The few years has seen a boom in trendspotting, most noticeable in the shape of blogs as they are the ultimate way for trendspotters to reach out with ‘new news’. But have trendspotting finally reached its peak?
The sheer abundance of “source” trend blogs, boosted by other social media, and the demand for trends have turned them into an omnipresent, realtime phenomena. Everyone is a producer and consumer of trends.
In this perfect information society, the trends seize to be trends in the sense that they lose their exclusivity: they are no longer part of the new and the latest, but part of the “now”.
If trends can no longer be seen as predictive or exclusive tools for getting ahead, they’re no longer useful for planners and marketers. If this is the case, maybe it’s time to stop following trends (which aren’t trends anymore) and start being original?
January 23rd, 2009 at 03:38
It’s a great point you raise Leon and something I’ve also been hammering on about for a long time. ‘Trends’ these days are a lot like ads in my opinion: given that 99% if them are pointless and superficial, they’re actually holding brands back rather than helping them get ahead.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:49
Strange entry, Leon.
You’re using a very myopic and in my view erroneous definition of the word “trend”.
A trend emerges when things/ideas/behaviour replicates – an integral part of humanity (just look at what you’re wearing right now and you’ll realize that most/all of it is copied from someone somewhere).
Furthermore, the “trends are dead – time to be original” thought is hardly new. It’s been sold by many trendspotters in the past decades. This is based on the reactionary view that consumption is ultimately something evil (not just an economic description of the part of your capital you don’t save) and needs to be fought.
Personally, I get truly inspired by many if the “new news” blogs you refer to here. Is your point that this inspiration is really an illusion and that I would be better off not reading them?
PS! I wrote a post about this a few days ago:
http://magnuslindkvist.vox.com/library/post/why-trends-will-never-die.html
January 23rd, 2009 at 16:10
The fact that a trend emerges when things/ideas/behaviour replicates is exactly my point. With 100% accessibility and assimilation, the half-life of trends go toward zero. Unlike the reactionary. The originality factor is hence not a political statement, but a strategy if competitive advantage is to be achieved. My perspective maybe myopic, but that’s because it reflects the use of trendblogs as a planner’s tool, not a source of inspiration. As you said, blogs are still inspirational.
January 23rd, 2009 at 16:38
Hmm…
Your assumption is that because “trends” (with your definition of the word applying) are increasingly ubiquitous and omni-present, they
a) are never replicated
b) lose value as planner’s tool
c) seize to be a source of competitve advantage
I disagree with all three claims.
Firstly, people will always copy an idea, a behavior, an insight, etc from somebody else. Different people use different sources but that hardly makes “trends” obsolete.
Secondly, a lazy planner who has relied primarily on trendwatching.com to do the job for him/her will be in trouble anyway with a shaky economy without me telling them that raw infomration has never been and will never be a tool or a competitive advantage. With your often insightful blog, Leon, you know as well as I that information needs to be filtered through that wonderful organ known as brain to be useful. “Trend” blogs are terrific as inspirational tools but in no way a substitute for thinking by yourself. I pity the planners who though otherwise and wish them the best of luck in their post-downturn career.
January 23rd, 2009 at 18:22
I don’t think that my argument is odd or unfounded. To me it’s rather clear that the trend market due to digital media has become exactly like the news market = commoditized.
Nor do I think that there’s one planner that solely relies on Trendwatching.com etc.
What I think that most planners are faced with are time constraints on finding “power insights” that will make their work more effective and creative. Looking where everybody else is looking is a bad research strategy for creating unique work.
This maybe seem obvious, but look at car advertising as an example. Car ads look very much the same, because they are all based on the same research information.
It often happens that ads from totally different categories can look exactly the same, because they are based on the same kind of thinking (and by smart people), although their input may vary.
There are other and better places to look for insights: observing humans and their behaviour for example. To base planning and creative work on truly unique information will give you a much more robust platform than a metastudy of what has already happened in the market.
