For our concept test we held interviews with 4 different people. During the interviews we tried to stick to our topic list to get as much out of it as possible. Click here to see the topic list.

These are the correspondents:
1. Woman (22) – Fashion student
2. Woman (21) – Tourism student
3. Man (27) – PR employee at GLDJ’s and MIC-student
4. Man (25) – Entrepreneur and retail management student

General info
All the correspondents had visit one or more festivals last summer. From just one-day till two-day events or longer. They all said that they liked the longer events the most. The ones who didn’t went to a multi-day festival would really like to go there. They said:

“A more day festival has more atmosphere and you feel more connected with the other visitors because you were the lucky ones who did get the ticket right on time.”

Other positive aspects of the festivals were the feeling you could do whatever you want, you don’t have any obligations except for having a good time. Positive was also good music, enough places to eat and/or drink something.

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For assignment 3 we also have to look at a company that actively implement trends into products. We could have take the easy way and going for an agency like FutureConsult which creates concepts that are based on trends for other companies but what you may didn’t knew is that a lot of companies use trends to build on future concepts for themselves. They have to because the competition is also thinking forwards. As a company you have to be innovating constantly to keep up with the rest and to keep your spot save in the market. We had a personal conversation with the director of camping ’De Bongerd’ and he told us proud about all his innovations.

Campingpark De Bongerd is an interntational, well-known, five-star family camping. This camping is on top of the market for years and won several prestigious prices on national and international level. To achieve these recognitions, you have to be constantly ‘moving’. The director of this camping does this by making trips abroad to see what happens overthere. He does this together with his wife, they don’t have trend watchers employed. They trust at their own instinct and of course they always keep their eyes and ears open because trends are everywhere.

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1.      General

·         Intro

·         General information of the interviewed

 
- Individual

·         Festival(s) the person has visit

·         Positive and negative aspects at these festivals

·         What does he/she expects of a festival

·         Essential services and activities on a festival

 
- Company

·         Tasks within the company

·         Current PR/advertisements/campaigns

·         Current image of the company

·         Desired image of the company

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The Huffington post has done research on the positive side-effects of being kind to others. For example, did you know being nice to other actually slows the aging proces of a person’s heart and body? Being nice also influences the people surrounding you and encouraging them to do the same thing. Last but not least, kind people are happier than those solely care about themselves.

The research shows us some surprising results. It’s not a big surprise that being kind to people influences your own state of mind. But the fact that our mental decisions have effect on our physical state can be called a real eye-opener. Be kind, live longer!

Source: Huffinton Post. (2011). 5 Beneficial Side Effects of Kindness. Consulted on June 23 2011, from: http://trendwatching.com/

The article above states that practicing small random acts of kindness makes us happier. It reassures us of the fact that we are ‘one of the good guys’, which is important in our often considered ‘selfish society’. The results were obtained by letting people perform little ‘random acts of kindness’, 15 minutes a day total.

This is a remarkable research, because random acts of kindness are mostly important to the ones receiving the kindness. Results like these remind us of the importance of being nice to each other to create a friendly and sincerence society.

Source: Vancouver SunVitals: The latest research on happiness. (2011). Consulted on June 23 2011, from: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Vitals+latest+research+happiness/4843667/story.html

A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation revealed that Great britain is among the five kindest countries in the world. People living in GB are more generous and eager helping helping other people. Other ‘kind’ countries in the top five are America, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The Netherlands are not in the list, so there is a lot to improve in our country!

Source: Telegraph. (13 April 2011). Britain in top five ‘kindest’ countries, OECD report finds. Consulted on June 23 2011, from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8447185/Britain-in-top-five-kindest-countries-OECD-report-finds.html

1.    What did we like or not like about the researched trend websites?

We really liked to watch other website because you can learn a lot from other bloggers. The write, create and think in a different way which is inspiring for us. Looking to other websites helps you to came up with new innovative and creative things. What we didn’t like was to search for more information about the bloggers. It was hard to find those information especially on the cool collectors website.  

2.    What did we learn?

During our minor we learned a lot about trends and especially to find them by ourselves. We didn’t learn much about the deepness of trends. by analyzing these websites we learned to look in a different way on trends, describe them and how we can translate this into products . 

3.    What would we do differently?

We would make a clear website with basic colors. We will keep the background clear so that we can post fascinated and attractive visuals. Besides that about the functionality we will use a more clear menu with a view topics which divided in sub-topics. This makes the blog easy and simple to read. About the content we would not do that much different, we only will add our own style. 

4.    What tips can we give the researched websites?

We would like the researched websites to have a more ‘cleaner’ design. The websites are often ‘crowded’ with bits of information which makes it hard to actually find the articles worth reading. A new, more logical design would help more websites to stand out in their category.

