Outside Perspective Y25W48 - It's trendmaaaaaasssss.
Amy Daroukakis on trends, Amy McNichol on things she's thought a lot about, and Laura Gran on the marketing foundations for curly-hair.
⭐️ ⭐️ GET INVOLVED: “2025 was the year that …” ⭐️⭐️
I’m collecting a series of reflections on 2025 from us independent strategy folk. If you’re keen to share a short paragraph on the past 12 months, hit reply. We’ll be featuring a few over the last month of the year.
“A Strategist’s Christmas” - Amy Daroukakis on trends.
It’s that time of year where hundreds of trends documents drop - some might call it A Strategists’ Christmas, others might wonder the ongoing relevance of such documents. Amy Daroukakis, and a team of fellow humans, each year wade through and curate a collection of documents - and here asks, do we still need them?
Every year, right when you’re dreaming of doing nothing, the trend reports start landing. We stuff a 135+ Trend Report stocking so you don’t have to.
You might not need them now. But during that March pitch, you’ll want a stat or signal to shape your story.
For the last six years, Iolanda Carvalho [Portugal], Ci En Lee [Singapore], Gonzalo Gregori [China] and myself, Amy Daroukakis [Everywhere], we start months ahead and pack a shared Google folder with reports from brands and agencies. Paywall-free. Always and only.
Our Shared Ethos is Simple - community learning should be open-sourced. Systems that make sense should be shared, and not every team or solo brain dancer has access to agency [paid] resources.
We don’t password-protect. We don’t ask you to comment for access in order to chase virality. And yes, it has attracted Pirates. We’ve seen questionable behaviour. Six years in, none of it surprises us.
In January, someone told me, “I’ve been feeling really guilty. I created an AI Amy trained on your data”, a mix of LinkedIn content and the folders. Another former client replaced me on annual work I won for them, using the folder as their toolkit. “We wait every year for it before we start.”
We still do it anyway.
We’ve heard AMAZING stories of small agencies being found for work because of their standout report, teams sharing knowledge across governments, NGO’s, brands and businesses [an estimated 45,000 accessed over 2025].
We’ve experimented in public with AI x trend reports, running community learning sessions as we ride this wave together. Hundreds have shown up.
Why? Because in an industry that often lacks morals, co-creation spaces and work opportunities in 2025, we believe in learning out loud.
The reports themselves come with a warning. We are still too Global North in perspective.
Ninety percent of trend reports come from just ten cities.
Human voices matter.
Data is missing.
Many reports are written to dazzle [our own echo chambers].
And as for trends? Do we still need them?
That debate has followed me for two decades. Spoiler: yes.
BUT: We don’t need solo oracles on stages. We need symphonies. That’s why our data sources are broad and our network diverse, and I spent an entire year highlighting the magic of Global varied voices via the Culture Connectors.
My nudge…think of this folder as PART of your curiosity toolset.
And if you upload it to an LLM and create your own “AI Amy” and choose to view the world only through that lens, go for it [TL;DR: I don’t get hired for my data, I get hired because I ask my clients how their divorce is going].
But know this: you’ll only be reading one chapter of a very big book.
The best insights STILL live in the world outside; they live at the barber shop, the bus conversation you overhear, and the community gathering you build or support.
℅ 4 Humans: Iolanda, Amy, Ci En and Gonzalo
» Access the curated collection of trends documents at https://bit.ly/2026trending
I Thought About That A Lot - Amy McNichol on curating 24 essays.
If 100+ trends decks are not what you’re looking forward to opening each day throughout the festive season - perhaps take a look at I Thought About That A Lot - an advent calendar for your brain not your belly. I spoke to Amy McNichol, creator and curator of the project, which will start dropping essays from Monday, December 1.
Amy, tell us about the project - when did it start, and what prompted the concept?
The idea came when we first locked down in 2020. Nobody was able to do much so we were all thinking a lot. People seemed exhausted by it. As someone who helps organisations and governments articulate stuff for a living, I wondered if I could help people empty their minds onto a page, untangle the mess, and arrange it into 800 intelligible words that we could share on the internet. I wondered if these essays could create connections during that weird year of isolation.
In 2020, all the contributors were people I knew. Six years on and that’s certainly not the case. We’ve had contributors based in the US, UAE, a nomad somewhere in South America, Sweden, India, Canada and New Zealand, maybe more places. As far as I know, the oldest contributor has been 74. The youngest is 22 – I know that because his age features in his essay about hair loss and masculinity this year.
ITATAL has grown significantly each year in terms of page views, subscribers, people engaging and also the number of people wanting to contribute an essay. We have a small team of empathetic and brilliant editors now too who work with contributors (most of whom aren’t professional writers – they are just people who think about stuff). Jo, Rosemary, Nia, Nadia and Rod make sure each essay gets the attention it deserves. Jack is the anchor for the website and much more. And to celebrate our 5th year, we published a book last year. It’s illustrated beautifully by Ralph. There are a few left if you fancy one.
How have you seen the themes and thoughts change over the past five years?
Funnily enough, in the most part the themes have been the same: society, resilience, acceptance and joy.
