Early trend detection to achieve cultural relevance

A must-read chapter in our Marketing Trends Report

Early trends detection—through consistent real-time and long-term monitoring—helps brands stay closely aligned with consumer needs, preferences, and concerns, boosting their cultural relevance. The power of relevance becomes even more important in the era of fragmented attention, where audiences are spread across channels, platforms, and touchpoints.

The challenge for brands isn’t just following trends, but activating them. 60% of respondents in our last survey to CMOs admit they track trends regularly, but struggle to integrate them into their overall brand strategy.

Jayson Fittipaldi, Head of Creative US, and Daryl Nuncio, Head of Strategy US at SAMY, are unsurprised by these findings. They work with major brands that rely on them to quickly translate global trends into regional activations, all while staying aligned with the brand’s strategy, audience, values, and specific business cases. Companies across industries face challenges with external global trend reports because they don’t always resonate with their local markets. Often, it’s a timing issue, as data and trends tend to become outdated quickly.

Our experts say that putting trends into action involves a “freedom within a framework” approach. This means empowering teams to make faster, more confident decisions while keeping a few key questions in mind:

• What cultural spaces are pillars – aligned with the brand DNA, meant for ongoing activation to deepen relationships through key passion points (think of this as content and activations happening at least once a month).
• What cultural spaces to avoid – not aligned with the brand DNA.
• What cultural spaces are exploratory -have the potential to increase awareness and engagement through new spaces that matter to your audience (think of this as happening once or twice a quarter).

“Without a strategy, brand teams can spend too much time deciding whether the trend is ‘worth it’ to execute. The process of tracking trends, building an activation recommendation, and convincing senior management takes time. What needs to be quick is the yes or no decision on if the brand should activate.” Daryl Nuncio, Head of Strategy, US at SAMY.

Eager to learn about marketing trends, or, even better, cultural trends?

Download our most successful yearly report.