"Believe the Hype! Who is leading the way in making a product out of a trend?"
It
can take years from the point a new trend is identified to the development of a new product. The industry
is generally very anxious to engage with trend cycles that are getting shorter and shorter. Products
need investment, but the market changes quickly. In order to prevent new products from missing the boat
— even before they are introduced —
PCH, a new kind of marketing and product design
agency, helps clients discover, understand, see and believe trends earlier than usual. PCH are
Alexander
Nolte and Stefan Liske, two experienced trend scouts with offices in Berlin and Los Angeles. They
call their strategy the “Understanding-Seeing-Believing” principle.
Cities
like Berlin, Tokyo and New York fascinate the international design world and have a lot influence on
business. How do the creative, artistic and cultural mechanisms of these cities function? How do motifs,
ideas and styles from the subculture of the street scene wind up in next season’s fashion features?
Who and what are the catalysts behind, for example, eco hype? What is the make-up of a specific target
group, and what kind of ecological criteria will a company have to meet in the future? How quickly does
a trend become mainstream and commercially profitable? Why do some concept stores work and others quickly
go belly-up? What developments are influencing the car interiors of the future? What role will Scandinavian
design play down the road?
These are all questions that business is
pursuing with increasing interest. Companies want to understand trends and impending developments for
themselves — to be able to translate this knowledge into innovative products. For most managers and
marketing directors, the motives behind trends remain a mystery. For this reason, only a few ideas end
up as authentic products with lasting market success. If the supplier has trouble clearly conveying
a product’s origin, its heart and soul, and the demands of the end customer, then it will have difficulty
developing the narratives around a product that are crucial for its market success. An understanding
for current trends and the cutting edge of future developments is the key.
Implementing
the “Understanding-Seeing-Believing” philosophy, Nolte and Liske and their teams provide tangible answers
and take their clients, usually the decision-makers in big companies, right to the cutting edge where
new tendencies develop. This cutting edge is primarily found in creative, artistic environments, and
this is right where PCH brings its clients, who are placed in interdisciplinary groups with people from
different business sectors. Away from their desks, the clients see for themselves what developments
are forthcoming from which subcultures — and gain an understanding of burgeoning trends on an experiential
level — long before it is clear whether these trends will ever go mainstream. In other words, subculture
up close and personal. This can be a hippie festival in the Californian desert, an international fashion
show or a walk through individual sections of Los Angeles.
To make sure
that these valuable, tangible sources of inspiration are not forgotten right after the experience and
that daily business does not obscure this intermezzo, PCH will also carefully “transcribe” what the
clients saw and experienced. Observations are documented to reflect what is important to each respective
client. Then, they are transferred into concrete product features, forms and style guides. Which brings
us to “believing”!
PCH uses these unconventional methods in the process
of “Understanding-Seeing-Believing”, in order to systematically demonstrate how looking a bit further
afield produces useful added value for a client’s business. Ultimately, it is about making a profit.
At PCH it’s called “human centered profit,” because the end customer is at the center of all efforts.
This is how the agency and its clients are able to blaze new paths. It means consciously being open
to fresh points of view and freeing oneself from the constraints of mediocrity. This is the only way
that new things can develop — with innovation, successful ideas and trendy concepts that impact both
the company and its clients.
Link:www.pch-berlin.comBackground
Information:
PCH is an agency for marketing and product design
that takes the constructive disruption approach. In other words, they track down the tendencies and
indicators that are visible before a trend develops. In addition to interviewing scouts, PCH places
value on so-called “disruption agents,” whose job consists of questioning all of the client’s established
processes and structures, in order to evaluate the possibility of taking a new path.
