and texting while driving isn't new. And it doesn't take an advanced mind to realize that typing while operating a motor vehicle probably isn't wise.

But all of a sudden the issue is everywhere. Over the weekend and early this week, several polls on the topic were publicly released and pointed to high levels of texting while driving. Today, a two-day distracted driver summit called by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrapped up in Washington. It seems every national newspaper has run a story this week on the issue.

And like with the green movement last year, we have noticed the issue turning up more and more often in our work. Clients are interested in the extent and frequency of texting while driving, as well as attitudes people (texters and non-texters) hold toward the practice. They want to know where this issue is heading and what they can do to get out in front of it in the design of their products.

According to Liz Halloran at NPR.com, 18 states and Washington, D.C., now have laws that ban sending or receiving text messages while driving. Six states and D.C. prohibit all drivers from talking on handheld cellphones; 21 states and D.C. bar novice drivers from all cellphone use.

Look for many more states to get in on the act. Halloran also points out that national legislation could limit funds to states that don't ban the practice.

Halloran writes: "The research is in -- and it's been in for a while: The nation's addiction to constant communication has led to a crisis on its roads, where behind-the-wheel texters and cellphone chatters have become the new drunk drivers."

This is only the beginning. Stay tuned.

My fiancé runs a video production and web design business out of our home. Needless to say, much of his work -- video editing, site building, e-mailing, networking -- requires an Internet connection. Last year we had Internet service from [insert major cable provider here]. We had our fair share of gripes, including gaps in service, poor connection, a modem that kicked the bucket, and customer service reps with heavily accented speech -- not to mention a whopper of a bill. My fiancé finally got fed up and cancelled service, and we looked into an alternate method for connecting.

Well, as luck would have it, method No. 2 is now causing problems. Annoyed and stuck, my fiancé recently hopped on his Twitter account and posted the following: "Does anyone have a reliable and AFFORDABLE Internet provider in NH? I just can't bring myself to pay [cable provider] over $100/month again."

Not 10 minutes later, CableProviderSteve (name changed to protect the debatably innocent) tweeted in response, asking how he could help.

The moral of the story? On Twitter, people are watching. And not in a creepy, Police, "Every Breath You Take" sort of way (although I suppose that's arguable), but in a "you're a consumer; our company should pay attention to what you think and what you're saying about us" kind of way. People -- lots of people -- are on Twitter, and are paying attention. Companies and service providers are monitoring what we think about them. CableProviderSteve's job is to watch blogosphere alerts for mentions of his company, and then ask how he can help. He gets paid to tweet all day! Of course, his motivation is saving money for his big, corporate-giant company, but Twitter can be used as a force for good as well . . .

A few months ago, at the height of both the economic crash and the dead of winter, my friend Amy found herself unemployed. Amy's professional experience centered around nonprofits and event planning, but she wanted to transition into human resources. She connected with a career coach, who told her to look into Twitter. Soon Amy was connecting and tweeting with human resource professionals all over the country, asking for advice, learning inside tips, and building her professional network, 140 characters at a time. She's now a recruiter for a major Boston hospital.

People are making connections (and making money) on Twitter. According to SSI's monthly newsletter, more than half of Twitter followers reportedly use it in some marketing, professional, or work-related capacity, and they've got an audience: In April 2009, Twitter traffic jumped 83% from the month before to 17 million unique visitors. Worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 10 million in February, which is up an astonishing 700% from a year ago.

Just the fact that Peter and I are blogging about Twitter is evidence of the niche it's carved out in our tech-savvy times. Blogging about tweeting -- now that's Web 2.0 in action. Is Twitter a fad? Probably. Is it useful? Definitely. It may go the way of 8-track tapes, virtual reality, and even MySpace before long -- but in the meantime, millions are jumping on the bandwagon.

I'd like to close with an excerpt from a cleverly written blog entry by my friend Ian, who highlights the eclectic fusion of Twitter topics:

The highlight of Twitter to me is the sidebar that tells of "trending topics." These are things most Twitter-ers are talking about. Lately, the Iran election had been wailing on everything pretty soundly until Michael Jackson wanted to give St. Peter a real test. . . .

