Trending Now: Color
Interior coatings brands have announced their respective 2022 colors of the year—a roundup of organic hues that bring the soothing influences of nature to the great indoors.
the home trend update no. 01
home is at the heart of everything.
Amy Odorizzi
Welcome to the first issue of The Home Trend Update, brought to you by Britton Marketing & Design Group.
Our team is always on the lookout for new developments across different audience segments, and we distill those trends into actionable insights that our client partners can utilize. One of our revelations is that the home is more sacred than ever before. While it has always been a backdrop for making memories, in the last year home has also become an office, a gym, a shopping center, a school, a sanctuary. One constant rings truer than ever: home is at the heart of everything.
Interior coatings brands have announced their respective 2022 colors of the year—a roundup of organic hues that bring the soothing influences of nature to the great indoors.
After a quiet 2020 season, consumers are ready to (re)start the spirit of the roaring ’20s; they’re more primed than ever to celebrate and gather for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s Eve.
It’s more important than ever that brands reexamine their need for a presence on TikTok and also start considering Pinterest as a reliable source for trendspotting.
Pinterest is not only one of our favorite visual inspirational tools, but it’s also a great place to keep tabs on social trends—especially DIY.
“Work from anywhere” continues to blur the lines between the boundaries of work, live, and play.
Brands being vocal and standing for something is a major point of activation for this generation.
Connected TV is poised to continue its rise in popularity and the impending removal of Google cookies means first-party data strategies will be more important than ever.
Should all marketers fear the cookie-pocalypse?
With so much noise in today’s consumer landscape, brands can still foster new growth and affinity by recognizing, harnessing, and owning their unique core values and beliefs.
Great Minds Think Alike in ’22
Interior coatings brands have announced their respective 2022 colors of the year—a roundup of organic hues that bring the soothing influences of nature to the great indoors.
Nourishing greens: a mix of organic greens reinforce the biophilic design movement, with consumers craving a closer connection to nature and its healing properties throughout the pandemic.
Soothing blues: soft shades inspired by the sky foster feelings of comfort and calm as consumers continue to shape their homes into personal sanctuaries.
*Denotes brands that did a collection of colors, rather than a single hue
Source: WGSN
After a quiet 2020 season, consumers are ready to (re)start the spirit of the roaring ’20s; they’re more primed than ever
to celebrate and gather for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s Eve. Key themes include:
Source: WGSN
From a Music and Dance Niche App to a Billion Users in Less Than Two Years?
Over the last six months, the conversation about Web3 has started to intensify and is slowly making its way into the mainstream.
Social channels and apps come and go. We often memorialize apps like Vine, MySpace, GoWalla, and Quibi and lament their demise. Just as there are dying stars, there are rising comets. TikTok is having a moment … actually, billions of moments.
We think it’s time to shift our attention to this channel and make it a full priority. What has been perceived as a Gen Z–only app has quickly amassed a following of millennials. In fact, approximately 40% of users are over 30.
TikTok is rapidly building a creative economy and integrating
with e-commerce to enable brands to take advantage of a captive audience—an audience that spends more time watching videos on TikTok than they do on YouTube.
Sources: Statista, eMarketer, TechCrunch, BBC
Did Pinterest Get It All Right?
Pinterest is not only one of our favorite visual inspirational tools, but it’s also a great place to keep tabs on social trends—especially DIY.
Pinterest published their trend prediction forecast early in 2020, and it appears that their foresight is valid. Eighty percent of trends predicted continued to gain popularity throughout the year. Furthermore, trends on the platform tend to take off faster, live longer, and break through category discovery.
It might be time to consider Pinterest as a source of trendspotting as well as inspiration.
Source: Business Pinterest
Mindset, Habits, and Behavioral Shifts
“Work from anywhere” continues to blur the lines between the boundaries of work, live, and play.
The secret to understanding the shifting behaviors lies in understanding the changing home makeup, the “new” work/life normal, and consumers’ mindsets. The lines aren’t just blurred anymore—they’re nearly imperceptible.
