it's ok to be lonely

There's a very interesting piece at Creative Review (CR) about the findings of Getty Images' Map Report. According to Getty, “advertisers will no longer shy away from depicting the individual without relationship ties.”
They claim this based on the purchasing patterns in their website, plus: a study of 50,000 searches conducted in the last 12 months, 120 re-branding exercises conducted for its clients, tearsheets from the 260 magazines read per week by its Creative Research department, and a survey of 500 advertising creatives around the world.
CR writes a very intelligent review of the report, acknowledging some of the insights while rebuffing the unnecessary marketing buzzwords (when will we ever learn to speak like normal people?).
Here's an excerpt: "It’s OK to be alone. While in the past, advertising may have conspired to makes us feel utterly inadequate unless surrounded at all times by a coterie of guffawing supermodels, images of solitude are the growing trend in global visual culture....So say Getty Images whose Map Report claims to “capture the concepts that are shifting global culture and will become hot themes for the world’s media”. Having spent decades deriding singletons as losers with all the social skills of a rock, advertisers now want to make friends with those of us with just the one toothbrush in our bathroom. And it’s not just because, with no family to support, single people are wont to fill their empty lives with pointless new purchases. Being on your own is now, apparently, an aspiration...It’s all wrapped up in an 11,000 word report which, though blighted by some of the worst marketing bollocks ever committed to paper, nevertheless contains some intriguing insight. We’ve read it so you don’t have to – OK, we didn’t read it all, it’s not like we’re some sad loser with no friends…". Read the entire review here.