On today's listing was both of those things, but also Princess Protection Program. What is Princess Protection Program? Princess Protection Program (henceforth known as 3P) is a Disney movie where a princess from a small country that does not really exist nearly gets assassinated. She ends up moving in with some normal teenager in America. Can you say misadventures? She's not used to doing things like washing dishes, so as you can imagine, hilarity is on the menu! She also teaches her new American roomie how to do things like walk with a book on her head and which one is the salad fork. In the end, they both come out better people and the assassin goes to jail. . . .

So, let's think about the 3 things we've got on the list.

1. Extreme political instability in a country that is very much our enemy and basically hates us.

2. Death of one of the biggest music icons of all time.

3. 3P.

This is why Twitter is awesome. These three things would never come together in any other way except on a website where people belch up 140-character pieces of information the moment they come into their head and display them for the world to see. I would not have it any other way.

Would you?

Five years of research for the music industry led us here at Taylor increasingly to the conclusion that the primary cause of the industry's woes is ubiquity (of which piracy is a subset). So much "free" music is readily available from so many sources (it's ubiquitous!), that two things happen: (a) more and more consumers say, "Why buy when I can just listen?" and (b) the very ubiquity of music makes it less "dear." People still love music, no question about that, and they still consume tons of music -- maybe more than ever. But because it's so available for free everywhere they turn, they're not buying the music they love. Why should they? They don't have to.

Our research bore this out. From 2004 through the first quarter of 2009, more and more consumers listened to music from an ever-wider variety of "free" sources (legal and illegal), and especially those "wide-variety-of-sources" users, over time, purchased less and less music compared with the market as a whole. Because they are music lovers, such consumers continued to purchase more music than other consumers, but their rate of decline in purchasing over time has been significantly greater than that of the average consumer.

It turns out the music industry isn't alone in the deleterious effects of ubiquity. Pay TV service (cable, satellite, phone company TV), consumer electronics, movies, and apparel are examples of other afflicted industries. Too much choice gets in the way of the purchase decision for consumers.

Here's some evidence of the point in a number of categories:

On consumer electronics shopping: "Despite falling prices and the increasingly consolidated retail space, consumers still despise shopping for consumer electronics. . . . The process [is] more complicated than it needs to be. . . . The selection at most stores remains almost mind-boggling, with products and models from a range of companies offering almost too much choice for buyers. Most shoppers . . . walk into the average CE retailer worried that they'll buy the wrong thing or end up paying too much." -- "Shopping for Electronics is a Drag," June 23, 2009

On movie watching: "It's a paradox of abundance. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice." -- Siva Vaidhyanathan, NYU professor of communication and culture

On jeans buying: "'I want a pair of regular jeans,' I said. 'Do you want them slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy?' the sales woman replied. 'Do you want them stone-washed, acid-washed, or distressed? Do you want them button fly or zipper fly?' I was stunned. The trouble was that with all these options I was no longer sure WHAT I wanted. Increased choice brings autonomy and control, but as the number of choices continues to grow, so do the negatives. Beyond a certain point the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. Choice no longer liberates; it debilitates." -- Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice

On pay TV service: The growing availability of video content online -- both long form and short form, both professionally produced and user-generated (and especially the widespread availability of "free" content (from both legal and illegal sites) -- will surely begin to erode pay TV service offerings, if it hasn't already.

And then there's my personal favorite example: hunting. [NOTE: I have never in my life hunted; I just love the book this comes from. It is the essence of scarcity.] It's essential that the "desired animal is uncommon. If it were everywhere there would be no question of not running into it. If it is unnecessary to look for it because it is always at hand, in inexhaustible supply, one does not worry about success in killing it. If the first blow fails, it is all the same; another animal is right at hand to receive a second aggression, and so on indefinitely." -- Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting

The point: So much choice available from so many sources reduces sales (and kills the fun if you're a hunter). Consumers say, "Why buy?" Hunters ask, "Why hunt?" Ubiquity of choice in any given category makes the product (or service) less "dear," or more confusing (or both). Scarcity, which of course is the opposite of ubiquity, creates "value" in people's minds. When something of reasonable value is relatively scarce, its perceived value is heightened; when something of value is available everywhere you turn in seemingly unlimited choice, its perceived value is diminished, and at risk of being destroyed.

