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Edition #31 | Your bi-weekly inspiration fix • 14 March - 27 March 2024
TREND
The return of ceremony: brands align rituals with modern life
An antidote to speed and convenience, younger audiences are yearning for slower-paced traditions. Recognizing this, Ele.me launched a tea campaign for office workers, rooted in ceremony. Leveraging the traditional Chinese solar term Yushui, a time typically associated with new life and tea-drinking, the brand offered discounts on selected drinks and invited workers to share their favorite milk teas. 

As spirituality rises faster than religion, how will you blend ceremonial heritage with contemporary lifestyles?
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INNOVATION
A supplier of sustainable energy equipment turned to an underutilized source of labor to fill an acute shortage of skilled technical workers faced by the energy sector in the Netherlands. A program specifically for refugees… read more 
INNOVATION
For most people, compost toilets conjure images of rustic outhouses. Aiming to close the lid on preconceptions, Swedish startup Harvest Moon designed the chic, fully integrated Luna toilet system to bring sustainable sanitation into… read more
INNOVATION
Sønderborg, Denmark is home to a new EV charging station that offers a refreshing take on the conventional gas-filling or battery-charging experience. Rather than the stark car-centric infrastructure we've come to expect, Better Energy… read more
TREND
Mexican reggaetón takes mainstream by storm, blending sounds of neighboring locales
In recent decades, Mexican reggaetón has evolved into its own genre 🇲🇽🥁. Now in its third wave, ‘reggaetón Mexa’ takes influences from Puerto Rico’s reggaetón, Dominican dembow beats and electronic urban music from Panama. Mexico lends its barrios and sonidero culture too.

Mexican reggaetón has seen a five-year growth of 1,119% on Spotify and with Rolling Stone naming Peso Pluma’s Ella Baila Sola as its song of the year, the hype isn’t going anywhere (the song has over 516 million views on YouTube 📈). Peso Pluma is part of a new generation of artists remixing Mexican traditions with contemporary styles like trap and reggaetón.

How will you join the reggaetón reventón 🎉 and encourage customers to define their own version of urban pride?
INSIGHT
How will you navigate the soaring gen AI adoption among your customers?
Google's Lumiere. OpenAI's Sora. Each week brings new expectation-shaping AI announcements 🤖. Meanwhile, ChatGPT is rapidly disrupting the internal mechanics of businesses, paving the way for an improved customer experience: 59% of consumers believe that gen AI will completely change the way they interact with companies in the next two years, jumping to 75% among those with direct AI experience.

Are you implementing gen AI into the customer experience with the goal of delighting, inspiring and assisting? Here are two avenues to begin your gen AI adoption:
  • Embrace co-creation and cede control by giving consumers the tools they need to hack your brand. Gen AI enables hyper-customization and maximizes creativity, and could encourage people to engage with your brand in an unprecedented way.
  • Transform abstract daydreams into vivid realities, providing both an escape from real-world challenges and new avenues for self-expression and imagination. 
THOUGHT STARTER
Distraction is leading the culture economy
The fastest-growing sector of the culture economy is distraction itself, eclipsing traditional cultural engagements such as art and entertainment. How can you convert mindless scrolling or swiping into mindful participation?
INNOVATION
Compass app points towards the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way
Galactic Compass is a digital compass that is always oriented toward the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Developed with the aid of ChatGPT, it’s available for free on the iOS App Store and received 17k downloads in just over one week. While some might call the app impractical, its creator, designer Matt Webb, believes it can instill a profound sense of awe about our cosmic position. 

Can you craft experiences that merge the digital and natural worlds, offering consumers new ways to encounter awe and deepen their connection with natural wonders… no matter how far away? 🌌
INSIGHT
Nike appeals to Chinese Gen Z with ‘song chi gan’ and nostalgia
Chinese gen Zs are known for coining counter-culture movements in response to modern life’s high pressures. We’ve seen a few come and go — ‘lying flat’ (躺平, tang ping), ‘let it rot’ (摆烂; bai lan) and, more recently, a call to ‘accept things as they happen’ (松弛感, song chi gan).

Nike’s ad taps into the song chi gan attitude, blending it with another of gen Zs’ preferred avenues for escapism — nostalgia. According to Spotify, 68% of gen Z globally said they like consuming media from earlier decades because it reminds them of when things were simpler.

Dealing with daily stressors and hurtling towards an uncertain future, how might you offer Gen Zs a way to cope with the present, before they can build a better future? Can you provide routes to simpler times and help them feel seen?
INNOVATION
For refugees settling in a new country, professional credentials are often lost due to complex bureaucratic processes. Austrian startup Indima has built an AI platform to cut through the red tape by… read more
INNOVATION
Skincare brand Aesop regularly transforms its shelves into a literary sanctuary. For International Women’s Day, it dedicated its mainland China stores to books written by women or centering the female… read more
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MakeShift is TrendWatching's free bi-weekly trend publication, bringing you the insights and innovations that will inspire you to create with meaning ❤️

Want MakeShift in your inbox? Subscribe now and join 100,000+ other trend enthusiasts!

Keen to access all our trends, insights and innovations? Check out Amplify, our Trend Intelligence Platform 💥

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Talk to us
Be sure to ping our editor, Caitlin, if you're working on something we should feature on MakeShift.