Insights on Cultural Research
An 85 page guide to help strategists stengthen the research and analysis process.
Beyond the Clock: Unraveling Microtrends, Urgency, and the Essence of Trend Work in 2024
As of January 23, 2024, the Doomsday Clock was set to the closest to midnight as it has ever been. The closer the clock is to midnight, the more urgent and serious the perceived threats to the world. Yet, for the most part, forecasts are babbling about ballet core, corpcore, cowboy aesthetic and mob-wife style on equal footing with climate change, race and economic issues. Show Studio recently pointed out that Louis Vuitton’s cowboy-aesthetic show drew from Hollywood cowboy costumes, not reality.
As we stand on the threshold of 2024, the conclusion of Art Basel Miami marked a departure from the sensational, viral spectacles that defined past events—no bananas taped to walls or MSCHF ATM machines detailing Diplo's wealth. The absence of such attention-grabbing moments extends to the majority of recent trend reporting as trendspotters approach the current landscape cautiously, navigating the delicate balance between predicting cultural shifts and avoiding the embarrassment of being proven wrong. Yet, amid this uncertainty, a discernible pattern emerges: a recurrence and evolution of familiar trends.
Subculture: Its Definition is an Obstacle to Problem-Solving
Subcultures are simply social groupings within a larger societal system. They form as a response to tensions within society. Their divergence results in an organic social cohesion of subsets where people share similar codes of behavior and ideologies. It is the place where people begin to evolve a common language.
Cultural Research Requires a Lab
Subcultures are engines of social cohesion. Alliances and affinities are reforming. What looks like chaos is a reset, a systemic change on the horizon. The tensions are present. We need to be taking a social science approach to futures, reading and analyzing signals as they develop.
No one will think about Italy’s "Barbie Venus" campaign 6 months from now, but many will continue to make the same mistakes as the world flies beyond 20th-century marketing techniques.
Mapping A Framework for Masculinity
The tradition of “men” had been off-kilter for quite some time now. Society has been dealing with more inclusive and equitable understandings of gender, intersectionality acknowledging that masculinity is not a monolithic concept and that it interacts with other aspects of identity, such as race, class, sexual orientation, and more.
Aren’t we always moving through time and space? A liminal state of existence is more our norm, rather than the places we aspire “to land.” Once, we land we already have the next idea in our sights. This places research and planning in a predicament. Projects must end somewhere so they can be acted upon, campaigns can be created and products can be built. Shouldn’t they?
“Disruption” Should be a Point of Evolution
Disruption is a slow steady process of understanding the human behavior involved. It does not launch like a tsunami. Nor is it presented by the hottest influencer of the moment.