As young adults discover more exotic varieties out there, consumption of American cheese slices are down. WAY down.
And why should anyone be surprised? It’s completely understandable. With the Internet, people have never had so much power to choose, so much ability to tell the difference between A and B.
Ergo, like Jeff Jarvis says, if you give people power, they will use it. Cheese is only one example of thousands.
Seth Godin has been writing about this for years… an exodus from mass market behavior, towards a plethora of tiny niches. He summed it up beautifully in his short masterpiece, “We Are All Weird”.
So it’s a good thing to remember: if the “newly weird” can do it to the mighty American Single, they can sure as heck do it to your thing as well.
Food for thought.
