The monthly trend monitor provides a unique data-driven overview over the most important global consumer, industry, and society trends. How it works: We use the SONAR trend radar, which tracks the volume of written scientific and journalistic publications on a certain trend, to find out what the top five trends are in these three categories. Utilizing intelligent algorithms, SONAR analyzes a continuously growing database of more than 40 million publications from academic journals, expert blogs, mass media, and patent registers to gain unique insights on global trends.
SONAR can sort trends by Volume (number of articles relevant to a trend and relative to the SONAR index), Growth (YoY growth, volume of the last 12 months vs. previous 12 months) or Momentum (MoM growth, volume of the last month vs. volume of the previous month).
Each month, we present the top 5 consumer, industry, and society trends by Momentum.
Top 5 Consumer Trends in March 2023
Self-Employment is March’s top consumer trend, followed by Mindfulness & Conscious Living and Athleisure. None of the top consumer trends in the top five show a particularly strong momentum.
Top 5 Industry Trends in March 2023
Artificial Intelligence often finds itself at the top among other industry trends, and this true once again in March. It is interesting, however, to find Sugar Replacement on the second position, as this trend rarely shows such a strong momentum. Search Advertising, the fourth-strongest industry in March is also rarely seen in the top five.
Top 5 Society Trends in March 2023
Right Wing Populism is the strongest society trend in March by momentum, though its YoY growth is slightly negative. This may be explained by the current anti-government protests in Israel. The remaining society trends in the top five all have a significantly weaker momentum.
More and more consumers expect brands to have a clear stance on social and political issues. Yet only few brands are truly effective in communicating stance. Many brands have ended up facing accusations of greenwashing, pinkwashing or wokewashing after launching an expensive purpose marketing campaign.
What should brands focus on to ensure their communication of attitude doesn’t fall flat or even lead to shitstorms? This white paper provides a game plan based on genuine data-driven insights.
Discussions on the ubiquitous social media have a significant impact on brand image and brand value. They also often put companies under pressure to take a stance on current social, political and cultural issues.
According to surveys, about 70% of consumers think it’s important for brands to show attitude. At the same time, the number of daily advertising contacts has been rising sharply for decades. This makes it increasingly difficult for brands to make their communication activities visible enough at all. On the other hand, brands on social media are also quickly accused of “greenwashing,” “pinkwashing,” and “wokewashing” if the communicated attitude of the brand does not quite match the actual brand perception on the part of consumers.
For brand managers, the crucial question is therefore often not whether the brand should take a stand, but how to make the corresponding purpose marketing activities visible in the first place. In our experience, the best answers to that can be found in innovative social and expert listening approaches combined with classic marketing theory.
In this white paper, we introduce a generalizable game plan on this basis, which can serve as orientation for brands in communicating attitude. It is based on a joint project between TD Reply and the Marketing Department of the Luigi Bocconi University of Economics and Business Administration. Under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Verena Schoenmueller and TD Reply experts, Bocconi students in the Brand Management course have contributed significantly to the collection of the data on which the findings presented in this white paper are based.
The monthly trend monitor provides a unique data-driven overview over the most important global consumer, industry, and society trends. How it works: We use the SONAR trend radar, which tracks the volume of written scientific and journalistic publications on a certain trend, to find out what the top five trends are in these three categories. Utilizing intelligent algorithms, SONAR analyzes a continuously growing database of more than 40 million publications from academic journals, expert blogs, mass media, and patent registers to gain unique insights on global trends.
SONAR can sort trends by Volume (number of articles relevant to a trend and relative to the SONAR index), Growth (YoY growth, volume of the last 12 months vs. previous 12 months) or Momentum (MoM growth, volume of the last month vs. volume of the previous month).
Each month, we present the top 5 consumer, industry, and society trends by Momentum.
Top 5 Consumer Trends in February 2023
Healthy Lifestyle & Wellbeing is the dominant trend in February, boasting more than double the momentum of the runner-up trend, Data Privacy. The three other trends in the top five are lagging far behind in momentum.
Top 5 Industry Trends in February 2023
Food Tech is the top industry trendin February, followed by Sustainable Food and Brand Experience & CX. It is worthy of note that all the trends in February’s top five are marked by a relatively strong momentum.
Top 5 Society Trends in February 2023
Diversity & Inclusion leads the top five of society trends with an extraordinarily strong momentum.It also shows high Volume and Growth. The two following trends, Climate Change and Digitalization, also boast an extremely high momentum. In the previous month, neither of these trends made it to the top five.
In recent years, marked by the Covid pandemic, the tech and marketing industries seem to have become even more fast-moving than usual. Significant and even disruptive innovations are emerging at a breathtaking pace.
This year too begins with a bang, with ChatGPT, a landmark breakthrough for AI, taking the world by storm. What else is there on the horizon?
