home : hartbeat : 2009-04-29

04.29.2009

“HartBeat” is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.

READMORE...

Private Label 2010: Redefining the Meaning of Brand

Why are consumers flocking to private label products in record numbers? Is the current economic crisis the stimulus behind the surge in apparent popularity? Can private label thrive without name brands?

The answers to these and many more strategic questions will be addressed in The Hartman Group’s Private Label 2010: Redefining the Meaning of Brand syndicated study.

Download a detailed overview for this study >>

For more Hartman Group articles on TRENDS, click here...

12.30.2008 Cultural Trends 2009

12.17.2008 Contemporary Food Trends

12.19.2007 In a New Era of Quality, 8 Trends for 2008

12.13.2006 Trends To Watch in 2007

12.14.2005 Trends To Watch in 2006

12.23.2004 Trends To Watch in 2005

12.29.2003 Trends To Watch in 2004

Archives »
Click here for an archive of past HartBeat articles

digg
del.icio.us

reddit
twitter

friendfeed

StumbleUpon

Technoemotional: An innovative cuisine trend emerges

It’s like dancing about architecture: from processed to fresh and back

Writing about trends is a schizophrenic business because you’re dealing with two very different populations who share little in common. On the one hand there is the audience for a trends presentation—folks that don’t usually make or (closely) follow the trends. They’re an eager, busy, open-minded bunch just looking to be kept abreast of what is happening in the world around them.

And on the other side of the fence we find the trendsetters—iconoclasts, mavericks, upstarts, messianic figures and such. These are the folks setting into motion the ideas, notions or ways of doing that eventually become full-fledged trends. And while it would be a mistake to suggest this group has much in the way of common motivations, ideals or purposes, typically the one thing uniting this population is their mutual hatred of the trends process itself. Because these people believe—to varying degrees—in the sanctity of their pursuits, their styles and ways of doing, their initial reaction is to run screaming from those of us trying to draw context or attention to emerging trends.

The result is a sort of natural, purposeful distancing whereby trend consumers (the audience) are usually only able to glean very surface-level details about the emerging trend (“Asian cuisine is hot!” “Grunge is in!”) through the interpreters. At the same time, because the trendsetters are headed 180 degrees in the opposite direction, there is very little dialogue causing them to reflect on the indigenous impulses or historical antecedents beneath their new ways of doing. Only very rarely are they called upon to explain how they began to imagine or activate their “trendsetting behavior,” and when they do reply, it is rarely a fruitful discourse. Andy Warhol made a career out of this oblique banter:

“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”

We believe this division is both unproductive and unnecessary and often dilutes the real utility of the trends process itself. Our answer to this challenge is to deploy ethnographers and anthropologists—researchers able to “go native” in a given world (food, music, etc.)—and thus provide a richer context to the “whys” behind the trends. More importantly, though, we’ve found that by effectively bridging this chasm—between the trends audience and the trendsetters—we often emerge with very unexpected insights.

Private Label 2010: Redefining the Meaning of Brand

Download a detailed overview for this study >>

Technoemotional: An innovative cuisine trend emerges

It’s like dancing about architecture: from processed to fresh and back

Download The Hartman Group Point of View “Technoemotional: An innovative cuisine trend emerges” >>