I think Fredrik summarises it well when he draws the parallell between trends and ads. To make unique ads it’s seldom a good idea to get “inspired” from other ads. That will totally restrict that wonderful brain that we’re talking about.
January 24th, 2009 at 11:58
My final post in this matter.
I agree 100% that the market for (online) trend information is commoditized. I would even argue that there hasn’t been a time in the past decade when it wasn’t commoditized.
However, commoditization is something completely different than your claim that we should “stop following trends and be original”.
That claim, as I’ve argued in this string, is preposterous.
Would you also advice people to stop reading newspapers and books because they’re abundant?
You seem to think that consuming information somehow corrupts the brain irreparably. I would argue for the exact opposite. Seeing, listening to and reading about the world (in everything from books, to mags, to TED talks, to trend blogs) enriches and widens your perspective, makes you aware of trends/ social movements and challenges your own world view. These are things that conspire to make you more creative. Commoditization makes it cheaper for more people to engage in this practice.
January 24th, 2009 at 12:44
Of course people shouldn’t stop reading books, blogs or newspapers. But I do think that the more alike the “input” data people have, from books, blogs and newspapers to education and consumtion culture, the more similar will be the output. So the question is not about consuming or not consuming information period, it’s about being selective on what to consume as a planner or marketer.
The truly exceptional creatives that I know are not meticulous followers of trend knowledge. Instead, they inspire their brains from totally unexpected sources.
I value your thoughts though, and I of course respect the fact that you as a trendspotter have a somewhat different perspective than what I as a “consumer” has.
January 24th, 2009 at 23:24
Beg pardon? I’ve been to some truly useless trendspotting seminars, with people bloviating at length for a day as to what’s going to be valid for the next interval of useful time.
The audience jots down trendy color, activity, music style, etc.
Leon touches on a very cogent point, the fact that the halflife of the trend-insight is nearing 0, because the “trends” evaluated are so insignificant, and because the trend churn rate is extreme as nobody wants to be seen as behind the initial surge of a trend.
We also have to take into account the rapid dissipation of trends across the globe, where one previously had more modest rates of transference that allowed a greater opportunity to capitalize on the trends as they were shifted from region to region. Today, we risk that they are over before we’ve had a chance to implement strategy due to instant dissemination.
Short sighted trendspotting has taken auto companies and airlines down their separate routes of despair. The fact that Air France and KLM are now going into high-speed trains is about time, should have been undertaken a long time ago. The absolute disaster that oversized and overpowered internal combustion engine cars have proven for automakers is another trendspotting graveyard of serious proportions.
It’s actually only recently that trendspotters have begun telling automakers that the future is not building cars, but providing worry free variable mobility, and that this is what people will be willing to pay for. Toyota has had a program exploring this for quite a while, in contrast to more traditional carmakers who fret because the market has been halved (they should already have been deep into the alternatives).
Dead wood advertising, and regular broadcast advertising, are over — as with most things, it will take a while for the realization to dawn on those with a stake in the game, but the realization is slowly gaining a hold. Still, how are agencies responding? Advertisers? Media owners? Clearly not well and fast enough.
Trendspotters should do more than just look for exploitable pivot points in human interaction, they should also supply the means with which to achieve the fullest effect from the opportunity.
As always, it’s a question of engaging with the right side, in exploiting what’s possible. Consider Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy for the 2006 and 2008 elections. He met enormous resistance from the Dem leadership, but prevailed. Consider Barack Obama’s campaign, and how it exploited the interconnectedness of our portable communications devices in achieving response times, cell organization, mobilization and message discipline.
Why didn’t ad agencies see the possibilities? Or trendspotters? Maybe because they are handicapped in today’s world, by having to work for the side that is doomed to lose, because it is defending a position, not challenging it. Defending GM’s position is a losing proposition, and it doesn’t really matter how many ingenious thoughts are cooked up, they won’t go anywhere.
That’s the challenge of trenspotting as an industry – it’s paymasters are incapable of responding to trends with anything like the same effect as are those who challenge them.