Episode 242: I’m With The Brand, part four (nostalgia, convenience, and hope)

A few weeks ago, Dustin and I found ourselves at the mall in the middle of the morning on a Friday.  I needed to try on glasses and Dustin was there to get a new phone after a year of carrying his with an external battery pack kinda permanently attached to it. We will do anything in this household to prolong the lives of our phones, planned obsolescence be damned!

The mall was a little busier than I expected, full of teenagers kinda killing time on a super hot day and families doing back to school shopping.  While we were there, we took a quick spin around the stores so that I could see what everyone was selling. And to be honest, everyone was kinda selling the same thing:

• There were a lot of stores that focused on licensed character products like Hot Topic, Box Lunch, Miniso, and lesser known chains/locally owned stores.
• Of course there were many stores selling sneakers, workout clothes, and athlesiure, from Foot Locker to Aerie to Lululemon. 
• The chains that target a more adult/professional customer like Loft and J.Jill.  They all sold the same color palette and silhouettes.
• And then there were all of the trendier clothing stores. They all looked the same in terms of trends they were selling, whether it was American Eagle, Garage, PacSun (Dustin was like “remember when PacSun was a skate/surf store?”), Charlotte Russe, or Urban Outfitters…mostly the same Y2k-inspired stuff.  In fact, while these brands would surely tell you that their customer base is different than all of the others I just listed, that their brand represents something different that makes them stand out from the crowd…the fact is that even the stores are kinda starting to look the same…and that’s all that differentiates them.

A lot of this comes down to trend forecasting.  And more importantly: that most of these brands (okay, really ALL of these brands) are getting their trend forecasting information from the same sources.

What does that mean? Let me explain how trend forecasting is a part of the product development process in the buying offices of brands around the world:

• Generally the product you see in stores got there via collaboration between four teams that execute  the product strategy for these brands:
  • Production: this is the team that does (in my opinion) the hardest part of the job by being the conduit between the corporate office, factories, fabric mills, freight forwarders, quality assurance in the warehouse, agents, etc. They make sure the right thing arrives at the right time at the right price.  And making that happen is a whole lot of work.
  • Buying: that’s the team that sort of builds the product assortment, managing the economics of it all, and steers the product strategy.
  • Planning: this team works really closely with the buying team, analyzing sales, budget, inventory, and profitability.
  • Design: this is the team that designs the products both creatively and technically (things like fit and details).  More and more brands are trying to minimize these teams by having them use Midjourney or other AI applications to create designs.
• So now that we know the team of players involved, let’s talk about how product development works:
  • It all starts with “trend concepts.” Often there is a person or a team whose job is entirely putting together these concepts, which will include print direction, colors, fabrics, and silhouettes. Sometimes the trend concepts are created by the leadership of the design team, but other times there is someone from the art department handling this.  In my experience, there will be 2-3 “trend concepts” for every 2-3 month delivery period, often living in stores and online at the same time.  These concepts will be merchandised individually in stores creating specific sections targeting different customers.  And online, they will be used as different marketing stories.  These will be presented to the buying and design teams before they start planning the next round of deliveries.  Ideally just about everything designed, produced, and bought by these teams will fit into one of the trend concepts presented.
  • Next buying and planning will do a bunch of analysis of last year’s sales and sales year-to-date to figure out the number of styles, colors, and units that should be ordered for this delivery window.  Buyers will build a sort of shopping list/outline for design called a “line plan.” And this can be as specific as “I need three dresses that retail for $140 and one of them must be a puff sleeved maxi dress based on last year’s best seller” or as vague as “I need four dresses that retail for $89 in three colors each.”
  • Design will take this line plan and design into it, trying to create things that fit into the slots identified by the buyers while also aligning with the trend concepts.  They present these sketches back to the buyers, who pick the styles to move forward with.  These are turned into tech packs, sent off to the factories for sampling, and from there they go through the series of revisions and adjustments to hit a price point that I have unpacked in previous episodes.

The important takeaway here is that yes, much of what you see available in stores is dictated by data, sales, pricing, profitability targets …but it all starts as a trend concept.  And designers and buyers must adhere to this.  So even if a designer or a buyer thinks that red holographic fabric would be really cool and interesting to experiment with right now, if that doesn’t align with the “y2K boho” or “neutral minimalism” trend concepts, they can’t design or buy that.

And that’s when we arrive at the station called “every big brand seems to be selling the same stuff.”  How? Well most of these brands (no really, all of these brands…I don’t know why I’m saying “most”) are subscribing to the same fashion trend forecasting platforms. And in most cases, it’s WGSN.

