Welcome to The
Non-Obvious^TM
Trend Collection

Every year our team curates the most interesting and impactful trends shaping culture and business. On this site, you can browse all of the trends from the past nine years by category, industry or year.

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Strategic Downgrading

As more products become Internet-enabled and digitalized, consumers are selectively rejecting supposedly improved products and services, opting for simpler, cheaper, and sometimes more functional versions instead.

E-mpulse Buying

While e-commerce is changing the way people impulse buy, the integration of mobile devices into the shopping experience has opened up possibilities for real-time marketing that encourages people to make split-second emotional buying decisions in a new way.

Experimedia

Content creators make use of social experiments and real-life interactions to reveal interesting insight about human behavior and build more authentic connections with their audiences.

Glanceable Content

Marketing effectively today means capturing the attention of a consumer base that is increasingly resistant to the stream of content they see all day.

Reluctant Marketing

Marketing used to focus almost exclusively on the messaging behind and promotion of products and services, but today, marketers are becoming key to informing their organizations’ product development and research.

Everyday Stardom

Some of today’s most innovative and influential ideas are coming from complete outsiders whose unconventional quirks disrupt entire industries.

Instant Entrepreneurs

Better support, incentives, and tools for entrepreneurs make it possible for anyone with an idea to launch a startup knowing that the costs and risks of failure are not as high as they once were.

Subscription Commerce

Businesses and retailers are adopting subscription models that deliver recurring services or products to customers instead of focusing on one-time sales.

Branded Inspiration

Brands are turning to the unparalleled power of awe to connect their products and services to big ideas, increasing their perceived value in the process.