UPDATE: The folks at Trendwatching revealed that their entire series of trends posted in November were fakes, were jokes, were intentionally fraud — including the ‘Generation Z’ trend I posted on below. What can I say, they got me…perhaps because even the bizarre seems reasonable these days. I leave the original post as evidence that I fell for it. One slice of humble pie, please.
If you didn’t feel entirely jaded by a market-driven society, this trend will likely push you over the top. While arts organizations are working to build market awareness among teenagers and young professionals, the rest of the commercial world is aiming a little bit further upstream.
Generation Z explores the promise and potential of building brand awareness and even brand preference in unborn children. Says the overview:
Consider this research nugget: a Swiss study has found that when sufficiently exposed to child-friendly brand jingles, tunes and spoken messages during pregnancy, up to 77% of all newborns not only recognize these brand markers, but develop a brand preference that could last until puberty, and probably into adulthood (final results are not yet available as the project only started two years ago).
I suppose brand strategy targeting unfertilized eggs or core DNA sequences isn’t far behind.