WGSN was founded in 1998 in West London by brothers Julian and Marc Worth. The name originally stood for “Worth Global Style Network.” Back then, trend forecasting was a different game: brands in fashion looked to runway shows for their biggest inspiration, along with magazines. Trends weren’t as fast and furious as they are in the fast fashion/social media era.  So any trend concept curated by a brand would live in stores for an entire season.  And many (but not all) brands were using a combination of sales analysis (making more of what customers bought most of) and sort of “trickle down from the runway” as a means of creating seasonal trend concepts. Moreover, the fact that these trend concepts lived in stores for an entire season meant that they aligned with the runway seasons, making it all a lot easier.  In the late 90s, when WGSN was founded, most trend reporting came from magazines and other physical media.  WGSN broke that mold by initially (before the internet) delivering their trend forecasts via CD!! Nowadays WGSN’s trend reports come via their website, newsletters, and PDFs, but the CD was pretty groundbreaking at the time.

Trends themselves are often socially driven, because humans are constantly inspiring one another. Sometimes that’s a good thing (shopping secondhand or voting) and sometimes it’s a bad thing (sunscreen truthers, MAGA hats).  And all of us have been living through social, fashion, food, and cultural trends our entire lives. Lisa Frank, frozen yogurt, JNCO jeans, Snackwells, low rise everything, that era of really long but tight t-shirts (ew), bell sleeves, “#liveauthentic,” avocado toast, pastel goth (also: health goth)…the list of trends goes on and on.  Some stuck around in one way or another (fancy reusable water bottles) and others feel like  a relic (low fat everything)  But until the era of “big trend forecasting,” fashion trends (just like social trends) were usually a reflection of what it was like to live at that moment: anxieties, generational moods, and collective desires.  Celebrities started trends because we desired to be them (at least a little bit).  Low fat everything caught on because this society makes body size a priority (and crushes us in the process).  Reusable water bottles are a big business because we’re all worrying about plastic. Trends should capture the spirit of a moment, but as a “big trend forecasting” became the roadmap for what is made and sold on a mass scale, it started to feel less like a reflection of a time and the people living during the time, and more like a menu of limited choices.

In 2005 WGSN was purchased by Emap (now Ascential), a business-to-business publisher and exhibitions company.  This meant that WGSN was no longer an independent startup, but part of a publishing conglomerate.

And the appetite for trend forecasting services grew through the 2000s and 2010s for a few reasons:

• The internet: people were slowly finding it easier to shop outside of their immediate geographical area, which meant that even though online shopping was new, it was becoming a threat to many of the national and regional chains.  Think about it: since mass produced clothing had replaced home sewing, most people were kinda limited in terms of what they could wear by what the stores in their area offered. That meant that brands didn’t even really need to make the best or most interesting stuff, because they had a captive audience with little options.  And that meant that brands didn’t really need to think about fashion trends that hard either.
• Next, the recession meant that brands became even more worried about buying the wrong thing or missing something important. They were a lot more risk adverse. So the idea of trend forecasting–getting ahead of the curve–felt like a good investment.
• And lastly, as we moved into the 2010s and fast fashion was THE way of making and selling just about everything on a large scale, brands had already raced their way to the bottom in terms of pricing.  The only thing left was to try to be the first to offer a specific trend.  Forget about being on trend, you needed to be AHEAD of the trend.

In 2013, WGSN merged with its biggest competitor, Stylesight.  We definitely used Stylesight at one of my jobs at that time.  And this merger was a big deal because it meant that WGSN was the dominant leader in trend forecasting…where it remains today. And sure there are independent trend forecasting agencies out there. There is the Pinterest annual trend report.  Companies like McKinsey that focus on consumer behavior.  But WGSN dominates them all when it comes to the behemoth industry of making and selling clothing, shoes, and accessories.  And now WGSN also forecasts trends in interiors, beauty, food and drink, color, and consumer tech.

Many of my jobs have had at least one person who handled the work of creating these trend concepts. In the 00s, before WGSN was such a player, this person (or team) scoured street style blogs, fashion magazines, runway shows, and maybe even went to a presentation by Li  Edelkoort, one of the world’s most famous trend forecasters. I had the privilege of attending one of her Trend Union presentations in LA back in like 2014-ish, and it was mindblowing.  But I was also working at Nasty Gal then and it was hard for me to see how the trend of (for example) artisanal weaving with found fibers would work into fast fashion. At many of my jobs, buyers were expected to do this trend forecasting work as well, using any spare moment ever to explore what was happening stylewise in the outside world. On a personal level, I am obsessed with analyzing and identifying trends because it involves so much reading, discovery, and observation.

If you’re wondering how trend forecasting works, I am going to share this rather lovely essay from Kat Hart of Not Just Another Label that talks about it at length. And this is a great excerpt:

“The role of a forecaster is to analyse the movement of the market, look for patterns in consumer behaviour and find the ‘red thread’ that unifies a collection of sometimes seemingly disparate ideas that will form the basis of the ‘next big thing’. In order to pinpoint a trend, a forecaster must gather and absorb as much information from as many sources as possible and collate it into a coherent, viable story. Taking an interest in all aspects of culture from the creative arts, media and travel to underground subculture movements and developments in science and technology is key for any trendspotter. Combined with statistical market research and observation of socio-economic shifts, these sources also give an insight into what the next emerging trend may be and show the direction and potential reaction of consumer culture.”

