Make Consumer Trends Work Harder For Your Brand’s Health

CONSUMER TRENDS HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT FOR BRAND HEALTH, but never more difficult to land on and interpret in a            meta-screen world. Against this backdrop, a recent Euromonitor survey reported that only 35% of companies have a strategic framework for interpreting consumer trends – which ‘makes decision making very difficult’ for the brand, agency, innovation, R&D and leadership teams. Weave in the seismic shifts in global consumer behaviors and remote-disparate locations squashing once-shared experiences, tracking and translation of consumer trends has never been more in need of a strategic do-over.

TRENDS ARE EASY TO FIND BUT DIFFICULT TO ACTION. Trends are omnipresent, flooding our inboxes and social media pages from the worlds of Fashion, Beauty, Health, Wellbeing, Food, Snacks & Beverages, Art & Design, Home and Environment, Entertainment, Tech and Transport. Potentially significant insights are surely there within our grasp – but where? Which ones? And aren’t our key competitors seeing exactly the same trend presentations? How are trends uniquely translatable to our brand, category and growth challenges? Isolating the precise trend that can shape your brand’s future is ultimately the biggest challenge often unmet by traditional resources.

HOW TO INTERPRET & FIND OPPORTUNITY. Most trend analysis funnels down to universalities and generalities. It can feel like wandering through a library of the future, where trends feel force-fitted into categories, somewhat imprecise, fostering ambiguity on how to interpret to best influence a brand’s future. To be successful Trend Hunting must be replaced by Trend Navigation, tailored to your brand, your consumer-customer, and your challenge context. This brand-centric trend methodology stands apart from typical trend analyses – and enables uniquely brand-centric growth mapping and runways.

HOW DO WE DO THIS? At FK our scientifically derived trend process works from two directions:

From the outside macro-universe → micro-brand universe, and from the inside micro-universe → macro brand opportunities.

We start with the familiar macro-universe with our hunt and analysis – curating the seismic consumer, societal, and cultural trends identified by our analyses, social listening, as well as the full breadth of governmental, business, and trend-house reports. These macro-trends provide the expanse of what is happening in the world at large and how people across the globe are shifting and shaping. This is where most trend analyses stop – giving you big bold impact statements, great inspiration, but inputs that can apply to almost anyone or anything, any brand or competitor.

Which is why we pivot to be brand insiders with brand definition and consumer target empathizing through the micro-universe brand process. This is what differentiates between trend-hunting and impactful Trend Navigation. We curate macro-trends from the perspective of your brand’s

micro-universe: analyzing the competitive landscape, brand elements, influencers, and inspiring related worlds that uniquely distill and translate trends into future insights of your category and consumers – and your brand within it.