This is creating new habits and changes in how we perceive our living space and how we dis/connect. Consumers are shifting behaviors of when and where, in the home, they access information and entertainment content. They are feeling disconnected while being as connected as they’ve ever been. They crave escapism and are flocking to new projects, hobbies, and undertakings.
We found in our research that ≈33% of millennial and Gen Z consumers say they
choose to buy a brand from a company that has their values vs ≈12% of baby boomers.
This new reality is also affecting consumers’ perceptions and requirements of brands. Brand loyalty is not what it used to be. If you have an audience that is predominantly made up of Gen Z and Y, then you must factor their expectations into the clear and consistent expression of your brand’s values. Overlapping values are now at the center of brand affinity development.
Sources: ThinkWithGoogle, McKinsey
Authenticity and Transparency Go a Long Way with Gen Z
Generation Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012 (often confused with millennials) is a group that is widely regarded as incredibly tolerant, open-minded, inclusive, and more racially and ethnically diverse than previous generations.
What can brands do to create favorable brand experiences in front of an audience that might not be fully understood?
Brands being vocal and standing for something is a major point of activation for this generation.
Here are five more tips:
1. FUN: Drive engagement with fun: focus on creating memorable experiences for this consumer group.
2. VALUES: Proudly own and share brand stories with the world, and do it honestly and authentically.
3. INCLUSIVITY: Connections are made when brands express openness for all groups and don’t alienate or exclude.
4. APPROACHABILITY: This generation values the real and raw over the posed, perfect, and polished of previous generations.
5. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: Having witnessed financial crises at a young age, this hyper-conscious, savvy group is always looking for new tools to aid in helping them shop carefully from brands that align with their value systems.
Sources: WGSN, Pew Research
Media/Marketers’ Favorite Channel Continues to Deliver Views
Connected TV is the darling of media companies at the moment. And why wouldn’t it be? You get your favorite client’s message, in the most engaging format (video), in front of mass audiences on the screens and streaming platforms that they love to use.
Connected TV exploded in 2020 and 2021, and its strong and steady growth is slated to carry on over the next few years. With granular targeting options, self-service deployment (for in-house teams), rich brand safety protection, and multiple objectives to activate, if your brand has an inventory of rich video content, then it’s time to consider a Connected TV activation partner.
Sources: Insider Intelligence
2023: the Great Cookie Exodus (Marketers, Rejoice!)
User privacy is one of the major drivers of change we’ve identified in the evolving marketing landscape, but what does Google going “cookieless” really mean? In reality, probably not much. Yes, it seems like a good thing to evolve away from intrusive and invasive individual tracking and this new-ish “cohort-bundling” approach seems like it would be a bit less centered on the individual.
Average marketers should be worried. Great marketers already have multichannel contingencies and focus more on owning their data than relying on third-party activations. The brands that will increase online share of voice, digital performance, and efficacy will focus on developing their own first-party data strategies.
Sources: Nielsen, BBPG.Agency
A Values-Driven Cure for Brand Growth
More true for brands today than ever: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” —Alexander Hamilton
Today’s consumer landscape is incredibly diverse, and share of voice is turned upside down and predominantly owned by the consumer, but there’s one thread that seems homogenous: brands that are able to identify their internal requirements and values and then express them with precision and clarity to consumers that have overlapping core values and beliefs are able to increase brand equity and foster higher brand loyalty and affinity.
Source: BMDG
The answers to these questions are what separate brands that merely sell products from the brands that create lasting emotional connections with their audiences.
This is the difference between Apple and Sony. Between Starbucks and Folgers. Between brand relevance and commoditization.
Welcome to 2023, and our first edition of The Home Trend Update. Our team is always on the lookout for new developments across different audience segments, and we distill those trends into actionable insights that our client partners can utilize.
The metaverse is here and we’re spotlighting a few of the brands, trends, and tools that are already dancing the increasingly fine line between our digital and physical realities.
In the 3rd edition of The Home Trend Update, we’re inspired by the constant that is change and the ever-growing (and imperative) mindfulness of both brands and consumers toward sustainability and environmental stewardship.