Now you can probably understand why I love working on trend forecasting projects because I really enjoy a research challenge, following threads, and then using my brain to put them all together.  That’s the thing about trend forecasting: it is a task that requires a human brain (or multiple human brains) to do it well.  And that means it costs money to pay all of those human brains for their work.

In an era where most big brands are scraping off every cent in order to keep profits high while prices are low, that means paying a team (or even one person) to do the job of all of that research and thinking doesn’t fit in the budget. So most brands are just opting for WGSN and maybe paying someone on the design or buying team to build out the trend concept presentations.  WGSN is not cheap…I couldn’t find an exact price–so much about WGSN is kinda hidden–but it seems to be about $25,000 per year for a subscription, with opportunities to add on features.  And even with the most deluxe WGSN package, a company is saving money in comparison to paying a salary and benefits for a human to do the job.

And to be fair, WGSN does the work to predict these trends:

1. Observation using its STEPIC methodology: society, technology, environment, politics, industry and creativity.
2. Data analysis
3. Social media and digital monitoring
4. Human analysis: I know nothing about the diversity of the people involved in trend forecasting at WGSN, but it would be interesting to know who is doing this work because let’s be honest, their own biases and experiences are most definitely being reflected by their output. 
5. And now the inclusion of AI into its methodology…which knowing the resources that AI requires to function, is predicting what denim wash people will want this fall really a good use of that energy and water?

But with one company basically predicting the trends, what you get is a lot of the same stuff everywhere…becuase every brand is paying for the same subscription to the same trends.  And it’s…kinda boring, right?

In fact, the era of “big trend forecasting” has a lot of drawbacks:

• One is that homogenization of what’s available for sale in the world. If everyone is selling the same colors and silhouettes, it only reinforces that “race to the bottom” in terms of pricing, with most brands having to put things on sale pretty fast.  That means those clothes have to be profitable as heck, even at a sale price.  And that means…low quality materials, cut corners, and bad wages for everyone involved in making, shipping, and selling those clothes. So yeah, “big trend forecasting” might be an issue of environmental and social justice.
• Next, every brand using trend forecasts as the hard and fast rule for what gets made stifles innovation. This means no new fabrics, colors, or interesting ideas…because they feel risky to retailers. 
• And of course, is it all a self-fulfilling prophecy? If the trends as forecasted are the only things out there available to buy and wear…and therefore, that’s what people are buying and wearing…was a trend really predicted or just created?  

That’s one of the reasons I’m always like “Fuck fashion trends, wear what you want.” Because for the past 10+ years, “trends” haven’t really been indicative of anything connected to what is happening culturally (with a few exceptions here and there). And really most trends have been fed to us by marketing and branding, not by what humans are actually choosing. And outside of any of this, honestly you should just wear what makes you happy.  Who cares if it’s “on trend” anyway? And really, it aligns with the goal of this entire series: uncovering the very strategic, highly intentional things that are happening behind the scenes to get us to shop.  By unpacking them, we can recognize them out in the wild and be more resistant to them. No one is saying “don’t buy anything ever.”  And for sure, no one is saying “don’t buy anything ever…and be super smug about it on social media.”  Rather, buy the things you need.  Make the choices that align with your values in the best possible way. But don’t buy things just because of trends or some clever marketing that really found you in your feels.

This episode is part 4 of a series unpacking brands and branding.  And I wanted to get started with an explanation of trend forecasting (and how seriously most retailers take it) because the concept of “emotional branding” has been a trend concept in this century that every brand has been following in one way or another. Just about every person in marketing and branding in the past two decades has read Marc Gobe’s book Emotional Branding (aka the Flowers in the Attic of modern branding). Gobe predicted a lot of trends in branding and marketing…that were indeed followed by just about every big brand.  Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or would those trends have emerged organically? It’s hard to say at this point.  But we know that in a strange way, brands like to follow the herd.

 In the previous installment in this series, we talked about cause marketing and how it has been a mega trend in marketing and branding from the 00s through now. And yeah, we see less of it these days, but now it’s been a trend for so long that it’s almost just a part of doing business.  In this episode, we are going to break down more of Gobe’s branding trend predictions and look for examples of how those were used by various brands over the last couple of decades.  And we will also look at the latest marketing and branding trend predictions so that we can spot them out in the wild (and stay wary of their ability to manipulate us).

Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that hopes I never have to eat another Snackwell cookie.

I’m your host, Amanda and this is episode 242, part 4 in an ongoing series about brands and how they influence our identities and drive consumerism.

In part one we explored the meanings of brand and branding, along with the history of branding. I also revealed some brands that are really just licensed zombies at this point.  

In part two, we unpacked the concept of “emotional branding” and how it has influenced our own relationships with brands, building large communities of strangers who are brought together because of where they like to shop/ what they like to buy.

In part three, we unpacked “cause marketing” and why it’s not really that charitable. Also, sorry I have to be the ruiner of everything all the time.  It was definitely not where I saw my life going.

This week we are going to unpack more of the branding/marketing trends predicted by Marc Gobe in his 00s book Emotional Branding: convenience, nostalgia, and hope.  And we will wrap this all up by examining a recent WGSN trend report about the emotions of consumers (and how to market into them).