And increasingly, it seems, ubiquity is everywhere.

OK, let's make this Praxis thing a little more interesting. Who's willing to bet that five years from now, Twitter will be as popular as it is today? Anyone? Because I'll take the other side of that bet, in a heartbeat. Hell, I'll even give you two years.

You should have a huge advantage over me in this little wagering exercise. For one thing, I haven't done exhaustive research into Twitter -- I haven't done any research, for that matter. What's more, I've never even used it (and yes, I've heard that you have to use it before you can truly appreciate its genius).

My view on the matter comes from one source and one source only: my gut. And that gut informs me that Twitter is a fad, a fad that before we know it will be going the way of the 8-track tape. There are just too many factors working against it:

1. It's risen too quickly. Twitter was introduced just three years ago, and today it's discussed everywhere. To me, anything or anyone that becomes that popular, that quickly, is bound for an equally rapid decline.

2. The mainstream media are fully on board. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but doesn't it feel like the mainstream media are invested in the popularity of Twitter? Did you see the June 15th cover of TIME magazine? "I've written this week's TIME cover story about how Twitter is changing the way we live -- and showing us the future of innovation." Changing the way we live? The future of innovation?

Claims this far-reaching are the kiss of death for any new technology. (By the way, with all due respect to my friends at TIME, here's an interesting quote from the November 1, 1993, issue: "Virtual-reality hype is gradually giving way to virtual-reality reality." Hold on . . . damn . . . I know my VR glasses are around here somewhere . . . )

3. Twitter serves no useful purpose. Look, there are plenty of people I love, like, admire, and respect. But if reading their random, 140-character-or-fewer thoughts constitutes a "useful purpose," then I absolutely need to get a life. And that says nothing about the people who think their own random, 140-character-or-fewer thoughts are so fascinating that I'd want to read each and every one of them. And on a related note . . .

4. Any product or technology that is so mercilessly the butt of jokes has little hope for long-term success. If you read Doonesbury, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You don't hear people ridiculing Facebook, by the way (which may also be a fad, but which I'm convinced will be around a lot longer than Twitter).

5. Twitter is extremely limited. I'm not just talking about the character limit, but the fact that Twitter does only one thing. Yeah, I hear you: The simplicity of Twitter is one of the things people like. And I'll admit, doing one thing, and doing it really well, is not necessarily bad -- just ask the people who have stock in Google. But after you read this reason, please go back and reread reason No. 3.

Actually, I lied a little bit about not having done any research into Twitter. Someone passed along an article on Twitter's retention statistics. Apparently, Twitter has only about a 40% U.S. retention rate (it had been at only 30% for most of the past 12 months). In other words, 60% of people using Twitter don't use it again the following month. Twitter's retention rate is much worse than Facebook's and MySpace's when they were relatively new.

So, still eager to lay out a little dinero? If you're a bit skittish, no worries. We don't have to use real money -- we can bet on Second Life. Call me if you're interested -- and don't forget -- to make things easier, just pick up the phone and use voice recognition to dial. Or, if you feel compelled to make this wager in person, just hop on your Segway and head on over. (Where ARE those VR glasses, by the way -- maybe the same place I put the pet rock?)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a tourist destination. It takes a solid week of sailing from the West Coast to get there, and most vessels avoid it entirely because it's essentially a whirlpool of strong ocean currents. And it's a topic I'd like to avoid even knowing about -- one of those "I wish I could stick my head in the sand" stories that make you feel really guilty for being a human, an American, a consumer, and so on. One of those, "Oops, we really have irreversibly ruined the earth" kind of stories.

The Pacific Garbage Patch is an enormous hunk of man-made debris in the North Pacific. This trash swirls in a circulating pattern called the North Pacific Gyre, created from four ocean currents that combine to create a massive swirling vortex. It's estimated that 20% of the trash came from sailing vessels, while 80% came from land-based sources.

