#4 🤓 What to do with end-of-year trend reports? 💬 Marieke van der Poel on applying trends & more 🌟 sparkly trend inspiration...
Hello my trend friends! 🌟
The end of the year is near (at least in the calendar I’m using). Which is always a nice period for reflection.
🙌 I’m skipping NYE this year and will be on a 10-day Vipassana meditation training. This is not a ‘fancy self-care wellness’ retreat. In quite basic facilities you enter ten days of silence, hand over your phone and don’t read or write.
How are these ten days filled? Training the meditation technique for 10 hours per day, eating your meals, walking on the premises and sleeping. 💤
🌀 I see a link with trends & futures work because observing change and impermanence (in your body and mind) are key concepts in Vipassana.
When you sit on a meditation cushion for hours 🧘♂️, you intensely experience things are changing all the time. Sensations rise and pass away, thoughts rise and pass away.
💫 This training can help you to postpone your initial reactions of aversion or craving to something changing in your life and make more balanced daily and future decisions.
That’s why I also mention it in the update of my trend book. It’s a bit hidden, can you find on which page this Easter egg is? 👇
🏷 You can still get a 20% discount using trends20 at the checkout until end of December.
Interested in Vipassana? You can follow 10-day Vipassana trainings around the world. They are on donation basis, so financially accessible for anyone.
See you in 2024 (or whatever time you live in…)
/ Els
Heard elsewhere
❝ The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to ignore.❞
philosopher and psychologist William James
Trending topic
🗣 what’s the debate about in trend circles?
This period is a time of reflection and pause for some. In the trend world it is often a hectic and overwhelming time with ‘THE trends of 2024’ reports and lists getting churned out. Read my experience with this phenomenon in the blog below. 👇 I also share 3 tips how to use these lists for your own trend work.
Read about what to do with end-of-year trend reports here.
TL;DR - Most reports and lists of ‘what’s hot or not’ the upcoming year are focused on signals instead of trends and are scratching the surface. Which makes sense because they are marketing tools and for deeper analysis you would need to (and should) pay. Point is, trends do not appear or disappear yearly on the 31st of December, they evolve over time. So I’m challenging you to release a report on a very random date in the year. 😆
How do you feel about these end of year trend reports? Join the conversation! 👇
Go elsewhere
🌟 recommendations for trend sources
👩🏻💻 webinar - Save the date: I’ll present my new book online on February 26 in collaboration with the Dutch Future Society. Together we’ll discuss developments in the trend profession. You can sign up for free, it will be in Dutch. Hope to see you there!
🗞 newsletter - Dense Discovery is one of my all time favourite newsletters. It spans topics like tech, design, sustainability or urbanism. Also love the design! You can feel that Kai Brach puts a lot of effort and attention into creating it.
📔 book - Recently read the novel Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin which could easily be turned into a Black Mirror episode. What if.. we could take a peak into a random stranger’s life via a Furby-like gadget who’s little eyes follows every step they take…?
👪 community -
is a global community dedicated to helping its members learn more about futures and how to create them. It includes an online Discord space and offline meetups to create meaningful connections and collaborative projects. In the midst of organising a FF meetup next year in Amsterdam together with Stefanie Schillmöller. Let me know if you are interested to present at this event.🛠 tool - I joined an online speculative futures workshop of the EU. They used Futures Canvas to collect reactions to artefacts, rank these and have an integrated AI-tool create future scenarios based on our collective input. Worth a try in your next workshop maybe…?
🏟 events - A new futures festival, Future Days, is held in Lisbon on March 21-23. It focuses on actionable futures and co-creation. I’m thinking of going, let me know if you are too!
🎥 video - This video about The Office of the Future from 1979 was shared in the Futures Friends Discord. In the future there will be more ‘flexitime’, don’t you just love that word! Pounding on the keys of a keyboard also seemed to be a thing. 😂 Watch & learn. 👇
Trend talk
🤓 insights from a trend pro
Marieke van der Poel is a seasoned forecasting strategist and chief creative at Proef. With her team she is based in the USA. Marieke shares her experiences in applying trends for brand strategies and product development.
Why do you feel that applying trends in the right way is essential?
To be able to create sustainable, long term engagement, it is important to take responsibility for the implications of the use of trends. Relevance is key; the movements and innovations you chose to partake in, should be relevant to you, your DNA, your consumer and development processes. People are growing more and more involved with the brands they chose to engage with: you owe it to them and yourself to be on target, for the long- and the short term.
What is the ‘right’ way of applying trends according to you?
Applied trend forecasting, to us, is understanding all kinds of movements, from tech- to social- , and applying them across verticals to create holistic strategies. Linear translations of trends (for instance the high/low trend; the split between high and low market segments) can lead to a lack of diversified offering, and a lag in original innovation.
What are the main pitfalls to watch when applying trends?
Do not translate linearly, and beware of confirmation bias. Start and create processes by thinking from possibilities, instead of problems.
Which new developments do you see happening around applying trends?
We live in interesting times, with a wealth of anti-systemic thinking. This allows for new approaches, which hopefully will not all be singular. We see a growing interest in the field of future fiction, congruent with a general interest in applied forecasting. Because of the influence of data driven projection and AI, both future thinking and trend application are in danger of become referential (creating things that are inspired by things that exist already), and less holistic. There is a lot of opportunity for non-siloed, laterally applied trend forecasting.
Super interesting to learn from the team at Proef! Nodding my head when reading about non-siloed and lateral applied forecasting. ⚡️ And the part of AI bringing us only referential inspiration also interests me. Food for thought…..
What’s your take on applying trends? Share your perspective.👇🏼
Work elsewhere
💼 trend related jobs
Even if you’re not looking to switch roles, the vacancy descriptions provide a glimpse into the ways companies work with trends. 🔍
Senior roles
🇬🇧 Insight Strategist at WGSN in London. For the content creators amongst you!
🇦🇪 Manager Future Foresight in Abu Dhabi.
🇩🇰 Manager Strategic Projects at LEGO in Billund. They need a forward-thinking person for their Strategy & Transformation team, sounds interesting…
Junior/Medior roles
🇩🇪 Trend & Foresight Consultant at marketing agency TD Reply in Berlin.
🇬🇧 Horizon Scanning Innovation Specialist at Coventry Building Society in Coventry.
🇷🇴 Area Insights & Foresights Executive at BAT in Bucharest. Not sure about this one but maybe you can help them to transform their business and move away from smoking…? 🚬
Internships
🇳🇱 Heard through the grapevine that insights agency MARE in Amsterdam is looking for a Dutch speaking trend intern to start in February 2024.
/ Let me know when you are trend hiring or spot an interesting trend vacancy. 👇
Sticky statement
👁 straight from the streets into your inbox
Seen in the university buildings of the VU Amsterdam warning their students to be aware of what they share in a quite peculiar way…. 🎭 “Shield your privacy like you shield your intimacy”, …que??
/ Did you spot an interesting sticky statement and want to share it? 👇
🎁 SUSTAINABLE GIFT: POSTERBOY NOTE BLOC
My boyfriend Jeroen Timmer makes ‘on trend’ notebooks with his sustainable company Envelopebook. These books are all made from left-over paper and envelopes. Instead of dumping the paper in the recycler (adding water, using energy and pulping the paper = not good), he reuses the papers directly and turns them into beautiful blocs and cahiers.
Like these Posterboys, handmade from left-over theatre posters.👇 Did you know that the back of these posters is heaven to write on?
