How do you avoid jumping on every trend and focus on the ones that matter for your brand and audience?

No matter how good, or innovative a trend may seem or appear to be, it is important to understand that not all trends will align with your brand's target audience, and even present the brand effectively. Before jumping on any trend some questions to ask are as follows: 1) How does this trend portray the brand image?; 2) How does the trend align with the brand's message, ideology, and even target audience? Understanding these questions and the respective answers, will help one identify and understand which trend to jump on and which not to, to better push out the organization and its messages to respective corridors and target audiences.

As designers, we must honestly assess our skill set and operate within that space. Generally, there are two types of designers: innovators and those who create variations on a trend or innovation. If you're positioning your brand as innovative, you can perhaps completely ignore the trends. Doing so risks marketing to a tiny niche that may need to be bigger to survive. You can also adopt specific material or color trends to avoid this problem. In other words, your market may appreciate innovative shape language, but the finishes in their homes are trendy. In this scenario, your material choice should follow such. ? If your positioning is trendy, you may have to be an early adopter of innovative materials to stand out.

A clear business goal, backed by organizational values helps you identify, adapt and filter trends that are available for your brand and audience. Day in and day out, promising continuous development in technology and tools come, the core principle is alignment. Do they match? Are they fitting? Will the trend help achieve the goal for the brand? Will it be beneficial to the MAJORITY of the niche. If not, the trend is not something we need.

In my analysis of each trend that comes our way, we look at these aspects: Is it sustainable? Will it positively impact the business operation in the long run? How will it negatively affect other matters already in place? What are the risks in adapting it? Will the stakeholders be able to afford it? How did it work for the other companies who tried it in another industry? Will our audience live a better life when this trend is integrated in our process? These questions have to be asked and answered. Before jumping into any new trend.

Some topics touch on general overviews offering context to big picture thinking and that can often be helpful for perspective and navigating interleaving topics … but every trend is not always acutely relevant to all people especially individuals in narrow focused specialisms! It can be limiting however when specialists become too “in-the-box” unaware of the cross functional, cross sectoral etc Specialising in one area will make you a deep dive subject matter expert in the singular areas best suited to your audience and brand and that can earn respect! But so can connecting divisions, department’s, governments, industries, teams or nations of the world! Some overarching trends are applicable across the board

If I see a trend that qualifies to the parameters we set, we test and measure it's impact in this way: 1. Select a sample size of the market by which we target to implement it initially. 2. On-board all stakeholders about the trial of this new technology: the period of trial, people involved, processes that will be impacted, expected results. This way, everyone understands what is about to take place. This will also reduce resistance to the changes that are about to take place. 3. Install the monitoring platform or reinforce what monitoring system is already in place to capture results of this new trend or technology. 4. Implement new technology. 5. Monitor adherence to processes set and monitor results. 6. Collect feedback

The result of trend testing and it's impact to a sample size of the business audience, will determine whether we will adapt the trend, improve it, or dump it. Critical determinant includes it's positive impact, the possible reduction in cost, the reduction of wastes, increase in safety, increase in stakeholder satisfaction. Once the new tech passes these parameters, with full consideration of business peculiarity and necessary calibration, it's set for full system implementation.

Para acompanhar esse volume de fontes de "informa??o rápida" você pode usar ferramentas como o Feedly. Pode ser útil também entender se o fen?meno analisado é uma tendência com um lastro mais significativo (fontes de informa??es diversas, consistentes e indicativos de que pode ser algo perene), ou se é um "hype", que em poucas semanas já n?o fará sentido e n?o vai se sustentar sem contexto. Além disso, nos dois casos é importante refletir se vai gerar identifica??o com o seu público.

In our industry, keeping updated with new trends happen through subscription to international newsletters and magazines and attending international industry related trade shows. This way, your eyes will be open to development of current trends and availability of new ones.

Your brand compass (mission, vision, values and purpose) has to drive your strategy and help you determine what trends make sense. If you’re not true to your brand, people won’t connect with your content. Even if a piece goes viral, it won’t truly help with long-term goals. Does that mean you can’t be silly or have fun with content? No. There are plenty of examples where that works on certain platforms. BUT it has to tie back to the why of the organization if you want people to be loyal to the brand.