Moving at the speed of innovation

The FreemanXP Trend Lab is an innovation incubator that examines trends, creates ideas and contributes to a better tomorrow. It also acts as a marketing program and tool kit that enables conversations with clients around the very trends that will impact their future and can help drive their business.

By pairing the two (the "trends" and the "lab"), we are able to both show our awareness of market trends driving change and how clients must re-engineer their brand experiences as a result.

The incubator format encourages clients to share key challenges they face, then our lab specialists match those challenges to trends that we see in the market today and make recommendations how they can use these to their fullest advantage.

There are many agencies that broadcast and identify trends, however we found that there was a desperate need to make the link on how all of these wonderful trends actually made a difference to our clients (and future clients). By focusing on their business needs we were able to apply trends that were actually relevant to the changing times and challenges they faced. It gave the trends instant relevance and grounded them in the client's world.

Brands have realized that brand experience is a critical part of their overall marketing campaigns driving brand affinity, loyalty and advocacy. Brands know that that creating positive brand experiences both live and online creates significant earned media through digital, social and word of mouth communications. The Trend Lab is a place designed to address these challenges and more.

Furthermore, the trends have been manifested into artifacts we call Trend Cubes. We found by creating physical objects people felt more connected when discussing and exploring the trends. Tangible props create a fun and lively atmosphere. We also have trend cards, a roll of butchers paper and colored markers for everyone to illustrate ideas, thoughts and actions.

The Trend Lab has been designed to give prospective clients a glimpse into the way the FreemanXP agency thinks and applies new trends to their particular business challenges. The user-experience embodies our philosophy of creating an immersive storyworld that showcases our methodology though engaging interactions and hands-on activities.

The below video explains the Trend Lab further.

The below video at the Design 100 Awards takes a deeper dive into understanding the Trend Lab and its mission.