A trend is not a forecast
By Gail Macleod ·
Chengdu and São Paulo, 2016: talks on Black Technology and consumer insights, six years before ChatGPT. Spot the pattern, then govern for it.
The signal
In March 2016 the Global Local Branding Alliance met in China. Brazil's Portal da Propaganda previewed it: the alliance's biennial meeting in China, followed by a packaging forum at the China Food and Drink Fair. Flamesun's founder said the meeting would present the main packaging design trends for 2016, naming humanisation and interactivity. I spoke at the Chengdu conference on Black Technology.
In September 2016 the alliance held its Global Design Trends and Consumer Insights conference in São Paulo, listed by Propmark via partner A10. I gave a keynote. ChatGPT launched in November 2022, six years later.
Public sources cover both events but don't publish the talk lists, so the speaker lines here come from my own records.
The so-what
Trend work gets sold as prediction. It isn't. So What Law: a trend tells you where pressure is building, and a forecast claims to know when and how it lands. The first is useful and honest. The second is usually a confident sentence with no source.
Fluency makes this worse. Generative AI will write a persuasive trend report on anything, and fluency is not authority. The report reads equally well whether anyone checked it.
The distinction
I don't have a public write-up of the 2016 talk itself. The nearest public record is the same topic in Shanghai in 2018, where Bizcommunity reports that I presented on Black Technology: millennials, digital natives, and how brands keep up with them. I am quoted saying that the line between content and advertising is increasingly blurred, so packaging design has become "an exceedingly powerful approach to put your product out there". That is a direction, not a date, and it was checkable against what consumers did next.
Consumer insight works the same way. Someone has to be in the market, watching real behaviour, and willing to be wrong in public. An AI summary of trends can't do that on its own.
The move
Take the last trend report you relied on. For each claim, write down who observed it, where, and when. Keep the claims that survive. Reframe the rest as questions, not forecasts. Then run the same test on anything an AI assistant tells you about your sector. A pattern with a source is a trend. A pattern without one is a guess with good grammar. Say it out loud: "A trend is not a forecast."
Quick answers
What was Black Technology? It was the topic I spoke on at the GLBA conference in Chengdu in March 2016. The public write-up of the same topic is the 2018 Shanghai report, linked above.
What was the São Paulo conference? The GLBA's Global Design Trends and Consumer Insights conference in September 2016, where I gave a keynote.
How is a trend different from a forecast? A trend is an observed pattern with a source. A forecast claims a date and an outcome. Treat AI-written trend summaries as the second until you have checked the first.
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FAQ
- What was Black Technology?
- It was the topic Gail Macleod spoke on at the GLBA conference in Chengdu in March 2016. The public write-up of the same topic is the 2018 Shanghai report on Bizcommunity.
- What was the São Paulo conference?
- The GLBA's Global Design Trends and Consumer Insights conference in September 2016, where Gail gave a keynote.
- How is a trend different from a forecast?
- A trend is an observed pattern with a source. A forecast claims a date and an outcome. Treat AI-written trend summaries as the second until you have checked the first.