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04.29.2009

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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.

Technoemotional: An innovative cuisine trend emerges

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

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