Check out this provocative post from Grant McCracken. He asks "does the death of monolithic trends mean that we live in a world consisting only of noisy, little, episodic ones?"
I believe this poses an interesting question for planners: how micro-trends should figure into our effort to understand the larger world and use this understanding to inspire big creative marketing ideas for clients.
Grant makes a point I thoroughly agree with - that just laundry listing micro-trends basically doesn't accomplish much. You have to dig beneath the trend to identify its root causes and implications to really be able to make it meaningful. And that's what planning is here for.
What does this mean for us? First off, exercise caution when using sources like Iconoculture which offers the valuable service of serving up micro-trends without having to go around the world collecting them yourself, but leaves it up to the end user to figure out what it means, and what to do with it all. I have always found Yankelovich's approach more practical - as well as statistically significant since it's based on survey research as well as qualitative observation. I particularly value Yankelovich's bubbling up of micro trends into meta themes which can be applied across a variety of problems.
This point probably applies to most things we do, not just trends. Think for a moment about scale - a micro trend impacting 1,000 consumers is interesting, and may well predict an enormous worldwide phenomenon. It is a valid data point and should not be overlooked. But our clients need scale now, so a micro-trend that's not yet "big" can't have much impact on our marketing today. However, it might bear watching for future consideration - and could provide an interesting new insight if analyzed properly.
Overall it's incredibly important to take a step back from the data or analysis or trend or whatever we're looking at to really think hard about what it means - which is why I am always encouraging insight practitioners to ask why why why until they are blue in the face.
One area where micro trends can be incredibly useful is in creative development - real creative inspiration comes from the tangible, granular, "human" dimension of a phenomenon or behavior, from seeing the expressions on people's faces when they're talking about their new hobby. We always need to be pushing the envelope on this front.
Comments