If you’ve been lucky (or, as some might see it, unlucky) enough to be invited to a Halloween party this week, you’re probably debating what to dress up as. This is no trivial matter – this year, us Brits are expected to spend over £320 million on the occasion, an amount which has been rising over the years – a truly scary (sorry) fact. As excitement around Halloween builds year on year, so does the pressure to impress with the best, most ingenious costume. But clearly, we’ve been embracing the challenge. Over the past four years, there has been a 17.2% increase in Google searches for Halloween costumes in the UK, showing that more and more people are turning to the internet, and especially social media, to find the perfect Halloween costume which will get the most attention. Last year, Halloween costumes were mentioned 69,519 times in October alone on Twitter, and 49% of these posts were retweets. Sentiment in these posts is predominantly positive, with users sharing their favourite outfit ideas as opposed to ones they didn’t rate. So, if you’re looking for the costume that will get you most talked about on social, what should you go for? We chose to let social data make the decisions for us… First of all, we looked at the more conventional Halloween outfits to see which one was most popular during October 2016. Cats, vampires and ghosts were reliable favourites, receiving the largest amount of mentions out of our selection. Mummies and zombies were less popular, but still made up a significant portion of the conversation. Taking into account the percentage of mentions which included retweets, we were able to rate these costumes as follows:CostumeNo. Twitter mentionsNo. retweets% of mentions which were retweetsGhost41618144%Vampire40115238%Cat51917333%Witch50116232%Zombie39711529%Mummy571119% So, even though cat costumes got the most mentions on Twitter, the percentage of these which were retweets was actually not that high, so we wouldn’t recommend drawing a pair of whiskers on your face if you want to become an overnight trending sensation. Ghost costumes were the most successful choice – although only the third most talked about costume, clearly one which impressed users the most. Conveniently this is also the laziest Halloween option, provided you have a white sheet and some scissors (although this is probably on the less impressive end of the scale). Pop culture also played a part in the Halloween costume conversation last year. Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Theresa May costumes got 109 mentions between them (and significantly more for the former two in America), with a retweet percentage of 40%. There might not have been many who braved an orange spray tan or put on some jazzy kitten heels, but those who did reaped the benefits on social. Suicide Squad character Harley Quinn was also a big hit, with 104 costume mentions, 12% of these being retweets. There was, however, a clear winner in our quest to find the most talked about Halloween costume. With a retweet percentage of 65% within its mentions, you’re most likely to get talked about on social if you don a pair of 80’s sneakers or wrap yourself in Christmas lights and head to a party dressed as a character from Stranger Things. When you look at the data, this isn’t surprising. Since the release of the first series on Netflix last year, Google searches on the cult TV show have rocketed, and in the month leading up to the release of the second series this month, have increased by 444%. It’s received over 2.7m mentions on Twitter and Instagram worldwide, and almost five million people active on Facebook each month have some form of connection to the show, either through post likes, comments or shares. So there you have it. If you want to stand out on social media and get people talking this Halloween, you might need to dig out those Christmas lights a couple of months early…

I recently got to implement all my hard-won knowledge from having one child, by spawning another. Hurrah! Now, this post won’t go into raptures about how exceptional she is (take it as read), but a key part of the anxiety around a newborn baby is the lack of certainty over what they’re doing. You lack the feedback older infants give you, and yet you’re very keen they feed, sleep etc ‘normally’. This is, in fact, an area one can automate. With both children, we’ve used this app . I can’t claim to have done extensive market analysis to ensure it’s the best, but with a 4.8 star review, it would appear to confirm my subjective opinion as “very good” (I’m not planning on creating an app review blog anytime soon). Essentially you can track every facet of an infant’s life: feed lengths, nappies, sleep… You can then work out averages, see patterns through charts, and also get prompts as to when one might typically expect a baby to feed next. Key benefits are a certainty. The continual ‘churn’ of caring for an infant means one loses objectivity. Have they really not slept for longer than an hour for days, or does it just feel like it? It helps in the interactions with the healthcare professionals and allows for objective measurement of the developmental stages. On a practical level – you always have your phone with you, meaning info is easy to capture (WhatsApp and Instagram being the nursing mother’s salvation). How does this play out in practice? Well, I can tell you that my daughter has averaged 8 nappies, 5 bowel ‘events’ and 12 feeds a day, and is tracking the 70th percentile for growth… What’s that, enough data already?   #automation #2017trends #baby #October #socialmediatrends

After my initial enthusiasm and all the benefits I gained from using Swiftkey or IFTTT (read my first blog post here), I must conclude that not every robot works to make my life easier. Two weeks into the ‘automating my life’ experiment I’d describe my experience as follows: I love the work productivity hacks and my new automated workout or dietary plan, but it is also quite annoying when your phone notifications just tripled, your Facebook messenger talks to you 5 times a day, or your Google Drive just crashed because every e-mail attachment got saved in the past 10 days…  And yeah… there’s also those everyday whims, which sometimes just aren’t to eat peanut butter with celery because the app told me to. But let’s start with a few follow-ups from last week: Quick update on my Swiftkey progress.  typos on my phone (~800 per week) aren’t getting any less, but I got much more productive and the robot much better in predicting my words: 14% more productive (last week I was on 12%), 54% more strokes saved, and 52% more words predicted than in week 1. Just two more amazing IFTTT hacks I learned about this week: Useful one (doesn’t matter if you’re a to-do list person or not) when having the pleasure of managing projects… Put all your completed Todoist tasks in a Google Spreadsheet. Becoming a little bigger on Twitter and want to personalise a message to your new followers? Just activate the applet that posts a “thank you” tweet back, when someone mentions me on twitter. As mentioned in last week’s blog, this week I focused on sport and food: I’d describe myself as a regular gym-goer, mainly classes, a bit of freestyle in the gym area, and, if I really feel it, an occasional run along Regent’s Canal before work. But let’s be honest, I don’t really have a PT-like, proper workout plan. My strategy involves watching other people during my warm-up and basically copying what they do. Luckily, I now found a robot to help me stop being a creepy spy in the gym: The Nike Training Club. The profile is super easy to set up and I even found some old friends from uni who I can compete with again now. I just had to select my fitness goal (Lean Fit Benchmark) and off we go… A 6-week based workout with 3 workout picks for me to choose from every week (you can easily change the session based on a library of 160 workouts, but then there’s a real time-saving benefit in letting the algorithm decide this for me). Week 1 recap is: 3 completed workouts, 180 minutes of being less creepy, 440 calories burned, and a reminder notification not to forget my session today. The only thing I still need to learn is how to take better gym selfies with my newly earned Nike filters… Great benefits in automating my physical activity, but I am not so convinced about automating my food choices. I signed up for Eat This Much and a friend suggested to try Lysa, my personal nutrition assistant – a Facebook chatbot (currently in beta phase). With Lysa I just type what I ate into Facebook messenger and it logs it automatically for me. There are about 500 questions the chatbot has already learned to answer. I like the idea of the chatbot as it feel quite natural to use Fb messenger, but it’s quite a basic log at the moment rather than a nutrition assistant yet (which is due to the beta test phase so we’ll keep you updated on further progress). Eat This Much is quite easy to use and, based on the calorie intake I select, it generates 3-9  meals/recipes per day. If you don’t like a meal you can just hit the refresh button and it suggests something else. I am quite happy with the food suggestions most days, only sometimes it suggests i have peanut butter with celery?? What I am struggling more with is when you just feel like eating pizza or meeting friends at a restaurant. Besides me being obsessed with supermarkets, loving to pick random food items as I stroll through the aisles, and trying new recipes all the time, my food is a very personal decision that I love to think about every day and it just feels a little less tasty when I don’t have the power to decide on it anymore. Maybe it’s the diet curse, but maybe it’s