Will the robots take over? How will brands tackle sustainability and what will become our favourite tipple in 2024? Here’s three trends WGSN is forecasting for the year ahead...
AI co-creation
“We predicted the rise of AI in 2015 as being the next major tech leap and now we’re seeing it advance at pace. There’s plenty of complexities and red flags, but because it’s our job to show positive ways forward, we’re seeing AI as a tool. It’s used by people to invent new systems fixes that are outdated, solve critical problems and be creative. So I see it as a tool for expanding human creativity and taking ideas from promise to prototype in record time.”
- Lisa White, Director of Strategic Forecasting & Creative Direction, WGSN
The multi-species home
“Nose Print is a nose pet tracking app for your cat and your dog. So effectively it gets rid of those pesky tags and microchips. You swipe your kitty’s – or in my case Penelope’s nose – it registers the animal and then through a smart camera, if they ever get lost that’s how they identify it. Effectively what nose app tracking does is say we want a world without lost abandoned or stolen pets. It really shows you again how much pets and multi-species living is a part of our daily lives.”
- Andrea Bell, VP of Consumer Insights, WGSN
Backyard beauty
"Backyard beauty is looking at dirt as a resource and dirt is our saving grace. It's not something to be shunned. We've heard about it in fashion and food with the whole idea of regenerative design, particularly with sustainable beauty brands, but we're going to be caring for the soil just as we would the skin. The Earth is a giant epidermis.”
“It's all about treatments. It's about aerating the soil, using soil stages, like microbes and insects and worms. Soil is also going to be a key beauty ingredient as it's something that's considered nutritive and not dirty beyond any type of mud bath or mud mask you can put on. What's really important here is it's really about regenerative farming and giving back to the soil rather than taking away."
- Lisa White, Director of Strategic Forecasting & Creative Direction, WGSN
Tune in and join Carla Buzasi, CEO of WGSN and the host of this end-of-the-year episode with her fellow WGSN guests Andrea Bell, VP of Consumer Insights, and Lisa White, Director of Strategic Forecasting & Creative Direction. And if you’re listening to this from the comfort of a heated blanket on your chair, find out how we called it in 2022.
Head to Apple or Spotify to hear the full discussion on our Lives of Tomorrow podcast episode, Top Trends for 2024 – From the Multi-Species Home to Meals as Drinks.