Evening Links: Women Changing Work, Aspirational Gap

Five years ago, I left my own corporate fast-track career to work freelance, sacrificing all chances of traditional success and power. I did it because I could. I liked my work well enough, but I’d grown to hate corporate life with its hierarchies of halfwits, its waste-of-time politics and its thought control…. I’m recounting this not because my decision was so interesting or unusual, but because it wasn’t. I was just one of a huge, growing wave of women who join the workforce running, with qualifications and ambition to burn, then opt out of life in the big corporations and institutions at mid-career.

You may recall there were several articles on this theme back in October. Linked from What’s your brand mantra?.

A gap exists between a consumer’s aspirations and their actual lifestyle. All consumers aspire to live a certain lifestyle but most times they settle for living a life below their aspirations. Successful lifestyle brands are designed to tap into people’s aspirations and then offer these consumers a way to actualize their aspirations.