It’s true. There’s more artificiality in the world and finding shared truths is a struggle – especially in a chronically online world. Last February, one of our trendspotters coined 2024 the “year of the distrust crisis.” Yet, it is also true that people are finding truth in experiences.
Presenting: The 2024 → 2025 Trends Lens. This exclusive edition explores how a year’s worth of emerging trends has cultivated a world of new truths shaping a world of new experiences. Our top trendspotters have identified four territories that offer us perspective on how audiences and brands will experience a world of new truths.
PLUREALITY (PLU·RE·AL·I·TY)
What’s considered authentic is no longer universal. Our cultural landscape has fractured into a universe of truths that often compete. The notion of what’s real is now tailor-made by you, or the influencers who storysell it best.
Ongoing scandals, data-breaches and AI has made the search for truth a massive challenge. Its forced us to essentially define our own truths. How can brands bring back meaning to the plurality of audience perceptions?
Extreme Belonging
In volatile times, we turn to communities for acceptance and support. As change remains the constant, there is a growing desire to find the places, spaces and people we can belong to more permanently, no matter how extreme the conditions.
Tapping into communities of niche, unique interests we are increasingly carving out new spaces to create a renewed sense of belonging and connection.
Time Escape
Beyond truth and acceptance, a world of uncertainty craves familiarity, control, reprieve, and well, pure fun. This trend territory highlights the power of nostalgia and escapism, while signaling a shift in perceived social norms and expectations.
AI, AR, and VR allow consumers to immerse themselves in uncharted moments from the past, while nostalgia continues to draw in jaded generations tired of an unpredictable and always-on world.
IRL Rebound
In contrast to prior decades, we’re using the real world to escape the internet. Tech makes connections “easy,” but also parasocial. IRL gatherings cater to all kinds of stable connections.
Dinner parties? Reinvented speed dating? Community is our essential human need for interaction. What’s old is new again, bu what’s human stays human.
Trust via Personal Experience
Truth is, people will always search for enduring truth, and what feels really real will shape how people experience, well, everything. There’s a lot of thought, but not a lot of leadership. Keep it with GPJ for more on how a world of new truths defines a world of new experiences. A special shout out to our strategists and trendspotters: Ian Bush, Josh Fischer, Britt Meyer, Donny Fox.
Catch up on all our previous Experience Intelligence reports, or schedule a strategy session with us.