Here, seven tech and marketing experts from TD Reply share their personal trends to watch out for 2023.
Dr. Philipp Dauderstädt, Associate Partner
More Selective Brand Collabs
“Brand collaborations have proven to be a highly effective tool for brand activation and strengthening positive brand associations. Today, however, the use of brand collabs has become almost inflationary. This demands a more selective approach to brand collabs in the future for them to remain effective. Future collabs should be carefully assessed in accordance with the strategic brand goals.”
Steffen Hück, Senior Director
Big Tech Layoffs Driving Innovation, Growth and Careers
“Last year, more workers were laid off in the marketing and tech industries than in 2020 and 2021 combined. While layoffs have a negative impact on the individuals affected, it is important to remember that the demand for technology talent is still high, and jobs will return. The influx of tech talent could recalibrate power dynamics in the employment landscape, accelerate innovation and growth in emerging sectors such as green tech, new materials, life sciences and Generative AI. The layoffs allow startups and early-stage companies in these future growth sectors to recruit talent that has previously been off-limits. In addition, lots of new startups may be founded by the layoffs around the world, which would help pave the way for economic growth in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how these shifts will affect innovation and – perhaps even more importantly – growth and careers.”
Anja Kielmann, Senior Director
Metaverse Buzz Dwindling
“Last year, the Metaverse was one of the defining buzzwords in the marketing industry. Today, impressive AI-driven tech is gaining traction and overshadows the Metaverse by offering opportunities that appear truly revolutionary and practically useful in daily life. The Metaverse has so far failed to make the same impression upon consumers. I project that in 2023, the number of articles and papers in the marketing industry discussing the Metaverse will drastically decline.”
Lars-Alexander Mayer, Managing Director
More Attention for Share of Search
“Over the last few years, more people have heard about Share of Search, a mighty digital metric that we have been using for ten years with great success. Share of Search is a proxy for market share, an indicator of brand health, a predictor of long-term ad effectiveness and much, much more. It is the essential metric to bring the upper and lower sales funnels together. I think that in 2023, some of the attention that contextual and econometric approaches will receive owing to the coming end of third-party cookies, will also spill over to Share of Search.”
Dr. Holger Noesekabel, Chief Technology Officer
Software Development with AI Support
“The first AI-driven tools have started supporting software development in 2022. In addition to suggestions for code optimizations – a constant code review – even entire functions can be generated on the basis of a simple written description. ChatGPT goes one step further: generating entire scripts, fixing bugs, creating documentations. Right at launch, ChatGPT showed impressive flexibility. Microsoft is already planning further investments in OpenAI. In 2023, we can therefore expect even more leaps in quality that will revolutionize the daily work of software developers.”
Martin Schmoll, Director Business Innovation
AI Becomes Part of Daily Work Life
“AI is something of a hidden champion today across many industries, driving online targeting, analysing market movements for investors or automating content generation. I believe that in 2023, AI will reach an unprecedented level of acceptance and use among the wider population as well. This is because more and more AI-driven technologies are now becoming truly viable and reliable, including: text generation, visual material generation, UX & UI optimization, note-taking, video editing, data engineering and management, office management, scheduling or project management. Accordingly, the number of popular software tools incorporating AI is exploding and AI is becoming an integral part of daily work life.”
Niklas Stog, Associate Partner
The hyper-localization of O2O commerce
“Online-to-offline, or O2O, has been blurring the lines between e-commerce and classical retail for years. Geospatial analytics will fully erode this separation in 2023: whether it’s the use of online data for commercial execution, the connection of physical locations and consumers via digital media (geofencing & OOH) or a more refined segmentation of B2B and B2C target groups using geospatial features. Companies across industries – CPG, retail or logistics, to just name a few – can gain a critical competitive advantage if they adapt to this development successfully.”
The monthly trend monitor provides a unique data-driven overview over the most important global consumer, industry, and society trends. How it works: We use the SONAR trend radar, which tracks the volume of written scientific and journalistic publications on a certain trend, to find out what the top five trends are in these three categories. Utilizing intelligent algorithms, SONAR analyzes a continuously growing database of more than 40 million publications from academic journals, expert blogs, mass media, and patent registers to gain unique insights on global trends.
SONAR can sort trends by Volume (number of articles relevant to a trend and relative to the SONAR index), Growth (YoY growth, volume of the last 12 months vs. previous 12 months) or Momentum (MoM growth, volume of the last month vs. volume of the previous month).
Each month, we present the top 5 consumer, industry, and society trends by Momentum.
Top 5 Consumer Trends in January 2023
Vegan& Vegetarian Food is the dominant consumer trend in January, with a significant year-over-year growth and strong momentum. Its momentum is almost double that of the second-strongest trend, Mindfulness & Conscious Living. Snackification follows third.
