Futures Coaching

How will the past change our future?

Trendspotters often focus exclusively on the future to understand change. But the past gives huge insights into how tomorrow's world will look.

Take Chinese medicine. Many of its ancient principles are now bang on trend and will shape the future of healthcare. How about the most revolutionary idea of Bill Gates - giving away his wealth? Sorry Bill but it's been done before. Canadian Indian tribal leaders already knew of the fantastic status to be gained by giving away all that you own.

How else can history help us understand what's coming next? Go back to the future here.

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When 'cool' rhymes with 'fool' : the problem with trend scouting

I first posted this in March 2009 during the last recession. Since Europe looks to be entering a new period of negative growth, I've dusted it off.....

You know, when you've been kicking around in the trends arena for more years than you care to remember, you get to see most things and become aware of most methodologies. It's a case of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Of course, what matters is what works. And what works, for me, is what improves clients' decision making. And, as we all know, better decisions generate more sales and profits.

Put another way, to avoid decisions which destroy value, marketers should avoid bad trends emanating from bad methodologies like the plague. Which brings me to trend scouting.

Sometimes Trend forecasters like to sniff out small adjustments in the way people are thinking or behaving and postulate that this 'new way' will go mass market at some stage in the future.

To be honest, this so called 'weak signals' or trend scouting approach is pretty hit or miss. For every new emerging trend that actually becomes something bigger across society, many more whither and die. In fact they probably weren't an 'emerging trend' in the first place - merely the personal fixation of a particular trend watcher.

Your favourite trend watcher likes technology? Hey presto the future of the world and everything in it becomes a product of weak signals in technology. Or perhaps the world will be entirely shaped by emerging signals pointing to his/her favourite 'post materialist' values.

Cruelly, but rather pertinently, Malcolm Gladwell had this to say about this 'cool hunter' approach to trend spotting:

"Coolhunting is not a coherent philosophy. It's just a collection of spontaneous observations and predictions that differ from one moment to the next and from one coolhunter to the next." (Malcolm Gladwell. The Coolhunt: Annals of Style)

I was put in mind of this because we are at a HUGE inflection point across global societies and across all realms - social, political, economic, technological.

My point? Why go searching in the corners for the outliers, for the 'bad' micro trends? Today, you should be looking at the macro. These are so significant for the future of brands and so obvious as to be in-your-face?

So, forget the foolish trend scouts. Your brands' future prosperity lies in unbundling the massive changes that are afoot. See them and reap!

 

Find the Future in Four Easy Steps

Your company might have reached the conclusion that future-proofing is vital but still not be able to do much about it. Intercepting the future is difficult, no doubt about it. Here are some common concerns:

• Finding the future takes too long and costs too much 
• Trends companies are all a bit flaky
• The futuring tool set seems shaky
• No one seems to do 'future-back' successfully ie. go from future foresights to today's decisions and strategies
• Getting internal buy-in is a struggle

I've been fighting with these issues for the last 13 years and here's some of the lessons I've learnt: 

• Most trends companies are staffed by researchers or journalist: few of whom know the world of business well
• Some tools are indeed inefficient (horizon scanning) or impractical (eg. scenarios)
• Trends are a raw material input to future planning, not an end in themselves
• The most important question in futurology is 'so what?'. Foresight is only important if it is relevant and leads to implications for a brand, a business or a sector
• It's important to take a holistic approach: too many trends companies are focused on one area, technology, say, or socio-cultural trends
• Finally, it's vital to get input from a wide variety of sources: in-house research and external datamining; internal experts and outside gurus.

Using these and other insights, I've been able to refine a methodology which successfully builds the best assumption base about the future - for any given sector. The approach is called 'Horizon Opportunities' and has been tried and tested now over an eight year period, amongst numerous clients, in a variety of sectors and geographies. 

Horizon Opportunities is simple to manage, rapid and extremely good value for money. It involves just 4 steps, each step building sequentially upon the previous one: 

1. Datamining
2. Expert interviews
3. Interactive workshops
4. Execution 

A typical timeframe for this work is 2-3 months; a typical cost £30,000. I've also worked up a 'lite' version, which starts at £10,000 and gives top-line results.

Now, finding the future need not involve personal nor professional risks. Contact me for a no obligation chat: chris@futurescoaching.com 

One Swallow does not make a Summer

As this idiom suggests, it takes two or more sightings to give conviction that change is on its way. Like birds, like trends. I get really annoyed when self-appointed trendscouts see something unusual, attach a label and tell the world that they've just discovered the next 'next thing'. And it's not just trendscouts, journalists are forever making similar claims.

Take for instance, the recent article making a big thing of an apparent new thing - single straight men adopting kids. It's a long piece in Marie-Claire so it must be a burgeoning new trend, mustn't it? Well, actually, no. Even the article goes on to admit that only 0.3% of applications to adopt come from single men.

So one early lesson for budding trendwatchers is 'beware media headlines'. Always look at the sociological reality beneath.