But, in 2020 during the pandemic, the essays were a mix of seeking calm (stuff like silence, forest bathing, and balance) and people turning to escapism (for example pretend fighting, fake injuries and made-up champions and ‘old people’ food). There also seemed to be a realisation about the importance of community and “Dave-who-knows-what-he’s-doing” on the community radio station and neighbourly love in how humans have responded to fear with kindness.
I guess the overriding theme of both the essays, and the project itself though is connection. In the essays, the contributors talk about meaningful (but not always healthy) relationships with family, friends, pets, places, society, even strangers. But the project was always all about connection. It could be one-way when a reader recognises part of themselves in the essay. For example, after reading about someone’s ADHD diagnosis, I know that 3 Millennial women pursued their own. Or it could be a two-way connection. After reading an essay by a mother who wrote to her daughters about her awakening, someone asked me if they could be put in touch because they were experiencing a similar thing.
What two or three essays have really stood out to you over the years, and why?
There have been so many good ones!
Last year, a secondary school teacher wrote about Boys who hate women. He noticed the boys in his class were using expressions such as ‘alpha’, ‘simp’, ‘sigma’ and ‘lone wolf’ – all part of the language incels use about themselves and other misogynists. We published the essay in December 2024, and a month after the US chose to make a sexual predator the most powerful man in the world. Fast-forward to March, and Adolescence – in which a 13-year-old boy kills his female classmate when she hurts his feelings – came out on Netflix. It is an essay properly rooted in that time.
Markers in time and space is so full of gratitude it made me sob while editing it. This one is by a 68-year-old chap who is incredulous at their insignificance in the vastness of the universe, and just thrilled to pieces with how lucky he is. It’s got a touch of the Mighty Boosh and a whiff of the wacky backy about it but it’s just lovely.
In 2023, a 42-year-old woman wondered whether she’ll ever have sex again. She begins with the best opening line we’ve had: “It’s been 4 years, 3 months and 11 days since I did some squat thrusts in the cucumber patch.” The bawdy innuendos throughout made it the perfect essay to share on Christmas eve.
It feels like your project is a lovely anthesis to doomscrolling and a 3 second attention span - is this deeper level of reflection an important practice for you?
I love the idea of preserving a very specific time and place. As a tween and teen, I was obsessed with magazines and how they were like time capsules for a narrow slice of about 2 weeks. Trends faded in, faded out and overlapped, and the fortnight that was reflected in those magazines was completely unique and the peak trends would never coincide again. You know, that TV show starts today, that banger is at number 1, they’re doing those plastic bangles fluro glitter now and at the moment the hot playground currency is whatever sporting event. That’s what I’m trying to emulate with the essays – just with a wider scope of a year.
» Subscribe to get an essay a day here, or browse the previous essays on the I Thought A Lot About That website.
Meet a Member: Laura Gran
Hi, I’m Laura - I’m Spanish by birth, British by passport, and a curious soul and writer by nature. I have a background in marketing and communications, with years of experience working with brands and professionals across different sectors and countries. Today, my work lives at the intersection of strategy, visibility, and purpose.
I now support professionals in the wellness, coaching, and spiritual spaces to build strong marketing foundations with confidence - through clarity of positioning, aligned messaging, and a solid content strategy. From there, we work on visibility, showing up on camera, and attracting aligned clients from a place of truth and service. And yes, along the way, I also help dismantle a few limiting beliefs about marketing.
A piece of work I’m proud of
One piece of work I’m especially proud of was establishing the marketing foundations for the very first curly-hair-focused salon in Spain, the one that helped spark what later became the curly-hair boom across the country. I joined them at a pivotal moment, just before the launch of their own product line, the opening of a new flagship salon, the rollout of B2B and B2C education programs, and their eventual expansion into Europe and South America. Looking back, it’s incredibly rewarding to see how we built a solid, coherent brand from the ground up, which has since grown exponentially in products and clients and has become a true reference point in the sector.
My outside perspective
Many people say marketing is saturated and “too hard” right now. It might be. But I’ve come to believe there’s still enormous opportunity for those willing to truly stand behind their value, and to strengthen it by developing what they know they still need to learn. What I think is actually unbearable is hiding.
Recently, a potential client who initially told me she could only invest £350 a month chose to commit to a £2,500 programme instead, not because her income had changed, but because she believed in the transformation she could achieve through the work with me. That experience reflected something back to me very clearly: before anyone else can buy into your work, you have to buy into yourself. You have to be willing to claim what makes you different, even when that visibility feels uncomfortable. The moment my answer to that became a true yes, things began to shift, externally but first internally.
Three things I’m consuming right now
Read: Fuck being humble. Why self promotion isn’t a dirty word, by Stefanie Sword-Williams.
Listen: The Jamie Sea Show
Learn: Matt Elwell, his YouTube videos and book: Open with a Close.
» You can connect with Laura on LinkedIn, or in the community.
Featured Gig
⭐️⭐️ Are you a strategist based in PL, CZ or RO? The team at Asahi are looking for a strategist for a culture project around gaming. Find out more here. ⭐️⭐️
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That’s all for this week.
mk✌️