As of today, I am planning two more parts of this series: an examination of customer data and our own experiences as customers (including your stories….keep em coming) and unpacking Glossier as a case study in branding in this century.  Send me your stories about brands that you used to be obsessed with…and why you aren’t any more (or maybe you still are).  A brand that disappointed you. Or a brand you LOVE now because of something they did or didn’t do.  Or maybe your thoughts on “cause marketing!” I promise that I will be sharing all of them before we finish this series!

You can record these thoughts as a voice memo on your phone and send them to me.  Or write an email. Please do not DM me on Instagram. Chances are I will miss it because my notifications are always blowing up there.  My email address is always in the show notes.  It’s [email protected]

I also just want to talk to you for a few moments about a slight change in Clotheshorse: I will be focusing more on deep dives like this branding series, deprioritizing guest interviews.  Sometimes there will be conversations with guests, specifically in line with ideas we are currently exploring.  In fact, I have recorded two great conversations that will be coming your way over the next month or so. 

But let’s be honest: Clotheshorse doesn’t really make money, just enough to cover the operations of it all, not my actual work. That is unlikely to ever change because it would mean either taking questionable advertising, shifting the content into a more mainstream space, or haranguing you all into giving me money. All of these ideas sound terrible to me!   So if I’m going to be doing all of this unpaid work instead of socializing, going outside, relaxing, reading, seeing movies, etc….well it has to be interesting from a creative and intellectual perspective.  And deep dives like this ARE super rewarding for me on a personal level…so I want to do more of it.  Also, these are topics that don’t seem to be discussed on podcasts and I want someone to talk about them! So I’m going to keep going down these weird rabbitholes. Sometimes guests will fit into that, sometimes they will not.  And to be completely blunt, 95% of the people who reach out about being a guest on the podcast are looking for marketing for their business or project. Sometimes I can shape that into educational and interesting content, sometimes I can’t.  I want Clotheshorse to be a source of inspiration and education. Otherwise, why does it exist? There are plenty of podcasts out there. 

Two more reminders before we jump into this week’s episode:

• Clotheshorse is coming to the west coast in October. I will be doing a show in Seattle on 10/23 and Portland on 10/26.  Links to get tickets are in the show notes.
• And we have one last ticket for the Crafternoon at Slow Fashion Academy in Philadelphia on Sunday, September 21.  Get it now before it’s gone.  I’ll share that link in the show notes!

Way back in the first part of this series, I talked about how some companies don’t have branding that focuses on being cool or trying to connect with customers.  And yet…their customers are just as likely to show up for an internet fight with a stranger to defend these brands.  One example is SHEIN. I think at this point everyone knows that SHEIN kinda sucks, right? I find it hard to believe that there is anyone left on the planet who hasn’t heard something negative about SHEIN, whether it’s yet another story about SHEIN stealing from an artist, having lead in its products, or just churning out really low quality product.  Obviously those of us who think about fast fashion a lot also know that SHEIN has an epic carbon footprint.  And we know it isn’t paying its workers a living wage.  Yet SHEIN keeps growing and growing.  A few days ago, I was listening to an NPR story about tariffs and apparently while SHEIN saw a drop in sales in the early months of the year when the de minimus exception was dropped for packages from China (as well as products that were made in China), its sales have come rolling back.  

People know that SHEIN isn’t great…but they keep shopping anyway. Why? For some, it really is an issue of access. It’s the only place they can find things that fit them in their budget.  But for everyone else who could shop somewhere else, there are three major reasons:

• Low prices (remember, it’s cheap because someone didn’t get paid…and in this case it’s workers and the artists whose designs were stolen)
• An almost infinite product offering: does a microtrend even exist if you can’t find it on SHEIN?
• Convenience: you can shop without leaving your couch or bed…and most of the stuff will arrive in less than a week with express shipping.

And in a time when we’re all working more than ever to survive, well, something that is fast, cheap, and easy is hard to ignore. That’s a branding story right there.

See also: Temu and Amazon. Once again, people KNOW that these companies are problematic…but they still shop and shop.  And I’m not talking about people who need something specific that they literally cannot get somewhere else.  That’s just about all of us at this point because businesses like Amazon and Walmart have crushed small local businesses. I’m talking about people who are doing their regular shopping and impulse shopping on these platforms, even though they DO have other options available to them.

People may not think that they are loyal to Amazon, Temu or SHEIN…but when it becomes your go-to first place to look for something….well, you have become loyal whether you realize it or not.  Habits are a form of loyalty that companies like Amazon are thrilled to have. And unsurprisingly, this loyalty IS the result of emotional branding…because these brands have convinced you that they stand for value, speed, and convenience.  AND you can pretty much rely on them to have anything you need.

