25 Feb Coinsidence or trend?

LEGO will soon launch a figure in wheelchair and another one with a quide dog. Mattel launches a Barbie doll with natural curves. That the two companies launches diversity products at the same time is that a coinsidence or trend? It is something I will write about in this post.

It is a trend rather than coinsidence that many companies want more diversity in their products. The trend has been on its way for a while.

If we start with the fashion industry there has been a trend over the last 5 years with more focus on diversity and realistic ads showing models with natural curves.

Dove was one of the pioneers and the latest number of Sports Illustrated is the newest example on the use of older models with natural curves.

Diversity does not only cover the look but also gender, age, race and disability.

In context to this post I have talked to Louise Byg Kongsholm, CEO and Trends forecaster at Pej Gruppen. She comes with the following statement:

”Few years ago I experienced that my child at 2 should have glasses. But very few dolls had glasses and trying to give her a more realistic picture and something she could relate to, I came across barnmedbriller.dk and found Rubens dolls (which also has a more realistic body shape) with glasses”.

Companies gets their inspiration from trend spotters like Louise, competitors, Google Trends, focus groups with clients and blog network composed by the respective companies. The blog network gives them the possibility to find out what their target group post without interfering.

Reputation and monitoring software as Google Alert and overskrift.dk delivers e-mails to your inbox daily with articles related to keywords you find interesting. It is another way to find trends.

So when LEGO and Mattel want more diversity in their products it is a trend. Louise Byg Kongsholm do not think this will be a flash in the pan.