Here's our line up: look out for the individual session sign ups
Our first ever futures month features fascinating sessions on future consumers, two quite different but equally successful approaches to scenario planning in an ambiguous world, the emerging themes of sustainability and productivity and how advanced tech is helping a supermarket predict food trends
The New Rebellion: Gen Alpha Changing the World by Stealth with Pete Maginn, Beano Brain
This session explores how Gen Alpha are changing the world around us with over 4 million mini acts of rebellion every week. Rather than anarchy and acts of rebellion which were rites of passage for previous generations, today’s children are carrying out millions of acts of activism every week. We are seeing an emerging generation who are responsible, frown on destruction and bad behaviour and will challenge everyday injustice. Gen Alpha’s “constructive” rebellion is already impacting societal change. The question is, are brands and organisations ready for them?
Project Bruce Foresight - predicting the post-Covid future, with Co-Op and Dectech
During the halcyon days of summer 2020 when we were eating out to help out, Co-Op’s insight team was being inundated with requests from stakeholders desperate to learn how life at home, work, shopping and in communities would change longer term. But of course, predicting future behaviour is difficult.
Bruce Foresight was a ground-breaking piece of research by Co-op and Dectech, combining behavioural economics, statistical modelling and market research providing confident conclusions about future behaviour.
You’ll hear how Co-Op and DecTech answered the questions on everyone’s mind, how they combined these disciplines to create a rich research methodology, and their learnings on circumstantial vs emotional behaviours, the shopping behaviours that have changed for good, and the 3 mega-factors that will underpin post-lockdown behaviour change
COVID-19: Everything's Changed, Nothing's Changed, with HSBC and SHED Research
2020 was a year like no other. HSBC UK needed to understand how to respond in its marketing plans, but also consider what the pandemic meant for its future content strategy. COVID-19 generated a huge amount of research - the Customer Insight and Strategy team just needed to make sense of it all. Rather than commission new work, Shed Research got maximum value from existing insight by synthesising it into two short reports over the year. In this example the business didn't need a new approach or framework to look into the future. Just a way of synthesising what they already had.
Right trend, standout product: How Sainsbury’s predict the future using Google technology
The food marketplace is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the past 50. Of course, the fundamentals about food don’t change. People still need to eat. But what, how, when and where they do it are transforming out of all recognition. Sainsbury’s has transformed the way they develop and range new products, positioning data driven decision-making at the heart of our day-to-day product development and commercial processes. Powered by Google’s cutting-edge technology they’ve created an intelligent food trend analytics platform designed for the product development and commercial teams of the future. This tool gives Sainsbury’s advanced insights in real time; harnessing millions of curated data points from around the world to provide actionable insights on trends driving our customer’s eating habits.
Planet saving or penny pinching? Navigating the tensions around sustainability in a post-pandemic world, with BoxClever
We know that sustainability has been propelled into the mainstream by the seismic shift that is the pandemic, but we also know that saving the planet must now compete with other priorities like our health and finances. So how will businesses navigate this? This work draws on consumer stories, human psychology, trends data and recent innovations from brands to explore interesting shifts and tensions on the topic of sustainability in a post-pandemic world. BoxClever will also hone in on the new business models across sectors that seek to solve this tension through innovative, yet pragmatic sustainable solutions for consumers.
Staying positively productive, with Spotify and Sparkler
Spotify partnered with Sparkler to explore what modern productivity means in the UK and US and how audio content can boost productivity. In this session hear a new, positive, and hopeful angle on how people’s behaviour and outlook has changed as a result of the pandemic. This future facing concept of productivity goes beyond just getting stuff done, it's as much about feeling good and the importance of personal satisfaction. It’s also personal and nuanced; each of us creating just the right environment to manage and increase our productivity in everything we do.
