TREND WORK-OUT: DEFINE YOUR TREND COMMUNICATION

The Trend Work-out: flex your muscles to train your inner trend researcher. In the following months I, trend intern Sanne, will be your trend fitness instructor and give you tips and tricks on practicing trend research. This week I will help you to define the way your going to communicate your trend. Read more and get started right away!

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Hi future trend researcher! Hope you had a nice week and that you are ready for a new exercise. In this exercise I will show you different ways to communicate your trend and help you decide what way of communication works best for you, or your client’s challenge.

Different ways
The way you are communicating your trend should be both informative and inspiring. Match your (client’s) challenge by the way you present your trend as well as making things relevant and actionable. What are the possibilities to share your trend? Check the slideshow below for some examples on how you can communicate your trend analysis:

Trend Communication Canvas
​A tool that can help you define your trend communication is the Trend Communication Canvas. I will take you through it, step by step.

Scope // How does the scope relate to the communication approach?
We didn’t do exercise ‘5.1 Uncover your scope’ together, but I hope you can take a look at it by yourself in the workbook. In that exercise you prepare the briefing with a potential client, which gives you handles to start your project with a specific goal or question.

So let’s say the goal was to inspire a small food truck company, for which the debriefing was at a coffee bar and the chat informal. What kind of communicational approach suits for this situation?

Audience // Who will you communicate with?
A big international company, a small food truck company, or will you show your trends at a design fair? It is good to know who your audience is, so you can level your way of communication. Besides: think about if it is for a larger group of people and how large, or just for the head of the company? 

Interaction level // One-way street or active and engaging
During a briefing you always ask what kind of collaboration the client prefers. If it is a one way street, you will just mainly send information from your side. This needs a different approach then the active and engaging one, where you will have more contact and input from your client and work together. 

Tone of voice // (In)formal? Visual or text? Emo or ratio?
These are all things you can sense or ask during the briefing. What kind of contact would your client like and in what way? Is he/she a more visual person or company or more about data and numbers? This information has a lot of influence on the way you should communicate your trends, to make sure it matches your client so you can help them to understand trends better.

Form // What is the desired output?
There are different ways to communicate your trend physically. Choose one that is most suited for your scope, client, and audience. Possible ways to show and communicate your trend are found in the list below. I've added a couple of examples you can take a look at. It also helps to search online and go to events to check how other trend researchers showcase their work.

• Trend report/book
• Trend video (see below)
• Trend presentation
• Trend game
• Trend consultation
• Trend tour 
• Trend workshop

Summarise and action!
​Summarise the way you will communicate about your trends for this specific project. Put together all of the information you've answered above to define how you want to communicate.
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Then get into action: what do you need to do to communicate that way? If you want to make a visual rapport, can you do this yourself or do you need assistance? If you want to make a trend game, what actions do you need to get there? 

More about ideating on trends next week, where we are going to formulate trigger questions that can help stimulate your creativity!