Backlash Culture

LS:N Global introduced Backlash Culture, our 30th Trend Briefing, to an audience including chief innovation officers and chief marketing officers, creatives, designers and strategists at many of the world’s most exciting companies.

After a Global Snapshot that explored important nascent trends including neuroscience-powered performance enhancement and growth opportunities for beauty in helping to fight digital fatigue, we moved on to our three macrotrends that will shape the coming decade.

We started with Backlash Brands, which asked: At a time when brands come under more scrutiny online than ever before, have they lost their autonomy or is the fight back only just beginning?

Our second macrotrend, The E-motional Economy, continues on from our Awakening Tech trend from 2014, in which we predicted a more empathetic approach to technology. With emotional sentiment fast becoming the new major metric in marketing we looked ahead to how this might begin to shape not just communications but the entire retail experience.

We finished the day with Gen Viz, a study of digital-first and visual-first teenagers that are influencing the way we communicate with each other. Entrepreneurial, primarily visual and upliftingly engaged, they are more driven than past generations, and are redefining the rules in schools and the workplace.