5 trends that will impact your brand in 2023

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Welcome to Season 2 of Branding for Impact Podcast! We’ve received such amazing feedback from our bite-sized branding and business tips and can’t wait to bring more helpful content to help you make an impact with your brand.

Aside from our quick 15 minute episodes, Season 2 will also be bring on guests from all walks of life and industries ranging from Wellness, to NGO, to Aromatherapy, to Hospitality to share their entrepreneurial journey and how their life experiences have crafted their unique perspectives on brand building.

2022 has been a year of realigning and reassessing our priorities. It’s an exciting time for brands to experiment with new ways of working, and new ways of interacting with consumers. In this episode, I’ll be covering 5 key trends we see that will impact your brand in 2023.

Reduce, recycle, reuse, repair

The past decade has been all the talks of reduce and recycle. The next few years will see us take that one step further to reuse and repair.

It’s encouraging to see brands challenge the throw-away culture and actively encourage repair.

Bottega Veneta now offers a new lifetime warranty program for unlimited free refreshes and repairs on its handbags.

The second-hand market is on the rise as the cost of living has gone up globally. On eBay, sales of “pre-loved” fashion and homewares shot up during 2021.

And more impressively, Selfridges took their mark as being the first luxury department store to pledge that 45% of transactions will come from circular products by 2030 in a bid to tackle textile waste. Project Earth by Selfridges includes five-year commitments, and builds on the steps the store has already taken over the last 10 years in terms of sustainability. A new “concierge” service will help organise product repairs, while clothing rental, a second-hand fashion shop and beauty packaging recycling will also uphold their new pledge.

Shopping Local

In-person meetings just don’t seem to be coming back as quickly as we expected. Companies around the world continue to allow employees the flexibility to work from home or even announced permanent hybrid working policies. Not only is working more from home better for our work-life balance, it’s also better for the environment. The daily commute to and from work accounts for more than 98% of an employee's work-related carbon footprint.

According to The Financial Times, the demand for workspaces outside city centres grew by over 30 per cent in 2022. Spending more time within your neighbourhood means there’s a shift from spending money in city centres to spending at your local shops. Vibrant local communities in suburbs and small villages will become celebrated and appreciated as people opt to spend more time locally.

Disconnect to reconnect

Have you had more moments in the past 2 years of wanting to go incognito? Yea, so have I. And apparently, a lot of us out there too.

Together with the pandemic, rising cost of living, energy crisis, geopolitical unrest and the climate crisis have all taken their toll on consumers and will continue to do so, causing fatigue and a sense of being overwhelmed.

As a result, consumers will try to cut through the noise and reconnect with what matters to them. Consumers will find meaning and comfort in disconnecting in order to reconnect with their surroundings, their communities and themselves.

We see immersive experiences such as digital detox retreats and festivals such as Wonderfruit and Burning Man become even higher in demand. It’s a chance for people to truly escape and give their overworked brains a break.

Rise of preventive care

The pandemic has made people more aware of the importance of health, and this is reflected in the boom of the preventive care category.

Health is the new luxury in China - The market for Health Supplements in China is clearly on the rise. In 2021 it’s estimated to be worth 271 billion RMB. That’s about 34 billion USD.

According to Chinese consulting firm Askci, the most common products are immunity boosting, accounting for 28.8% of total spend. Other common products are vitamins (14.9%) and anti-fatigue health food (12.9%).

The global changes in consumer behaviour regarding health and what it means on an individual level, means the Health and Wellness industry are getting more attention than ever.

The meditation app Headspace has been downloaded more than 60 million times and earned over 2 million paid subscribers as of 2020.

Our study from late 2020 also shows that health and wellness ranks higher in concern than Climate crisis and Plastic waste for Hong Kong consumers – something we’ll dig a bit deeper into for the final key trend on our list.

Me first, Sustainability second

This may be a controversial, and somewhat uncomfortable insight – but sustainability alone doesn’t sell. It’s not that people are suddenly less outraged by the degradation of our planet. It’s more a case of prioritization and mental bandwidth.

Between rising living costs, unemployment, political upheaval, is fatigue. To want to go out of our way to be sustainable is a conscious decision making process. One that requires us to educate ourselves of brands, and decide if they’re greenwashing or if they’re actually being truthful.

Our study shows that while 87% of consumers are more willing than ever to support sustainable brands, 3 out of 4 are still skeptical about them. We have to remember that getting someone to actively make a change in their purchasing habits is essentially behavioural change, which can’t happen overnight. There needs to be an even bigger draw to the product or service than sustainability alone to nudge them in the right direction and make small, incremental changes in their choices.

Our study shows that good design, durable quality, and convenience are at the top of consumers’ minds more often than sustainability.

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