Communicate

Print

E-mail

RSS Feeds

Add Comment

Communicate: Professional trendspotters. That would make a really cool business card.
What is a trendspotter anyway? Someone who sits on a green hill waiting for a trend to roll by? That sounds just as cool as the business card, and, as it turns out, it’s not too far off from the truth.
Trendspotting as a recognized discipline has been in practice for a number of years. In 2005, Ad Age wrote: “Trend-spotting, of course, is nothing new, with legions of companies established to understand how shifts in consumer behavior and large scale social change can inform marketing programs. Ad agencies and the holding companies that own them have also gotten into the game, establishing dedicated offerings.”
JWT was one such organization, establishing JWT Intelligence in 2007 as a “center for provocative thinking.” The agency uses Intelligence to focus on “identifying changes in the global zeitgeist so as to convert shifts into compelling opportunities for brands.”
Magnus Lindkvist, a futurologist and lecturer within business intelligence and trends (a trendspotter, in other words), puts it more plainly. “You don’t become a trendspotter – everybody is already a trendspotter in the sense that we look around us and constantly wonder, ‘what’s going on in the world?’”

GONE IN 6.5 SECONDS. Global advertising agency HorizonDraftFCB fronts an initiative called The 6.5 Seconds That Matter. As part of the initiative they launched Welcometomatters.com last year, a Web site that is meant to gather trends from all over the world and pour them into a database of what matters to consumers and agencies. In Dubai, the agency appointed Yasmine Said, account planner, as its designated trendspotter.
"Generally, being part of the planning department means we're usually on the lookout for anything new, and anything we can use in our communications," says Said. "There are times when you come across something that's just interesting, and you think about whether there is more to it. Does it matter, really, for our consumers and for the industry as a whole? That's how I differentiate if it's an interesting fact or something with a deeper layer within."
Through his trendspotting experience, Lindkvist says there are various groups of trends to identify when looking at what shapes societies and affects consumers. "Imagine yourself walking on a city street," explains Lindkvist. "On this street you will see a number of different trends in motion." The first are microtrends: what people wear, the gadgets they carry, the subjects they talk about. Lindkvist says those are microtrends with a lifespan of one to five years. "These are fads or fashion statements, and have a limited impact in the long run," he explains.
"If you start watching the facades of buildings, you can see more long-term trends," continues Lindkvist. According to him, the logotypes which appear on buildings can give a sense of economic cycles and which industries are booming, as they are macrotrends with a lifespan of five to 15 years. Whereas watching buildings from above, seeing their size and architectural style, and assessing whether they contain companies or residents or both, would reveal megatrends of 15 to 30 years.
Finally, watching the city street from space will reveal gigatrends with a lifespan of over 30 years, says Lindkvist. "Those are long-term societal changes like urbanization," he explains. "Each of these groups requires us to use different kinds of sources to answer the question 'what's going on?'"
In Dubai, Said says she spots trends by reading, paying attention to conversations around her, shopping, or people-watching. “For example, a few months ago I read about couchsurfing (a service that helps traveler’s find free accommodation) being reactivated in Dubai,” she explains. “If you give couchsurfing a bit of thought as a consumer, you’ll find there really is a need for budget hotels in the country, and that’s why it matters. There are no set rules to what matters, but you just have to think about how a consumer or an industry can take advantage of this trend.”

KEEPING PACE. Tarek Daouk, executive vice-president of Starcom MediaVest Group in Dubai, is a little skeptical about the trendspotting business, because he believes that the pace of change makes it near impossible to look too far ahead into the future.
"An accumulation of short term trends should lead you into the long term," says Daouk. "[But] long term trends are mainly affected by technology, and the speed at which technology is changing makes it extremely difficult to predict long term trends. Of course, there are societal changes you can look at in the long term, but technology is affecting the social behavior of people, so how can you predict long term trends?" But while trends spanning over 30 years can be difficult to spot, according to Daouk, he doesn't deny that short term trend spotting can be useful.
As part of the Welcometomatters.com initiative, Said also says that she tends to look at microtrends that matter to consumers and to the industry, all the while keeping a broader sense of what those trends will mean in the long run. "The question of, ‘why does it matter?’ is so important within our network," she says. "Anything can be interesting, but for it to be important and matter, we need to understand what implications it holds."
In the Middle East and Europe, Horizon DraftFCB says there has been an overall trend of fashion and food colliding. Said says that the trend that was spotted became a conversation the agency could have with some of its food clients. “It hasn’t directly translated into anything yet, and you won’t be seeing butter or cheese at Harvey Nic’s, but such trends can allow you to have conversations where you can think of consumers and brands in a different way.”
There is no doubt trendspotting has made into the books of the most prominent advertising agencies as an important trend in itself. However, Daouk does say that the trendspotter title might just be a "fancying up" of other titles like planner or researcher or insight manager.
But at Communicate, we still think it'd make a really, really cool business card.

Print

E-mail

RSS Feeds

Add Comment