But Rosenfield has his eye on the majority of Westerners, who plan to pop the champagne corks when the three nines turn to three zeros. Cultism is another phenomenon that tends to appear in these times. Some people have been predicting that we would see a cult connected with technology, so when Heaven's Gate happened, they were right on the money. In conjunction with his observations about millennial fever, Rosenfield offers companies advice on how to address the hopes and fears of their customers. Rosenfield believes that companies have to show commitment to the future without alarming customers.
Reassurance is key and can be communicated by promoting the company's heritage.
But the time for capitalizing on these concepts is short. The countdown clocks have already started ticking in London and Paris, and if companies miss this one, they'll have to do some really long-range planning to catch the wave in the 2990s. They should also look ahead to what happens after the ball drops on December 31, 1999. This happened 100 years ago. There was a pause, then an explosion in art and other areas.