making the future human #10 - october 2024

october 2024 at dcdx

edition #10 tl;dr - speaking, sxsw, bon appetite, top 25, and trend tragedies

Welcome to the 265 new members since September! this is our monthly recap where we give you a look inside the happenings of dcdx from our founder, Andrew. enjoy!

reflections on october ‘24

Through October, we’ve been talking more as a team about the shift away from trend culture that we’re observing in both the audiences we’re studying and the teams we’re advising. It seems like the collective fatigue with constant cultural change has finally set in, with next week’s election certainly contributing to much of the overwhelm.

And yet because of that fatigue, I think this is a particularly exciting time in culture. There’s a shared hunger for more meaningful relationships - not just with the brands we buy from, but with our own peers, as well.

And so, despite the dread that lurks ahead of next week, I feel surprisingly…optimistic about the state of culture. Optimistic that coming out of this year, we’ll have collectively rounded an important corner, moving away from the purely transactional, me-first mindsets, and towards deliberate decision-making that reminds us all of the power we hold through our daily choices.

speaking of 🎤

I was invited by the lovely folks at INMA to speak at a lunch in LA last week to talk about the future of journalism for Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

Journalism is in a very tenuous position right now. Bezos’ recent lack of endorsement and the subsequent Post cancellations, CNN’s new subscription model, and most importantly, young people now getting their news from so many sources other than these outlets directly…certainly not a boring space.

A convo that followed many different paths, I spoke mainly on the landscape of trust. Amidst subscription fatigue, information overload, and the decentralization of news, I challenged leaders of these outlets to think about their product beyond just news, but as an experience, finding other ways to build trust through off-platform interactions.

more exciting speaking news!

I’ll be speaking at SXSW this March 2025 in Austin for what SXSW has spotlighted as a featured session: Gen Z vs the Gerontocracy: Reclaiming America’s Future. Should be a wonderful session led by the team at Made By Us.

Never has there been a more important time for young people to make their voices heard. The question we tackle thus becomes - how do we convince our leaders to pass the torch to younger generations, to preserve their legacies and the future of our country?

If you plan on attending in March, give me a shout. Would love to see you. Fun fact, I lived in Austin for 6 months last year. Unfortunately, this northern Ohio kid was not made for the 100+ degree summer days, but I have lots of love for the city. Also if you have not had the breakfast tacos from Veracruz, it is worth the cost of the flight down.

dcdx in the news

When Coke and Oreo referred to themselves as ‘besties,’ was it ‘cool’ or ‘cringe’? (Retail Brew)

A fun one from our bestie - I mean friend - Andy at Morning Brew, coming off of the success of our Brand Soup piece.

Should brands fear the ‘underconsumption core’ trend, or lean into it? (Retail Brew) Another one from the Morning Brew crew, looking at underconsumption and the role that brands can - or maybe should not - play in the “trend”.

How Bars Are Adapting to Gen Z, the Homebody Generation (Bon Appétit)

I have a faint memory of a doctor’s office visit when I was a kid, waiting for the doc to call me in and finding a Bon Appétit magazine on the table in front of me, wondering why some french cooking magazine was in my doctor’s office. Well, little Andrew, maybe you should not judge a magazine by its cover! Fun to work with Kate from Sightlines on this piece, and shoutout to our Director of Strategy, Mara, for the wise words in here too!

Four-day workweeks gain steam as companies promote wellness (Triangle Business Journal)

Great in-depth piece on our 4-day workweek, why we chose to experiment with a Monday off instead of a Friday, and what results we saw this summer.

upcoming releases 🧪

In 2 weeks we’ll be releasing our third annual Gen Z’s Top 25 Most Magnetic Brands report, a ranking of the 25 brands dominating organic online conversations in 2024. This is the most thorough, and IMO the most insightful version of this report we’ve ever released. Some major shockers in there, and some not-so-surprising results. Last year, McDonald’s took the #1 spot.

Sneak peak: bigggg year for chicken. and fandom webs. not so big year for just doing it.

The Trend Tragedy of the Commons

We did a post-mortem analysis of demure to understand when agencies say they “move at the speed of culture”…how fast is that? Through a poll of 1,000 Gen Z’ers, and analyzing 5k+ posts on TikTok, we found a deeper issue:

“Brands collectively exhaust the brief windows in which trends could take root, and end up diluting and depleting the very cultural richness they aim to exploit.”