OK, I admit it. I have on occasion bought books promising to reveal to me the trends of the future. Worse still, I write the stuff all the time. Heck, I even try to prove that I was right most of the time! It is a great exercise in ego boosting and had much practical use when I was in technology. The timing of new technologies coming of age, much hyped stuff failing, the possible size of particular segments…all this means money for those that can spot the trends.
Others call it experience.
But in advertising? An explosion of new terms and new ways to describe trends and demographics. I won’t even condescend to name a few. You have read them in tweets, blogs, books and even reputable magazines. They serve great for fleshing out a weak story. And that is my point. Advertisers use supposed trends to justify anything they do. You can find a trend for anything you like! It is a bit like horoscopes; read a bit from your main one, then your ascending star, mix and match as you please and …what a surprise, it all seems to apply perfectly to you!
But branding is not about trends. It is about the true nature of something. A company, a product, a person. (Click here for the great blog post about how ancient Greek philosophers apply to branding.) You shouldn’t be looking in cool hunter or trendwatching.com for a persona. Or, more accurately, for a funky, fashionable dressing to a persona. Branding is about finding the true essence of something and projecting it. Sure, the packaging has to aid the communication, the “wrapping” may change over time.
There is one thing that you can usefully do on the back of all these trendy trend spotters: take their names, slogans, images and summaries and use them! If we all understand what a GenX person is that is great. If someone else took the time to build that understanding that’s one less blog post for me and three minutes less wasted in a presentation. If something called “s/he” or “urbanomics” makes sense to everyone in the room, fantastic.
Even more so if it adds to the point you are trying to make! Which is why they hired a branding expert and not a futurologist.