Scientists estimate the size of "garbage island" to be anywhere from twice that of Texas to twice that of the continental U.S. And just in case knowing a patch of trash is floating in the ocean -- killing wildlife and polluting the water -- wasn't enough to trouble you, there's this lovely piece of news: the decomposing toxic materials (mainly plastics) are slowly working their way back into the food chain. As Thomas Morton writes on the Vice Magazine website:

"Once the plastic confetti gets small enough to fit inside a jellyfish's mouth, it gets sucked in and starts its way up the food chain back to us. As the jellies float out of the debris field, little fish eat them, absorbing all the built-up plastics. Then big fish eat a bunch of little fish, even bigger fish eat a bunch of big fish, and by the time you get to the point where we're hoisting creatures out and eating them, you're looking at entire milk crates' worth of particles built up in their fat. It's the cycle of life reimagined as a dystopian sci-fi cliché. We are eating our own refuse."

So what does this mean for us as consumers, us as researchers, and our clients? It means we should be concerned about where our goods come from, how they're disposed of, and which companies provide the most environmentally friendly products and services. And as the green movement gains ground, more and more companies are starting to pay attention to consumers' concerns about "green-ness."

In this light, The Taylor Group has conducted its second wave of the Green Report Card -- our survey on consumer perceptions of corporate greenness.

Based on 769 online interviews, this research measures the environmental image of 93 business-to-consumer-based companies in the U.S. Highlights include:

• In spite of widespread, and growing, efforts among U.S. corporations to promote their environmental initiatives, companies with a clear, distinct "green" image are the exception rather than the rule.
• The top-rated companies include (among others) Google, Discovery Channel, Whole Foods, Apple, and Toyota.
• While the highest-rated companies have changed little from the first wave of the study in summer 2008, many industries have seen a slight dip in ratings -- suggesting a halo effect from the economic downturn that has bled into green perceptions.

The research is available for download at nominal cost on our homepage, and we're planning additional survey waves to track companies' images over time.

Comments or questions can be directed to Jason Grucel at greenresearch@thetaylorgroup.com or by calling 603.422.7600.

Bridget Leopold cleared the breakfast dishes and settled into what promised to be a relaxing Sunday morning. Hours to spend with the Sunday Boston Globe. She reached for the "Ideas" section and was instantly intrigued by the cover story: "Born to Party: New research suggests that our basic political attitudes -- liberal, conservative, or otherwise -- are with us at birth."

If you spend any time reading the news these days, you've undoubtedly encountered similar stories. They tend to run something like this:

• Topic: New insight into why people (think, feel, decide) the way they do.
• Approach: Experiments conducted by (psychologists, social scientists, cognitive scientists).
• Method: A group of subjects (usually university students) is divided into two subgroups. One subgroup is (given, shown, told) X, while the other subgroup is (given, shown, told) Y.
• Result: Those in subgroup A were (more/less) likely to (choose, prefer, decide, express, worry about) Z.

The news media have glommed onto stories like this with a vengeance, in magazine-length feature pieces and bite-sized sidebars.

While the media fascination may be new, the types of experiments that feed these stories are anything but. Ever taken a psych class? Remember studies of identical twins raised in different homes? Remember split-brain experiments (connection severed between right and left hemispheres)? These are variations of experimental designs -- alter one variable, keep other variables constant, measure differences in outcome, and conclude that the differences can be attributed to the altered variable. The approach is elegant and inherently satisfying.

But wherever there's inherent satisfaction, there's also opportunity. Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) and Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics) correctly predicted that non-academic audiences would open their collective wallet for books with an experimental design feel--books that use empirical data to explain complex marketplace trends.

The public's appetite for 'splainin' whetted, the market was only too happy to oblige. New books began flooding the shelves, examining everything from how people make judgments (Gladwell's Blink), to the physical processes triggered by music (Daniel Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music), to why you shouldn't worry about your videogame-addled son (Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You). It wasn't long before the news media smelled blood too, which is why you'd be hard-pressed to find an edition of a newspaper or news site that doesn't include a story on the study du jour.