One of the branding trends that Marc Gobe predicted in Emotional Branding was “Time is (even better than” money, saying “Instead of acquiring more material goods, people want to spend money to create quality time for themselves.” And he called out the idea of “self checkout” as one of these time saving luxuries that customers wanted.  Now, as an introvert, I lowkey love self checkout, but I also recognize that in the weird dystopia of 2025, self checkout is really just a way for companies to pay less people to work.  It’s not dissimilar to using AI instead of designers to create clothing.

Marc Gobe is writing during a different time: the 00s.  And the full repercussions of the 2008 financial crisis were not fully visible yet.  Namely the way it changed work here in the United States and many other countries. The 2010s established the very abnormal norm of the gig economy (Uber, Door Dash, Instacart, even Amazon delivery and warehouse jobs) along with perma freelancing (working full time for years for the same company without the benefits of being a permanent employee, like healthcare and PTO).  The success of platforms like Uber, Door Dash, Instacart, and Amazon are directly linked to this idea of convenience and giving people more time to do the things they like…except that only works for some people. Because everyone else–namely those doing the delivery or working in the warehouse or permanently freelancing–found themselves working multiple jobs to exist.  And startup culture cemented this idea that we SHOULD be working all the time. In fact, every time someone at the horrible feminist brand would hit a wall, have a breakdown, and leave…the CEO was like “well, that’s how startup life is. And some people just can’t handle it.” The implication? That needing a work/life balance was a sign of weakness.  It sounds absurd to say it out loud, but then again, that’s exactly what the “hustle culture” of the 2010s was all about: work, work, and work somemore…and maybe along the way do some instagram posts about how hard you hustle as some kind of humblebrag.  For those of us who were forced to “hustle” in order to remain housed and fed, hustle culture was not a choice.  And as we found ourselves working more and more, we had to lean into these “convenience” brands like Amazon and Door Dash. 

The Ouroboros–a snake or dragon eating its own tail–is a great analogy to “hustle culture” and Marc Gobe’s trend prediction of convenience:  We hustle so hard that we do not have the time to buy groceries, cat food, or dinner…so we use one of these convenience brands…which cost more money than doing it ourselves, so we have to hustle even harder to afford it…which means we have even less time, so we lean into convenience brands even more.

And yes, things like food delivery and fast prime shipping are examples of convenience as a branding moment, but the list doesn’t end there:

• The expansion of takeout food options in grocery stores. 
• The exponential growth of so-called “fast casual” restaurants like Chipotle, Sweetgreens, Cava, etc.
• Meal delivery boxes like Blue Apron
• Clothing subscription services like Stitchfix that pick out the clothes for you and send them straight to your door.
• The concept of “subscribe and save,” where the same items are shipped to you every month with a very slight discount.
• Order online and pick up in store or at curbside. Even ordering from the Starbucks app.
• Even the rise of sort of “grown up Lunchables.” See also: meal replacements like Soylent and 1000 different varieties of protein bars. And all of those food boxes at Starbucks (which I lived off during my peak hustle culture years).

The other thing about the hustle culture era? It made us shop so much more because we needed all of these other marketing/brand trends to help us cope: 

• Self care as beauty products, skin care, and bath bombs.
• Supplements to keep us unstressed but full of energy.  For a few years there were SO MANY internet brands of supplements (primarily targeting women) that were shipped right to your door, like Flo and Care/of
• Travel
• Online therapy

Fast fashion has benefitted in a major way from an overworked and underpaid society: we don’t have time to do laundry or repair things, so we buy replacements instead. We buy more stuff in general because we’re fucking tired and depressed.  And this exhaustion makes us more vulnerable to marketing as a whole because we’re looking for something to be hopeful about. 

One last thing I wanted to discuss on the subject of convenience as a means of selling us stuff: way back in the early days of Clotheshorse, my friend Amy was a guest talking about apparel production. And she shared saying that many who work in production live by “Fast, cheap, or good. You can have two but you can’t have all three.”

The thing about convenience brands that really came up in the 2010s, like Amazon, was that for a long time we could somehow get all three.  Stuff came fast.  It was crazy cheap, underselling any other retailer or service. And it was usually pretty good.    But what many of us didn’t realize is that these services were cheap because they wanted to get us hooked.

Uber and Lyft are great examples.  In the 2010s, when I was living in LA, I did not have a car.  I took public transportation and Uber because it was wildly cheaper than owning a car (which I could not afford).  Taking an Uber to work could cost me as little as $7. I rarely did that because I am a wildly thrifty person, so I preferred $2.50 to take the subway, but when I worked super late, it was nice to know that a ride home would only cost a few dollars more and I wouldn’t be walking alone late at night on Santa Monica in very impractical shoes (probably Jeffrey Campbell Litas).  

Well the cheap car rides were an illusion, meant to get us hooked on ridesharing (which was a very new idea at the time). I’m going to share a 2019 LA Times article by Sam Dean that explains it best in the show notes.  Dean writes, “The 2010s have been the decade of the subsidized ride.

Uber and Lyft duked it out on the streets of American cities, burning mountains of venture capital to keep fares low in the hopes of winning the battle for market share. The costs were steep: Lyft lost nearly $1 billion in 2018; Uber, with its global scale and broader ambition, lost $3 billion.