But the other point is to try and triangulate - a trend is a real trend when a number of pieces of evidence come together from different origins and point to the same underlying phenomenon.

I'll give you an example. Here's a trend which I'm seeing manifest everywhere. It's called 'Hyper Life'. Basically, it's the growing sentiment that everyday life is distinctly dull and needs to be punctuated by periods of intensity for it to be worthwhile. Here's the (multiple) evidence.

1. Important rise in extreme sports - both numbers of participants and varieties (bungee jumping, free-running, BASE-jumping, zorbing, snowkiting, kitesurfing, coasteering, canyonning etc).

2. Increasing use of technology to magnify ordinary life experiences - eg. ear pieces for spectators to listen to the referees comments during a live rugby match

3. The rise and rise of Summer music festivals

4. The binge drinking culture which is spreading fast: even the young in France with their 'open bars' are adopting the drinking patterns more often associated with anglo-saxon cultures

5. New findings from America which associate teenage drug use and other risky behaviour with the idea that their situation is hopeless so it's important to live life to the full today - even if it means dying young. (In fact the survey found 15% of the teenagers interviewed have a death wish!).

Five insights which together start to tell the story of a very real sociological phenomenon - one you can have confidence in when it comes to marketing strategy.

With this in mind, ask yourself, what is dull about your offer? And what can you do today to make it intensely interesting to the very many consumers who are continually searching for a Hyper Life?

Are you drowning in trends?

Trends are coming at us thick and fast these days. The TV programming schedules seem to be full of them (green, mean, consumption less seen and so on). Meanwhile, Trend scouts such as Trendwatching.com fill their websites with lots of tempting morsels. And journalists, too, fancy their crystal-ball gazing talents. Each edition of a typical broadsheet newspaper carries in excess of 10 'trend' predictions.

With this glut of Trends, it's no wonder I've heard business people moan: "I'm drowning in Trends".

Trends can seem like cats. You think you've captured a few but some get away just as easily. Just when you think you've understood 'Thrill Pleasure' you are told there is a new 'Assault on Pleasure'. Meanwhile, 'Crude Hedonism' has apparently morphed into 'Healthy Hedonism'. The 'Body Perfection' Trend is growing but so too is 'Obesity'. Very slippery these social Trends.

Meanwhile, just as cats can look very similar one to the other, so too Trends. Are 'Affluent Activists' from agency x the same as so and so's 'Social Entrepreneurs'? And isn't 'Ethical Consumption' and 'Conscience Consumption' really the same thing - albeit baptised differently by two competing Trend scouts?

Time and again, I've seen people emerge from Trend seminars, swooning at the story-telling capacity of their favourite agency. Energised they undoubtedly are, but like a hard drug, the hit is soon over and the withdrawal sets in. Once back at the office, the dread begins: "what do I do next?" It all sounded so good at the time but what do I tell my boss tomorrow and just how do I integrate Trends into my decision-making?

If this sounds all to familiar to you, join the crowd. Many marketing people find themselves in this situation.

So if that's the problem, what is the solution?

The key to handling the mass of Trends coming your way is to have a structured framework to help you organise and sort them. Once you start collecting Trends within a System, you will suddenly find you have relaxed control over them. You can find them. You can link them. You can prioritise them. You can share them. In short, Trends become the slave and you the master - not the other way round. Having a Trend System gives you confidence that your raw materials are in-house and in order.

There are 5 stages to structuring a Trends System:

1. Get buy-in
2. Distinguishing between types of Trends
3. Collecting the right information
4. Loading the system
5. Using it!

1. Get buy-in. It's important to get a champion high up in the business. It's too easy to criticise trend work and if it is not to be seen as an exotic expense, best to get backing fore investing.

2. Distinguishing between types of Trends. Not all Trends are the same and it is vital to distinguish between: 'Fashions and Fads', (eg. Sudoku) 'Social Trends' (eg. Rejuvenation) and 'Long Wave' Trends (eg. Global climate change).

3. Collecting the right information To share Trends with your colleagues, you'll need to collect 7 key pieces of information for each Trend including photos, props, proof and stories. It's important to be able to convince both left and right brainers.

4. Loading the system. Jean Luc Godard said that it is not about where you take things from but where you take things to. So, borrow and 'steal' Trends from anywhere and everywhere. Take your existing consumer research and 'future mine' it. Speak to experts. Surf the net. Turn to the trendspotters. Read widely. Keep your eyes open as you walk down the street. I started by saying Trends are all around us and indeed they are.

 5. Using it! Companies often limit themselves in the value they squeeze from Trends. Trends have to be more than the warm-up act to the Senior Managers' Away-Day! If Kodak had observed Trends - or GM - their businesses would be in entirely different places today! So think about using Trends in many areas including:  decoding your offer and your communications; future proofing your business and brands; stimulating your creativity and generate new ideas and innovations; validating strategy and build contingencies; developing a futures-oriented culture.

Now more than ever, Trends should be helping your recession marketing activities and rejuvenating your brand or business for the post recession opportunities.