BIRTH OF THE NEW SPIRITUAL CONSUMER

What's behind the Enneagram's resurgence—and why should brands care?

Author

Jasmine Bina
May 19, 2021

Hey friends, 

If you're anything like me, you might be both curious and skeptical of some of the seemingly emerging forms of spirituality that have taken hold of our culture as of late. But after I read a fascinating piece by Allegra Hobbs that argued that the Enneagram is "upending American Christianity," the curious side of me took over.

I wanted to know: what sparked this renewed interest in decidedly spiritual categorizing devices such as the Enneagram and astrology? And how has a diverse group of people from CEOs to solopreneurs not only become believers in their use as a form of elevated ways of being at work and in life, but also ushered in a new spiritual consumer that is changing everything from user experience and design, to branding and positioning in every category? 

In the fourth and final episode in our series on "Systems in Flux," we dig deep into this phenomenon of a-religious spirituality. 

We're talking about how new spiritual brands are positioning themselves to take advantage of our collective movement towards wanting to be both categorized but at the same time free from conventional binary definitions. 

Everything is being catered more and more to us as individuals—and religion seems to be shifting in that direction, too. Part of that shift is the way we understand what religion is in the first place, and our youngest generations are pushing us further toward newly remixed ideas of spirituality that borrow from a wide range of traditions. 

I talk with Hobbs about the Enneagram and why other categorizing devices like it have also seemingly crossed over into the mainstream because, as she found out in her reporting, we find ourselves in a perpetual state of isolation and alienation—something Rachel Lo also discovered as she developed the dating app Struck, which helps match people based on their astrological signs. Lo explains the larger context of utilizing astrology to reach more diverse audiences—and how that perspective has helped her ultimately to build a more authentic user experience. 

This episode explores how these new forms of spirituality have both changed the consumer and changed how brands reach them.

And while discussions about spirituality can be challenging for a number of reasons, our conversations ended up revealing surprising potential implications for equity and inclusion in everything from how we find meaningful relationships to how we conceptualize our work.

You can also listen on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify and Simplecast.
Or listen & read the full episode transcript here.

Links to interesting things mentioned in this episode:

IS THE CART HALF EMPTY? OR HALF FULL?

Here's what we've been consuming.

Online Shopping Changed, And We Barely Noticed (Vox): "Just as Amazon’s one-click technology introduced impulse buying to a generation of shoppers, social commerce will affect not just consumer behavior but the types of brands that become household names. And increasingly, content creators will have a larger role in directly influencing what we buy. Can you shop till you drop if your digital shopping carts are never full?" 

It's Not a 'Labor Shortage.' It's a Great Reassessment of Work in America" (The Washington Post): "The coronavirus outbreak has had a dramatic psychological effect on workers, and people are reassessing what they want to do and how they want to work, whether in an office, at home or some hybrid combination [...] Economists describe this phenomenon as reallocation friction, the idea that the types of jobs in the economy are changing and workers are taking awhile to figure out what new jobs they want — or what skills they need for different roles." 

Why Millennials Can't Grow Up (The Atlantic): "Millennials, as just about everyone knows at this point, are a generation delayed. The pandemic recession has led not-so-young adults to put off having kids, buying a house, getting married, or investing in a car—yet again. But today’s economic conditions are not just holding Millennials back. They are stratifying them, leading to unequal experiences within the generation as well as between it and other cohorts."

Why China Embraced the Creator Economy Before the West Did (The Information): "Executives at Facebook, Twitter and Snap recently realized that if they don’t help the people who produce videos and other content for their apps make money, these creators will take their talents, fans and potential revenue streams somewhere else."

The a16z Marketplace 100: 2021 (Andreessen Horowitz): "As 2020 drew to a close, however, many marketplaces proved to be extraordinarily resilient—a testament to the flexibility of the model. In a year when in-person interactions were heavily restricted and unemployment went through the roof, marketplaces allowed people to access the products and services they needed and, in many cases, monetize their own talents, services, and resources."

CULTURE CLUB

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Jasmine Bina
Founder & CEO
Concept Bureau, Inc.