The private investors that pumped money into these companies were looking for growth at all cost, betting that one of the companies would grow large enough to reach monopoly status or fund the research to invent self-driving cars.”

Of course when Uber and Lyft decided to IPO, that changed everything because they could no longer burn money.  They also couldn’t double prices overnight. So they paid their drivers less, they fought unionization, they spent epic amounts of money fighting legislation in California that would have made drivers employees, and not independent contractors. 

Similarly, Amazon bled money over prime shipping for years, forcing it to squeeze its workers in every possible way, just to stem the bleeding of money.  That meant even worse working conditions for employees in the warehouse and the drivers delivering the packages.  And ultimately, Amazon has pulled back on the speed of its shipping because it just wasn’t working.

And of course companies like Door Dash and Instacart have been wreaking havoc in restaurants and grocery stores, while wildly underpaying the workers doing the work of shopping and delivering.

Because that’s the thing: you can have it fast.  You can have it cheap.  But if you want that, it can’t also be good.  That means the product quality declines.  And the workers involved are treated worse and worse.  Like a lot of the branding trends we have talked about  in this series, convenience as a branding moment is really just an illusion. In fact, it forces people who are already stretched too thin in terms of money and time to participate in the exploitation of other humans who are stretched even thinner in terms of time and money.   

By now, we have debunked over and over again the illusion of “value” that many fast fashion brands (and really fast everything brands) are offering us. We think we are getting a good deal, so we buy it. But in most cases, we are receiving something low quality that will need to be replaced soon.  I don’t want to go into that again, because if you’ve been listening long enough, you know this. But even this idea that a certain brand or store has the lowest prices, that things will always be the best price there…that is actually a form of emotional branding in itself.  We trust those brands to have the lowest prices, but that doesn’t mean they do.  In fact, Amazon is a great example of a brand that for so long offered that illusion of fast, cheap, and good…and not only is most of the stuff no longer  “good,” the prices are usually not lower than other big box stores and even local businesses. Yet many customers assume that they are getting the lowest price just by shopping from Amazon, even as Amazon has been discovered raising prices a few weeks before Prime Day, just to make them low and “on sale” for Prime Day.

Of course the idea of low prices and convenience are types of emotional branding.  We are tired. We are poorer than our parents.  And we just want something to be a little bit easy.

Another key emotional branding trend forecasted by Marc Gobe in the 00s was nostalgia, “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”  He explained, “This trend is partly about soothing anxiety: a need to be reassured and grounded as we move forward into a super fast-paced and seemingly uncertain future. It is also equally about a sense of excitement and empowerment–being at a vantage point in time when we are able to choose the best of all eras.”

Now Gobe felt that this desire for nostalgia would be primarily driven by baby boomers–nostalgic for the 50s-60s of their youth–and GenX, feeling a longing for their 70s and early 80s childhood.  And I laughed a little bit about this “trend,” because…sir, nostalgia has been a marketing ploy my entire life!

• When I was a small child, I remember so many commercials for music compilations of the hits of the 50s through the 70s. I was particularly fond of Freedom Rock and I begged my mom to order it. You know what? Let’s listen to a bit of that commercial because it is ICONIC.  These music compilation sets were specifically intended to cash in on boomer nostalgia.
• See also: the extraordinary number of movies that came out in the 80s and 90s that specifically took place in the childhood and young adult years of the boomer generation, from the 1950s and 60s (Dirty Dancing, Peggy Sue Got Married, Hairspray, Back to the Future, Forrest Gump).  I also remember watching Happy Days after school in syndication, but it was a 1970s sitcom set in the 1950s. Grease did a similar thing…made in the 70s but set in the 50s.
• In the 90s and 00s, we saw a mishmash of nostalgia used in advertising, entertainment, and fashion:
  • 1970s fashion was cool in the 90s (in a more leisure suit, Mr Furley kinda way) and then back again in the 2010s with a more Stevie Nicks angle.
  • Of course, films set in the 1970s were huge in the 90s–primarily targeted at Gen X hipsters–like The Ice Storm, The Virgin Suicides, and Dazed and Confused (which btw, my friends and I smoked so much weed before and after that movie that I swear an entire cloud of smoke emerged from the minivan we were in and made it practically invisible when I opened the door outside my mom’s house. Also, who could forget That 70s Show? But even more, 70s color palettes and fonts were a part of any cool, sort of counter culture indie brand in the 90s. And to be clear: Gen X and elder millennials were the target customer of brands using that aesthetic.  
  • As we got into the 00s, nostalgia for the 80s became a thing, with shows like Freaks and Geeks and movies like Donnie Darko and Wet Hot American Summer.  American Apparel was basically the early 80s (when it still felt a little 70s), wrapped up in creepiness.  Indie sleaze and electroclash were filled with 80s workout clothes, cocktail dresses, and little Chanel bags. 
  • At the same time, because in the 1980s people were super nostalgic for the 1950s, it made a little bit of a comeback aesthetically in the 00s (especially with advertising).  And all along the way, hipsters were falling into different groups based on which era they admired the most:
    • The 1960s, dressing like cute secretaries and flight attendants, wearing glasses and bangs.
    • The 1970s in a very rock and roll way
    • The 1980s (including lots of coke)
    • And maybe, just maybe, a little bit of 90s as we moved into the 2010s.

Nostalgia as a marketing tool only picked up momentum in 2016, as we began to feel more and more grief and despair about life in the Trump years and a global pandemic:

• We saw long gone brands rise from the dead (meaning: their intellectual property was licensed by someone else to create fast fashion). I’m thinking Dolls Kill licensing Delias. Or like multiple different companies trying to bring Von Dutch back.
• Taco Bell launched a decades menu in 2024 that brought back popular items from the 1960s through the 2000s.
• McDonalds tried adult Happy Meals in 2022
• Polly Pockets relaunched in 2021…and earlier this year, Lisa Says Gah did a Polly Pocket collection.

This is just the beginning of a long line of brands and products that have been relaunched and revamped over the past decade…and often they are targeting Millennials and Gen Xers (sometimes Gen Z) with things they remember as kids…in hopes of getting them to spend some of their adult money.  Like, when is Littlest Pet Shop doing a relaunch? Right now you can buy reissued versions of classic Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, Teletubbies, and more.  The main nostalgic thing I want? An Esprit oversized canvas tote bag, something I wanted so badly in middle school but never got to have.  That’s the thing about nostalgia: sometimes it’s just about “fixing” history in our minds.  And other times it’s about escape to a simpler time. And maybe, as Marc Gobe thought, it is about finding something we don’t have right now. He wrote, “I know we are missing something that is genuine and true.  We are seeking more trust, authenticity, and truth.” Interestingly, a lot of the nostalgia products aren’t as good as the original (the Dolls Kill Delias stuff is a great example).  Or things that feel nostalgic to me, like Little Debbie oatmeal creme pies…either they aren’t as good as they used to be….or they were never that good to begin with. 

Nostalgia is hard to resist.  And I think the best thing we can do is ask “Why do I want this American Girl doll or Dr Pepper Lip Smacker? Am I trying to fix history? Or am I just looking for a break from the bleakness of life in 2025?”  Regardless of the reason we want that thing, we have to admit that our desire is rooted in emotion…and that’s why nostalgia is so effective for selling stuff.

The last marketing trend Marc Gobe saw as significant in the 00s? The idea of hope, as leveraged by the Obama campaign.

Now, I’m not here to have an internet Leftist debate about the Obama presidency with you.  That’s another podcast hosted by someone else. But I do want to talk about why his campaign was different from previous campaigns and why it worked.

And I think it starts with examining where we were in the United States in 2008.   To be blunt: things sucked, unless you were rich, white, or (maybe) a child.

• Since 9/11, our personal liberties and privacy had been whittled away thanks to legislation like the Patriot Act.
• The US was in multiple wars in the middle east, thanks to greed.  “No blood for oil.”
• The social safety net was  whittled down to almost nothing, with drastic cuts in Medicaid, SNAP, and cash assistance (aka “welfare”).  
• It was an incredibly shitty time to be a woman, thanks to extreme diet culture, rape culture, and open and “ironic” misogyny.
• Healthcare here in the US was shitty. If you didn’t have a job, you probably couldn’t see a doctor without tempting financial doom. If you had a so-called “pre-existing condition” your treatment options were limited. You might not even be able to get health insurance at all!
• And oh yeah, there was a massive global recession with many people losing their homes, jobs, and any sense of security. Those of us who held on to our jobs were stuck, dealing with cut benefits and freezes on raises and promotions. If you graduated from college or high school during that recession, well, I’m sorry.
• Also, the US was an embarrassment globally.

Things sucked.  It was hard to feel hopeful…and then this Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama arrived on the scene.  He had a different way of speaking to people. He focused on change.  He said “Yes, we can.” He sold this idea that we are all in this together.  And when he spoke, he genuinely seemed to believe that, which felt magical and rare after decades of inauthentic politicians.  He stood for consistency, transparency, and sincerity…and that was just so new and fresh.  His campaign used the internet to connect with voters, which also seemed indicative of a new generation of leadership, an era of CHANGE. He brought hope to so many…and he made everyone feel like they had a place in what he was building, an important part to play!

I ugly-cried the night Obama won the 2008 election because it felt like the dawn of a new era…the country’s first Black president, something that had previously seemed impossible. And just knowing that he was going to the White House made me feel safer than I had in years.  Optimistic. 

Marc Gobe felt that brands had an opportunity to follow the lead of the Obama campaign, using hope and inclusion as a marketing strategy, as long as the product was “authentic” and the connection was “genuine.”  He said, “What brands will learn by observing the Obama campaign is that people, when motivated, flock to the ideals that will help them feel better about who they are. In the commercial world, most consumers will not stop buying, but they will be more selective. While buying less for personal, ecological, or economical reasons, they will still need brands that help them define who they are.”

And Marc Gobe gets to the core of the main reason people buy stuff and where and when they buy it: it makes them feel a certain way. And specifically in this century, we do a lot of buying based on how unhappy or stressed or tired or broke we feel at any given moment.  Think about it: Convenience makes us feel less tired.  Low prices make us feel like we can have more.  Nostalgia makes us feel comfort. And hope…well, it helps us get out of bed to face another day.

The 2010s were not a perfect time, but they were certainly (at least until 2016) a little less bleak.  Hope was good for marketing because it kept the vibes flowing and let customers feel like they were part of something bigger.  Sort of like virtue signalling via shopping. And from 2016 through today, we just needed something, anything to make us feel a little bit more optimistic. 

A lot of the marketing tropes of the 2010s are definitely spinoffs of that concept:

• #girlboss, female-led companies, and feminist merch
• All of that cause marketing and “brands that stand for something”
• Greenwashing: yes you CAN save the earth…by buying this t-shirt made of recycled plastic.

In fact, all of this hope can be YOURS…with the low low price of a pair of Nike shoes or a bottle of Dove body wash.  Or maybe an Away suitcase or a pair of Toms.

Which brings me to the final part of this episode…and it’s going to be a full circle moment.  Are you ready?

About a month ago, WGSN published a white paper called “Future Consumer 2027: Emotions.”  From the introduction, 

WGSN says it has identified six key emotions that will shape consumer behavior. In this white paper, it introduces three of them. Seriously, if someone out there has a WGSN subscription and wants to send me the other three emotions, I will be eternally grateful.

Strategic joy “couples joy with purpose” and it is intended to help cope with the “prolonged stress, boredom, and dysregulation” of the last few years. Okay, yeah, I do kind of feel all three of those pretty deeply.   Brands are encouraged to lean into play, humor, positive habits and mindsets, personal wellbeing, and “pleasure activism.” Um, that sounds a little bit like cause marketing to me.  But I expect that we will see this concept of strategic joy play out as bright, fun colors in clothing and home goods (sort of like “dopamine dressing” for everything around us).  An endless array of supplements, workout stuff, comfy clothes, healthy comfort foods, party supplies, fun books, and anything else related to fun and the joy of being a kid.  So look for some nostalgia here, too.

Witherwill is all about combatting everyone’s sense of burnout. Look for a move away from our digital devices (I mean, who isn’t feeling kind of over nonstop emails, all night texts, and social media–aka where people go to be their worst selves).  I suspect this will mean being sold devices that force us to stay away from our devices. Travel. Getting into nature. Self care. Comfy bedding and clothes.  Binging books and movies. Apps and services that “lighten our load.”

Suspicious Optimism is built upon the idea that most of us distrust what we read and see online more than ever, whether it’s in the news or on our FYP. AI makes it super difficult to trust our own eyes! This one is going to be interesting as a marketing approach…I’m guessing we will see more brands claim radical transparency and trustworthiness, maybe aligning with content creators and celebrities that have the trust of their fans.  

The thing about all of these “emotional trends?” They will 100% be used to develop products and marketing campaigns.  That is after all what WGSN does.  And in a weird way, I kinda like reading them NOW, so we can spot them playing out in front of us in the near future.  After all, the thing about all of this emotional branding is that…it connects with our emotions and our most inner selves. It’s hard to spot because it feels so personal.  It’s hard to have a critical eye on it when it’s something you FEEL.  But when we can keep an eye out for it, maybe we can see it and kinda resist it before it permeates our outer shell. 

That’s where I want to end this installment of the series…with the acknowledgement that if you have found yourself loving a brand because of its charitable giveback, super convenience, or perceived low prices, no one blames or judges you.  If you bought something just because it righted some wrong from your childhood or gave you a minute of sweet nostalgia, no one thinks you are a lesser person.  If you bought a feminist tee because it made you feel empowered to do that…seriously, so have millions of other people.  Emotional branding is the gold standard for selling stuff in the 21st century because it works so well. It sells without overtly selling…because it is so personal. And that means we also don’t judge one another for falling for emotional branding, either.  I mean, it’s designed to manipulate us. And people have spent lots of time figuring out how to get it right, to make it as effective as possible.  Emotional branding and marketing knows that we just want to feel loved, safe, and happy. We are willing to buy something that offers a chance to be unafraid and optimistic. In fact, we have been told our entire lives that stuff will bring happiness.

Nothing annoys and depresses me more than someone being judgy and sanctimonious on social media while evoking the name Clotheshorse. Like, that goes against everything that I personally stand for and everything I want my work to stand for. We’re not here to judge anyone for anything they have bought or not bought.  I mean, come on…there’s way worse stuff happening in the world. Rather, I think that we are all on this journey together.  Along the way we learn things together. And our perspective changes together.  We reduce, refuse and resist together.  And rather than making others feel bad about what they have bought or are thinking about buying…we give them knowledge and hope that the world can be better. We extend a hand to invite them to join us on our journey.  We bring light and a new way of doing things. That’s how real change happens.  And you don’t have to buy a t-shirt to get it.