5.    Who are the potential clients (readers) of our own trend webblog and who could that potentially be of our former blog of methodology 1?

 We are aiming for all kind of readers at our blog. For example, people who are interested in the different goals that can be reached with random acts of kindness. You should think of individuals, but -as you can read in our blogs- RAK is also a big opportunity for big companies like airlines and artists

6.    What kind of trend information would we like to work upon or communicate about and how would we attract readers and clients?

We really want to find some deeper information about how companies decide to create a random acts of kindness or how they can create a good random act of kindness. It would be wonderful if we had the knowledge to explain to other companies how they can create a r.a.k and they asked us for advice. 

Watching Trendsactive.com

TrendsActive is a trend interpretation agency, which means we bridge the gap between theory (trend research) and practice (daily business).

TrendsActive was founded in 2007 by Kees Elands en René Maas and is located in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

How they do it?

They filter, analyse and summarize socio-cultural trend research in understandable language. Also, They make trends and insights 100% practical for organizations - on strategy, communication and product development. (trendsactive.com, 2011)

Trendsactive has 3 steps for creating opportunities for companies.

1. Insights

2. Interpretation

3. Imagination

Example

Some clients of Trendsactive

Camping ‘De Bongerd’, translated as ‘The Orchard’, is a Dutch five-star camping in a small village in the North of the land. The camping is well-known in Europe and won several prestigious prices. This year ‘De Bongerd’ is already nominated for the best family camping of 2011, by the Dutch ANWB. The interview was held by the hand of our topic list, which you can find here.

The company
“As the director of De Bongerd I make sure that everything runs smoothly. I send my managers and have a lot of business meetings. Once in a while I also make a trip abroad to look at other campsites. What they do and if there are important trend going on.”

“We don’t have big advertisement campaigns but we do promote ourselves on the web at travel related websites. We want to set ourselves on the market as a luxurious family camping were the kids will be entertained the whole day and that’s also how the current image is. In the future we will also be known as a sustainable five-star family camping. That is the goal for the next years.”

The concept
“Actually I didn’t heard of Random Acts of Kindness before but I like the idea of it. I like the idea of the festival as well but there is still a lot to think about.“

“R.A.K. can really do something for your company of you cause that it will be noticed by a lot of people. For example you can film your R.A.K. and spread it over the internet or even use is as some sort of commercial. In that way it could do some good for your company. It’s just how much effort you put in it yourself and how it’s being picked up. That depends also on how well-thought your R.A.K. is.”

“I don’t see how it will be good for my own company. De Bongerd is doing good at this time and we’re still busy with improvements every year. It would affiliate my company in a way that it stands for happiness and having a good time with others at one park but I don’t feel like it. It wouldn’t reach enough of my target group which are parents with young children. I don’t think that a lot of them would go to a festival like this.“

The flyer
“I like the idea of the flower and that you explained the Random Acts of Kindness because I didn’t heard of it before. I would have made it in one big page so everything is more clear right away. A flyer has to appeal immediately and this flyer will take more time to understand it all.”

Conclusion
“The whole idea is great in my opinion and I think you will find the right partners to work this out. But you also need to take care of sanitation and enough water and food supplies. It is also useful to make a list with ten basic rules like no drugs, no weapons and clean up you dirt. Good luck with it!”

1. What is, or could be the use of trend expertise for organizations and entrepreneurs?

 The use of trend expertise help organizations and entrepreneurs to observe what is ‘hot’ in their industry. By observing the developments of this trends gives them the opportunity to invest and produce new innovate products and/or services. This way they create the possibility to make a blue ocean strategy that hopefully earn them a lot of revenue and income. 

2. Name one or more organizations that use trend expertise for innovation

For example, Philips, Apple, Nike and Adidas

3. What difficulties could trend experts come across whilst getting trend insights practically implicated by organizations they advise on?

That organizations trying to turn insights of a particular trend into their benefit and isn’t based on facts because a company tries to create a own trend. Therefore trend watchers should be impartial and try not to get influenced by the company.

4. How could these possible difficulties be overcome according to you? 

Trend experts should always be neutral and only accept trends insights that is based and facts and arguments. 

5. What is the future of the profession of trend expertise (say in ten years)?

It will get more important because everyone is looking for that trend which is changing our world and for a company their revenue.

6. What is trend implication?

Trend implication takes place once a company uses trend practical. For example to produce a new product.

7. What extras does trend research and trend translation bring you?

Now that we learned how trend develop and how to recognize them it really helps us in our future work. We will now always be aware of the possibilities trend research could offer companies and we really want to profit of it in the future.