Greetings Trend Hunters! This month, we released our
2011 Q2 TREND REPORTS. On that note, we were calling several of our customers this week to better understand their innovation needs, and one of them was delighted to learn how our methodology works... so, inspired by his curiosity, I wanted to share a bit more...
We create our trend reports for innovators, strategists and marketers who want to inspire their new ideas using 'more robust' qualitative trends. Historically, trend spotting was performed by savvy people who would 'clip out' their favorite newspaper articles and form their opinions on upcoming trends. The danger of this approach is that it means that a company's inspiration is tilted by the views of a few people. In industries where innovation matters, it is important to take trends more seriously. Accordingly, at Trend Hunter, we rely on (1) crowdsourcing, (2) crowd filtering and (3) clustering to create a dramatically more effective platform. Here's what that means:
Step 1. Crowd Sourcing - To ensure a broad spectrum of ideas, we have crowdsourced 100,000 articles / innovations from 50,000 global contributors, which is by far the largest trend spotting network. These are the 'trends' you may see on our front page, but these are MUCH different than our PRO trends in our trend reports.
Step 2. Crowd Filtering - With nearly 500,000,000 views of data, we have an incredibly powerful ability to 'test' these articles to identify the most interesting innovations in each category. By using the power of the crowd, we democratize our trend spotting.
Step 3. Clustering - Using our crowd filtered set of trends, we look for clusters and patterns. If we can find a cluster of similar, attractive ideas, we have identified an opportunity that could be relevant for new product design, advertising, innovation, or sparking creativity.
The end result is our most insightful and useful data, which companies like Google, Cadbury, Pepsico, Mars, and American Express use in order to kick start ideas on their innovation teams. If you would like more info on subscribing, go to
TrendHunter.com/TrendReport.
Branded Living is this week's
PRO Trend, with a score of 7.4. The implications: Unless they feel intense loyalty, a consumer is often disconnected from a brand. But, branding is now getting up close and personal, whether it is an invasive campaign on the part of the brand, an act of extreme loyalty on the part of the consumer, or a contractual agreement between both parties. Branding on such a personal level, regardless of motivation, is highly advantageous, as it creates a deeper connection in which brand messages no longer just skim the surface. Some examples:
Other new PRO Trends include:
1. Social Media Therapy,
2. Sensualizing Religion,
3. Tatcessories,
4. ChariTEEs,
5. Slick Self-Promotion,
6. Social Comfort,
7. Dancevertising, and more. If you're looking to better understand consumer trends, we now have
1,071 PRO Trends with 42,840 examples in our
2011 Trend Reports Enjoy!
Jeremy Gutsche, Chief Trend Hunter (
@jeremygutsche)
P.S. If you're wanting to track me down, here's my
innovation keynote schedule: