To be clear, the trends that we can call suitable for business planning may not be the ones you see every day. For example, you could look at consumers' online behavior on an hourly or daily basis, or collect real-time feedback or opinions from a survey panel, and call these “trends.” But for those with significant decisions to make – about developing a new product or launching a multi-country ad campaign – this kind of information usually does not have “the right stuff.”
Something that is “trending,” or a fad, might be a viral meme or online challenge that lasts a few weeks, or a popular color of the season – but a trend is a more concrete expression of a deeper consumer desire. True trends have a much longer shelf life and emerge from broader cultural and social forces. They are living, breathing entities that evolve along with us – helping us make sense of the noise of everyday life and data.
To leverage trends wisely, we need to separate them from the everyday static of random, unverifiable numbers and assertions.