2020 Year In Review and 2021 Non-Obvious Megatrends To Watch | Non-Obvious Insights #250

Dear Newsletterest,

Welcome to the 250th edition of the Non-Obvious Insights email! Since it also happens to be the last day of the year (Happy New Year by the way!), it's time to talk about trends. This week there was no shortage of the usual useless "trend" predictions offering clueless observations about things that are almost certainly not trends. One even suggested that whipped coffee and Netflix's Tiger King were top 2020 trends (yikes). So how can you separate the actual trends from the trivial bullshit? Read on to see my curated picks for the best trend insights from across the web, and what lessons they might hold for all of us in 2021.

What Social Media Platforms Can Teach Us About 2020 Trends.

One of the most fun ways to experience the year in review is to read some of the recaps produced by the social media networks based on all the data they gather throughout the year. Pinterest offered one of the most insightful reports of the year, featuring predictions like "Skinimalism" and "Getaway Cars." Facebook divided their recap region by region, spotlighting Neo Banking in Mexico, the Joy of Reading in Australia and Expanding Connectivity in India.

Twitter was ironically one of the quieter recaps, highlighting just a handful of popular tweets from the year including one about the passing of Chadwick Bosman and a viral tweet from Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin promising to make us all feel old by reminding us all that he just turned 40. Yup, it worked for me.

Google also created their traditional video about the year in search (which was really more of an ad than a recap - but still interesting). And finally, YouTube produced an video recap of the year divided into thematic chapters, predictably gathering some of the year's most popular videos (and their creators) for a behind the scenes look at 2020's most memorable moments.

Together these recaps felt like the ideal way to relive a hard year - with the year's entertaining, funny and trivial moments mashed right up next to the powerful, important and life-altering ones. Honestly sometimes it felt hard to tell the difference.

An Unusual Way to Find New Trends: Watch For Corporate Patents

In the course of reading about trends this week, I discovered The Patent Drop newsletter from Neer Sharma, which delivers a weekly look at corporate patents. The latest issue featured details about Facebook's efforts to patent an "animatronic eye" that tracks user eye movements and Spotify's latest patent filed for technology that can understand the mood of a video and suggest appropriate music. I love ideas like this which help you see around the corner and discover things that no one else is paying attention to. My own method for doing this involves looking at announced books that will be published 6-12 months in the future. Both techniques look at publicly available data and offer a way to leverage them to develop trend insights.

Netflix Recaps 2020 For All Of Us

A two minute video timeline from Netflix might offer an eerily familiar review of your year - if you happened to spend any of it watching Netflix programming. Watch the video and see if the timeline reflects your past nine months of TV watching. If you prefer a darker sort of recap, the parody documentary Death to 2020 is a fun look back over the year that I enjoyed (despite many negative reviews). The popularity of TV itself was a reminder that no matter how bad life gets, many of us will continue to find our escape in entertainment.

Why Discussing Inconsequential Fashion Trends Might Still Matter

There is something fun about reading a good old fashioned rant and the editors of fashion blog Highsnobriety obliged this week with a surprisingly self-aware yet still wonderfully snarky article about the 2020 fashion trends they would rather leave behind. Everything from elastic hems that create "a gross mushroom over your pants" to extra small bags that "only fit your vitamins" are all targets of highly specific rants. Why am I sharing a story about silly 2020 fashion trends that even their own writers call "inconsequential nerdy minutiae"? With all the political and medical stories about how our world and future has been forever changed, it's nice to remember that there is still a small corner of the internet where you can find people who miss sneaker drops, hate mushrooming pants and just want a place where they can complain about it to someone else who will listen.

Fjord 2021 Trends: Mapping Out New Territory

The team at Fjord trends does an excellent job pulling insights together and this year's report introduced some nice ideas for trends, including "Interaction Wanderlust" (the idea that brands need to work harder to bring joy and serendipity from the real world to the screen) and "Liquid Infrastructure" (how organizations can personalize and rethink their supply chains). The full 90 page PDF report is available as a download for free.

10 Big Megatrends From the Best Books of 2020

If you wanted our awards show from two weeks ago for the Non-Obvious Book Awards, you know I did something unusual this year by selecting ten major themes from the books of the year to share as a reflection about the year itself. As with previous years, many of the book themes also represent cultural themes and trends that helped to describe this past year and what might matter for the year to come. See the full list of themes and read my article about the themes here >>

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Want to discuss how I could bring this thinking to your next event as a virtual speaker? Visit my speaking page >>

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2020 Year In Review and 2021 Non-Obvious Megatrends To Watch | Non-Obvious Insights #250

What Social Media Platforms Can Teach Us About 2020 Trends.

An Unusual Way to Find New Trends: Watch For Corporate Patents

Netflix Recaps 2020 For All Of Us

Why Discussing Inconsequential Fashion Trends Might Still Matter

Fjord 2021 Trends: Mapping Out New Territory

10 Big Megatrends From the Best Books of 2020

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Return of Movie Theaters, Why JK Rowling Got Canceled & Unusual 2020 Time Capsule Ideas | Non-Obvious Insights #249

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