Issue 01, 2024 – Managing Trends for Stronger Branding

Welcome to our first 2024 edition of RADAR – our monthly newsletter. A read from a design viewpoint to expand your perspective and deepen your knowledge, helping you better navigate the shifting world of brands and consumers.?

As everyone looks forward to what 2024 will bring, it would seem the right time of year to address Echo’s design views on trends and how brands can take advantage.

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What's behind a trend?

Let’s start with the underpinning idea that the future is created, not just extrapolated, preordained, or inevitable. So slavishly following the direction of a trend, be it a fashionable colour or an emerging consumer habit, will not guarantee success. A trend might turn out to be niche, or maybe everyone follows it and so nobody stands out; and it might not align to your brand and weaken your business as a result. Trends are there as a guide to help shape a response and build on in your own way. For example, the trend towards naturals has infiltrated everywhere. Yet for brands whose products are performance led and technological, naturals are a problem. Whilst this consumer need demands a response, alternatives solutions should be explored when the obvious doesn’t fit.

There's always an alternative

I am struck reading trend reports on how many of the stats include percentages like 42% of people like this, or that. They are significant, but what do the other 58% like? Quite possibly the opposite. So, whilst many people want their soap made of seaweed many others will just want their soap to work. Stats need be considered carefully for they are rarely universal and preferable alternatives will abound. We need to look what’s behind trends and not simply take them at face value. We need to look at the fundamental human need. The reason naturals is a long-standing trend is that people universally want things to be safe for them and the planet. Mass production let them down, so naturals is an obvious alternative. Natural is one way of being safe, but new technology represented in the right way can also be an answer. In terms of that trend the tide is turning with technology companies now seen in a positive light with Apple leading the pack with a net-zero target of 2035 whilst food companies lag behind with 2050 targets.

In the moment and taking the long view

Trends are an indicator of how the world is shifting and as such are useful, but they are open to interpretation depending on who you are. It is interesting to note that Pantone’s colour of the year 2024 is Fuzzy Peach and WGSN’s is similar with Apricot Crush, however for 2025 WGSN’s is Future Dusk (a dark blue). A year apart and couldn’t be more different and that’s fine if you are in fashion, but you wouldn’t want to base your brand refresh on it. Haute couture brands set fashion trends four times a year. High street fashion brands follow suit knowing that they have the power of the catwalk behind them and that I will rush out to buy my trendy fuzzy peach top. But this is a highly unusual model. Conversely, Coca-Cola has stuck to its red for 130 years and enjoys universal recognition as a result. Most brands should sit in between. They need to be recognisable, so consistency is essential, but they also need to remain relevant, interesting and distinctive. They need to understand and respond to what people are looking for and interested in. That’s where trends can be helpful.

Keeping your brand safe

Knowing what is essential, in your identity or offer, and keeping it sacrosanct, gives you the strong base to selectively activate in other places to respond to shifting trends through tactical innovation. However, if the trend is likely to have a more profound effect the response will need to be careful brand management over time to make the transition. Apple is instantly recognisable today and it’s hard to recall its multicoloured apple logo and large grey, angular computers of the 80s. They gradually transitioned as technology and style changed, keeping consumers with them and always on the leading edge of design.

When a trend is really a craze

How did Hush Puppies in the 90s, Hunters in 2005 and Crocs in the 2010s? become as big as they did? Could we have predicted them? Should we have followed them? Could we have created them? Is it worth worrying about? More fashion crazes maybe, but we see this happening in other industries as well. Plant-based burgers have recently seen significant growth and then decline from over supply and price sensitivity, but in this case the craze is an indicator of a deeper health and wellness drive. So rather than jumping on the short-term craze with a ‘me too’, the smart thing would be to develop an ownable innovation strategy of healthy, planet friendly products.

Are they causal forces

We should look at trends and ask if they indicate a ‘Causal Force’. A description, coined by Peter Schwartz in The Art of the Long View, as something that could or will, as an opportunity or threat, change business in the future. Some will be inevitable like legislative trends around sustainability. Some will be variable, like the move to consuming less meat, from flexitarian to fully fledged veganism. For the fixed causal forces, we need a direct response, for the variables we need to decide which to ignore, which keep an eye on and which to engage with.

Trends, like semiotics or AI, are an aid, not a brief, for the designer. They provide useful information to guide and interpret in the quest to create something up to date yet distinctive, memorable and useful. So don’t follow trends, use them to lead.