Top 5 Industry Trends in January 2023
Artificial Intelligence is once again the top industry trend, boasting high volume, significant growth and strong momentum. Graphene, an interesting trend that rarely makes it to the top five, comes third, followed by Computer Vision.
Top 5 Society Trends in January 2023
All the top five society trends in January are marked by a remarkably low momentum. The respective volumes and growth indicators are also at a low level. Talent Gap is the strongest society trend, followed by Freelance Economy and Continuing Education.
The monthly trend monitor provides a unique data-driven overview over the most important global consumer, industry, and society trends. How it works: We use the SONAR trend radar, which tracks the volume of written scientific and journalistic publications on a certain trend, to find out what the top five trends are in these three categories. Utilizing intelligent algorithms, SONAR analyzes a continuously growing database of more than 40 million publications from academic journals, expert blogs, mass media, and patent registers to gain unique insights on global trends.
SONAR can sort trends by Volume (number of articles relevant to a trend and relative to the SONAR index), Growth (YoY growth, volume of the last 12 months vs. previous 12 months) or Momentum (MoM growth, volume of the last month vs. volume of the previous month).
Each month, we present the top 5 consumer, industry, and society trends by Momentum.
Top 5 Consumer Trends in November 2022
New Work is the new number one consumer trend in November, boasting the strongest momentum by a wide margin, followed by Self-Employment and Snackification. None of the last month’s top trends managed to maintain or improve their position.
Top 5 Industry Trends in November 2022
Cognitive Care & Mental Health is the number one industry trend in November, showing a very strong momentum. Gamification, another trend related to human psychology, also made it to the top five.
Top 5 Society Trends in November 2022
Digitalization manages to maintain its position as the top society trend. Its momentum, however, has slightly decreased compared to the previous month. It is followed by Diversity & Inclusion. Global Social Tension and Fake News are also among the top five society trends in November.
The marketing and innovation consultancy TD Reply used Chinese social media data to investigate which fashion brands were able to attract the most attention (buzz) during Singles’ Day 2022. The French luxury brand Louis Vuitton manages to outshine other brands by a wide margin. Adidas generates more buzz than Nike, but lags significantly behind Chinese competitor Li-Ning.
During Singles’ Day in China, the world’s biggest shopping festival, fashion brands do their best to attract consumers’ attention with attractive discounts, spectacular PR stunts and other marketing activities.
The Berlin-based marketing and innovation consultancy TD Reply, which operates an office in Beijing since 2010, measures which brands attract the most attention every year on the occasion of Singles’ Day. The measurement is based on a digital metric called buzz – which represents the number of mentions of a brand in discussions on social media, e-commerce, and other online platforms. A brand’s share of the total buzz for a particular category (such as fashion brands) says a lot about how much attention the brand is able to generate relative to the competition. This metric can be a good indicator of brand visibility and the effectiveness of marketing activities, particularly in the context of important events such as Singles’ Day.
Louis Vuitton successful with boy band as brand ambassadors
The French luxury brand Louis Vuitton clearly won the battle for attention this year. With a 17.1% share of the total buzz, it generated almost twice as much attention during Singles Day activities as second-placed Italian luxury shoe and bag specialist Tod’s (9%). Saint Laurent comes in third position (3.6%).
Top 10 fashion brands ranked by share of buzz during the Singles’ Day 2022 festivities in China.
The specialists in TD Reply’s Beijing office attribute much of the buzz generated by Louis Vuitton this year to two activities: the recent opening of the first Louis Vuitton restaurant in China in the city of Chengdu and the partnership with the boy band Teens in Times, which Louis Vuitton has picked as brand ambassadors. In the Chinese market, partnerships with well-known influencers, the so-called key opinion leaders (KOL), play a key role. The communities of leading KOLs, which are much larger than the communities of Western influencers, usually respond very positively to the business partnerships of their idols. As a result, these partnerships are among the most important marketing instruments for companies with ambitions in the Chinese market.
It is important to note, however, that Louis Vuitton has been one of the most popular non-Chinese brands in China for years thanks to its good understanding for Chinese cultural codes and sensitivities. In 2020, for example, the Chinese public reacted overwhelmingly positively to Louis Vuitton’s decision to hold the “SEE LV” exhibition in Wuhan – a comparatively insignificant city in terms of economy and the probable place of origin of the COVID-19 virus.
Li-Ning gets more attention than Adidas and Nike
Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning lands in a strong fifth place with a buzz share of 3.1%, but drops two positions compared to last year. It performs considerably better than competitors Adidas (1,3%) and Nike (1%).
Adidas still manages to garner significantly more attention than last, when it could only claim a 0.3% share of the total buzz.
Top 10 e-commerce platforms ranked by share of buzz during the Singles’ Day 2022 festivities in China.