Not everyone is thrilled with how the discipline has been popularized. Take a gander at some recent examples (all reported in my local newspaper, The Boston Globe), and see what you think:

• Did you need a study to tell you that . . . "Couples where the wife was more attractive were characterized by more supportive interaction on the part of both spouses; but, if the husband was more attractive, he was less satisfied."
• And that . . . "When the viewers were rating the faces for attractiveness, the preference for being gazed at directly by smiling eyes was much greater for faces of the opposite sex, especially when they were rated by men."
• Did you really spend money on . . . "Through five psychological experiments, [the authors] demonstrate that the color red makes men feel more amorous toward women."
• Did you check a dictionary before starting? "Perhaps understandably, boredom has never caught the attention of the psychological world. . . . So [the author] set out to examine boredom more closely, with the idea that the feeling must have a purpose."
• Wow, that much? "In a forthcoming paper, [the authors] say that having a winning NFL football team increases the incomes of the people who live and work in its hometown by as much as $120 a year."

Trivial topics. Frequently sloppy interpretation (e.g., correlation mistaken for causation). Minuscule sample sizes. And tree, after tree, after tree, with nary a forest in sight. Some entire books do little more than recount a laundry list of narrowly focused experiments, with only the vaguest attempt at tying them all together (see Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness).

Speaking of vagueness, the vagueness of the topics doesn't help either. It's bad enough that medical research regularly contradicts itself (remind me: is coffee good or bad for you this week?). But at least those results can be objectively measured (cholesterol levels, blood pressure, weight). How do you measure the vagaries of the human heart and head -- attractiveness, charisma? You'd have better luck nailing Jell-O to a wall.

You have to feel sorry for newspaper feature editors and writers in all this. With so much content to churn out, it has to be tough to meet deadlines and still come up with original, creative story approaches. But thankfully, they can take their cue from movie sequels -- create a boilerplate and simply plug in the relevant content.

• Section 1: Tell a personal story as setup
• Section 2: Explain the phenomenon
• Section 3: Describe the phenomenon's history
• Section 4: Give detractors a say
• Section 5: Go back to the personal story and close with affirmation

Back to Bridget, who has just finished the cover story with a vague sense of having learned something meaningful about the human condition. As a bonus, the magazine includes a weekly wrap-up of the latest experiments, which she reads with keen interest. She makes a mental note to whiten her teeth and iron her red blouse today, and checks whether the Patriots are on at 1 or 4.

Go team!

Being "green" is no longer just an environmentalist's concern. Political candidates are talking about it. Corporations are trying to find ways to capture it. Quirk's Marketing Research Review recently dedicated an entire issue to it. Here at the Taylor offices, we've instituted an aggressive recycling program and are saving on waste and energy costs.

Environmental awareness has taken off this decade, especially over the last several years. There's been a notable increase in consumer expectations for companies' green products and green business practices. Consumers are making changes, and they expect businesses to follow suit. As many companies have scrambled to respond, we wondered: Who's succeeding?

So we set out to conduct a self-funded online study measuring the "green" brand image of major U.S. corporations. The research, released today, consisted of 617 online interviews and measured the environmental image of 71 business-to-consumer-based companies in the U.S.

We invite you to check it out and join in the green discussion: view our press release or download the full report from our website.

I love that song by Radiohead, I wanted it for my iPod, and I simply assumed I could download it at the iTunes store. No such luck--they don't carry anything older than the band's new In Rainbows album.

Next stop, Amazon. I was excited to see the song listed, only to find it was only available by downloading the entire album. I even checked Yahoo! Music, but it looked like I would have to sign up for their monthly subscription service. Way too complicated for just one track. And not to sound self-righteous, but I couldn't even begin to consider a file-sharing site.

Oh yes, I did have one other online option--downloading a version by the "Radiohead Tribute" band. Right. Can we say Beatlemania?

