In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• Only 33% of US firms actually require full office presence

• Tactile workshop teaches blind women how to style their hair by touch

• What is Substack Couture?

• Explainer: townsizing

• Nigeria's PalmPay turns corner shops into bank branches

Last weekend, I drove down to Devon for an impromptu seaside break: ice cream, fish and chip, dodging seagulls, impossibly cheerful pastel-coloured houses that look like a row of macarons. Classic British seaside therapy.

This morning, I stumbled across research about #gelatocore, and suddenly those butter-lemon yellows and soft peach facades made perfect sense. According to Faire, a wholesale marketplace, British consumers are embracing Italian ice cream aesthetics: pistachio searches have surged 600%, vanilla climbs 400%, and mint follows at 130%.

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• Are tampons getting an engineering upgrade?

• Uno is launching physical social clubs

• Home meal preparation has reached its highest level since 2020

• Explainer: dark tourism

• Brazilians can earn money from their digital footprint

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• Gen Z spend most on subscription

• SVoD Services Struggling for Identity

• Juicy Tubes are making a comeback

• Explainer: cloud coffee

• Retailers bet on AI transformation

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• The Google Street View "Internet Roadtrip"

• Savvy consumers are sceptical of loyalty cards

• Butter made from thin air

• Explainer: dry texting

• 60% of British women are reporting being "mansplained" about money

I'm delighted to share my latest essay, now published as part of the inaugural Semiotic Sisterhood quarterly collection. In it, I examine how slogan tees have evolved into modern cultural battlegrounds, using Conner Ives' provocative "Protect the Dolls" t-shirt as a lens to explore broader questions about identity, activism, and commercial messaging.

This piece sits alongside six other fascinating essays from Carla Moss, Liz Hetherington, Hannah Hoel, Su Luo, Elinor Lifshitz, and Ashley Mauritzen - each unpacking different cultural codes that shape our world in ways both subtle and profound. The range of topics is genuinely wonderful,

Huge thanks to Hannah Hoel and Carla Moss for creating this collaborative space where cultural analysts can dig deeper into the signs and symbols surrounding us. I'm excited to see how this collection develops over the coming quarters.

Read the full collection of essays here: https://lnkd.in/eS4ffCwX

You can also read my individual essay below.

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• Gen Z consumers expect AI beauty personalisation

• Viking's hydrogen-powered cruise ship

• Brand Loyalty is Shrinking

• Explainer: cofertility

• Beauty's Next Frontier

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• The rise in pensioner shoplifting

• Gen Z's ChatGPT stylist

• Ferrero is launching Nutella Peanut

• Explainer: Luxury Blind Boxes

• The epic 100-day global train journey

In this episode of Negotiation Illuminators, Amy Combrinck speaks with Ramona Daniel, a Cultural Insights and Strategy Consultant. Founder of Twenty3.

They explore the evolution of Negotiation practices, the importance of understanding cultural contexts and the significance of communication styles in Negotiations.

Ramona shares her journey of transitioning careers and emphasises the need for relationship building in Negotiations.

Ultimately, they conclude that Negotiation is a dynamic process akin to a dance, requiring adaptability and awareness of cultural differences.

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• Pinterest's enhanced visual search

• Visa's Intelligent Commerce "agentic shopping"

• Philips' Fixables offers 3D-printable repair

• Explainer: millennial hobby energy

• Luxury Diapers

This training session was created for the Insight Consultant Group (ICG) as a Knowledge Share session for their independent consultants.

If you are relatively new to AI, this 45-minute session will help you get more out of the AI tools you’re already using, without needing to become a tech expert. You’ll learn:

• What different types of AI tools (like ChatGPT or Claude) can and can’t do, and how to pick the right one for the job

• Simple, repeatable ways to write prompts that give you better, more relevant answers

• How to fine-tune AI responses when they’re not quite right

• Easy ways to keep track of the prompts you’ve written, so you can reuse and improve them over time

This is a hands-on, interactive session for independent researchers who want to work faster, think more creatively, and make AI a more useful everyday tool.

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• • Agatha Christie's AI-powered writing course

  • AI-generated avatars help marketplace sellers

  • The world’s longest train journey

  • Explainer: quiet cracking

  • The rise of "screen fatigue"

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• Durex India's "The 🐔 Blocker"

• Slow travel

• AI-powered addiction recovery

• Explainer: Dirty Soda

• China's emerging plus-size modelling scene

I had a really enjoyable chat with Ray Poynteron his 'Talking AI' podcast about using LLMs for cultural insights.
His questions made me realise how we are all moving through the GenAI adoption curve at different speeds.
Working as an independent researcher forced me to find new ways to challenge my assumption, so I accelerated my own learning to use LLMs as a thinking partner.
And I very quickly realised that using Ai isn't about replacing human insight, but amplifying your ability to ask better questions when you don't have a team around you.

Labubu dolls have somehow convinced grown adults to hand over £15 for a mystery toy they might absolutely hate – and we're queuing up for more.

Using YouScan's social listening data, I mapped the conversations around mystery boxes. Consumers aren’t just buying products, they're buying emotional rollercoasters, micro-doses of hope, and escape from algorithmic predictability.

In a world obsessed with precision targeting, we're still hungry for serendipity.

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• Reddit's time spent is surging

• Gen Z's travel 'icks'

• Gen Alpha's influence on their parents' shopping

• Foreca$ter puts a dollar on Canada's snowfall

• The misunderstanding of gluten sensitivity

I wrote a piece for @Greenbook on a common research dilemma: what to do when cross-cultural fieldwork clashes with holiday seasons. We’ve all heard the usual advice: pause, delay, avoid. But in a world where people are online 24/7, does that still stack up?

In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:

• AI-powered dubbing

• Gen Z's instant coffee boom

• Dior's luxury rail travel

• Sleep Tourism

• Rome airport's app to support travellers with vision impairments