JD ahead of Tmall
On the shopping platform side, JD.com outperformed its main competitor Tmall.com in terms of attention this year. For example, JD.com received 43.1% of the share of total buzz with its Singles Day promotions, while Tmall.com only gained 24%.
Last year, Tmall.com (42.8% at the time) was still narrowly ahead of JD.com (38% at the time).
The monthly trend monitor provides a unique data-driven overview over the most important global consumer, industry, and society trends. How it works: We use the SONAR trend radar, which tracks the volume of written scientific and journalistic publications on a certain trend, to find out what the top five trends are in these three categories. Utilizing intelligent algorithms, SONAR analyzes a continuously growing database of more than 40 million publications from academic journals, expert blogs, mass media, and patent registers to gain unique insights on global trends.
SONAR can sort trends by Volume (number of articles relevant to a trend and relative to the SONAR index), Growth (YoY growth, volume of the last 12 months vs. previous 12 months) or Momentum (MoM growth, volume of the last month vs. volume of the previous month).
Each month, we present the top 5 consumer, industry, and society trends by Momentum.
Top 5 Consumer Trends in October 2022
Vegan and Vegetarian Food is the new number one trend in October, while last month’s top trend, Healthy Lifestyle & Wellbeing, is not featured in the top five anymore. Data Privacy retains the second position, further gaining in momentum.
Top 5 Industry Trends in October 2022
Food Tech is once again the top industry trend. It already held the same position in August. With Smart Fashion & Augmented Body Tech, a relatively rare trend enters the top five of industry trends.
Top 5 Society Trends in October 2022
Digitalization is the number one society trend in October, followed by Global Power Shifts and Individualization. Right Wing Populism enters the top five on the fifth position. This may be a possible consequence of the Italian general election, which was won by a candidate often described as far-right.
More and more consumers expect brands to have a clear stance on social and political issues. Yet only few brands are truly effective in communicating stance. Many brands have ended up facing accusations of greenwashing, pinkwashing or wokewashing after launching an expensive purpose marketing campaign.
What should brands focus on to ensure their communication of attitude doesn’t fall flat or even lead to shitstorms? This white paper provides a game plan based on genuine data-driven insights.
Discussions on the ubiquitous social media have a significant impact on brand image and brand value. They also often put companies under pressure to take a stance on current social, political and cultural issues.
According to surveys, about 70% of consumers think it’s important for brands to show attitude. At the same time, the number of daily advertising contacts has been rising sharply for decades. This makes it increasingly difficult for brands to make their communication activities visible enough at all. On the other hand, brands on social media are also quickly accused of “greenwashing,” “pinkwashing,” and “wokewashing” if the communicated attitude of the brand does not quite match the actual brand perception on the part of consumers.
For brand managers, the crucial question is therefore often not whether the brand should take a stand, but how to make the corresponding purpose marketing activities visible in the first place. In our experience, the best answers to that can be found in innovative social and expert listening approaches combined with classic marketing theory.
In this white paper, we introduce a generalizable game plan on this basis, which can serve as orientation for brands in communicating attitude. It is based on a joint project between TD Reply and the Marketing Department of the Luigi Bocconi University of Economics and Business Administration. Under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Verena Schoenmueller and TD Reply experts, Bocconi students in the Brand Management course have contributed significantly to the collection of the data on which the findings presented in this white paper are based.
The monthly trend monitor provides a unique data-driven overview over the most important global consumer, industry, and society trends. How it works: We use the SONAR trend radar, which tracks the volume of written scientific and journalistic publications on a certain trend, to find out what the top five trends are in these three categories. Utilizing intelligent algorithms, SONAR analyzes a continuously growing database of more than 40 million publications from academic journals, expert blogs, mass media, and patent registers to gain unique insights on global trends.
SONAR can sort trends by Volume (number of articles relevant to a trend and relative to the SONAR index), Growth (YoY growth, volume of the last 12 months vs. previous 12 months) or Momentum (MoM growth, volume of the last month vs. volume of the previous month).
Each month, we present the top 5 consumer, industry, and society trends by Momentum.
Top 5 Consumer Trends in September 2022
Healthy Lifestyle & Wellbeing succeeds Eco-Awareness as the new number one consumer trend in September. Data Privacy follows second with only a slightly lower momentum. Next in line is Human Enhancement, a very interesting trend not often seen in the top five. Worthy of note, Meme Culture is also featured on the last positioned.
Top 5 Industry Trends in September 2022
Food Tech, last month’s number one trend, is superseded by Bio Engineering in September. Renewable Energy not only manages to stay in the top five, but also climbs up two positions to become the second-strongest industry trend in September.
Top 5 Society Trends in September 2022
Diversity & Inclusion is the number one society trend in September, followed by Smart Cities and Digital Ethics. Global Threats, a trend indicative of dangerous new global developments, enters the top five once again.