So the next time I was in Borders, I wandered over to the Radiohead bin and found the CD with the song. I stood transfixed, holding the CD and waiting for something--a critic's blurb ("Best Album Ever!"), divine intervention, a message from my gut--to convince me to take the plunge and buy the entire album on the basis of a single song.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to spend $13.99 for a song I coveted. I was frustrated. If I had been a few (okay, many) years (okay, decades) younger, I might have thrown myself on the floor and thrown a temper tantrum.

After calming myself, I began to realize that I was in the exact same situation as people I've spoken to in focus groups, people who have all but abandoned CDs. Why buy an entire CD when you might only like a couple of songs, and when an alternative acquisition method is readily available (downloading individual tracks, legally or illegally)?

Then my somewhat obsessive habit of thinking of the broader implications of seemingly insignificant situations kicked in (a habit, by the way, that can be a blessing in one's professional life but a curse in one's personal life).

On the one hand, my experience spoke to some of the well-documented benefits of the Internet: convenience, ease, 24/7 availability, instant gratification. But in my mind, something broader, more profound seemed to be going on.

Not too long ago, the very notion of acquiring an individual song would have been unthinkable (unless the song happened to be released as a single). I would have had just two choices--buy the album, or live the rest of your life "Karma Police"-less. And even though I'm in that state right now, I realize that's more and more becoming the exception. If I had been looking for a different Radiohead song, or if I didn't feel guilty about file-sharing, I could very well be listening to Thom Yorke as I type this.

What seems to be happening is that the world of commerce is shifting from prix fixe to a la carte, from needing to buy the complete package to picking and choosing just the items one wants. The music industry, historically structured in prix fixe (i.e., complete albums) terms, has been one of the first to feel the effects of this shift. But the media industry is feeling it as well. (Why subscribe to a newspaper when I can pick just the stories I'm interested in online?) And we're already seeing the beginnings of the shift in the television industry, where people can download individual programs whenever they want, without needing cable or satellite TV--or a TV at all, for that matter.

What's most significant in all of this is that it's more than just a shift in the primary transactional unit. That's happening, for sure, but it's being accompanied by a more profound shift in the consumer mindset. From "I guess the companies know what's best for me, so I should accept it," to "I know what's best for me, so you'd better adapt to it."

Think of magazines, which strive hard every issue to include a range of material that readers will find interesting and that adds value. But hey, we all know magazine subscription is shrinking. Why? Because it's faster and more convenient to read stories online? Maybe. But I think it's because the notion that an editor knows what's best for me is fading fast. Empowered by the vast choices offered by the Internet, consumers are becoming accustomed to making those choices for themselves.

Some industries have already embraced the new a la carte environment--for years now, the computer and auto industries have been allowing consumers to "build their own" machines online, choosing just the features they want. Other industries may be immune--industries where the product's piece-parts hang together as a creative, coherent whole. (It's tough to imagine people buying only a chapter of a book or a scene from a movie.)

On the other hand, the shift is probably going to wreak even more havoc in other industries, like television delivery. The whole a la carte channel debate is likely to intensify--why should I pay for a package of 75 channels when I only watch five of them? Or even, why should I pay a monthly subscription for a premium channel when I only watch a handful of its programs and shows?

Are product bundles an exception here (e.g., "triple play" offers of telephone, Internet, and TV from a single provider)? To me, that's a different animal. Consumers want or need those three things, so they may as well get them cheaper (bundled discounting) or easier (single bill). But throw in things consumers don't want--the price is higher, but you also get Yak Recipes Illustrated every month--and you kill the whole concept.

There will undoubtedly always be consumers who consider those responsible for producing a product to be experts, and as such have the best idea of what would be useful and valuable. But I've got to believe this is a shrinking population, to be replaced by younger consumers who, every day, have the luxury, and freedom, to choose from a myriad of options online. More than ever, companies will need to move from wondering, "How do I convince people to buy what I've got?" to, "How can we make sure we give people exactly what they want?"

The Internet is spoiling us. Me included. I'm holding off on "Karma Police" until I can buy it, legally, as an individual download. If you happen to know where I can find it, let me know (just don't send me the song, please).