also the crux of automating human preferences. I care a lot about my food and having done a lot of reading into the food tech/automation scene, I just think it’s not quite there yet, but a lot to watch out for. Lastly, as I said in the beginning not everything in automating your life really works the way I was hoping for. Probably the two things I struggled most with are information overflow and my daily habits. Actually, there’s a considerable number of times my phone, slack or any of the new apps send me notifications and require me to stop, read, process, act. Surely, I could switch off some notifications, but then what’s the point of having, for instance, a weather reminder? This one is actually a good example. My London weather reminder kicks in every night before I go to bed. So far so good, but then I also start thinking about what to wear, whether to take the tube or still cycle and so on. Not that useful when you’re trying to fall asleep… Most of the apps and functionalities need tweaking and quite some time to get used to. Rather than saving down every file that comes into my inbox, I changed this to certain senders only; or instead of deleting every word that the new keyboard autocorrects, I now trained my thumb and eye to use more of the word predictions. Overall, I’d say once you invest the time there are some really cool automation hacks out there, but it’s also not always an instant fix to productivity. What I’ll do next is looking a bit more into chatbots (as Lysa fascinates me) and the science of personalised recommendations, like Nike’s ‘Picks for you’, Netflix’s suggested movies, or Spotify’s Discovery. And we also have Alex supporting me in automating his daddy life… #2017trends #automation #October #trends

I’m at the end of the first week of letting ‘robots’ making my daily choices. The perfect moment to share my first experiences with you! To be honest, Day 1 involved a lot of downloading and understanding how these services work. Less optimal for my mobile storage, but an interesting lesson in finding out a bit more about yourself. First was setting up my accounts and identifying preferences to get the algorithm started. Everything from my fitness goals on the Nike Training Club app , to what diet I’m following to generate daily recipes on Eat This Much . I’ve also looked at how to automate the little tasks or habits in life that I tend to avoid, forget, waste time on, or I can be too lazy to do… Great news – I’ve got a computer to do them for me! Two services that stood out in making my life a little easier this week: Swiftkey and IFTTT. I’ve been really impressed at how quickly Swiftkey learned the way I use different languages (I’m German – or Bavarian if you really want to get it right!) or move my fingers across the keyboard. Have a look at the image on the right to see how the computer has changed my Tap Map. Basically, it’s adjusted the keyboard to my own use of it. Amazing. According to my personal Swiftkey stats I am (already) 12% more productive – awesome! I needed 1,268 taps less on the keyboard and (let’s hope the bosses aren’t reading…!) the automated keyboard corrected 1,096 of my typos. Swiftkey also predicted 27 of my next words. But I reckon this number will go up significantly the more accustomed I become to it. An extremely useful feature is that – depending on who I message in WhatsApp – I don’t have to switch between English and German keyboards anymore. However, I actually expected the computer to learn about my use of slang and abbreviations much faster. This is where the auto-correction takes over, distorting my meaning and resulting in some very funny, but not very coherent messages… My favourite auto-correction by far occurred when my flatmate oversalted our dinner and I messaged my friend about it: “Heute gab’s Megapixel salzige Suppe” – today we had megapixel salty soup (rather than really, which is mega in German) salty soup. The other one I absolutely recommend trying is: IFTTT . For those who haven’t heard about it, IFTTT basically allows you to connect any two services or apps with an IF … THEN connection. Let’s say it’s raining in my location tomorrow… IF the Weather App predicts rain tomorrow, THEN send me a notification on my mobile to “take my umbrella with me”. Very useful for all those who live here in London!! Or, let’s say I am a person who is quite likely to forget to save down email attachments. Easy one to fix: IF someone sends me a Gmail with attachment, THEN save it onto my GDrive. 39 documents have already been prevented from getting lost in the past 7 days! And my all-time favourite travel hacks: IF I am at the airport (map), THEN send a message to my mum with my flight details (Gmail) – and she never has to worry anymore whether I have landed safely or not. IF I arrive in Krakow (map), THEN send myself a map of the city area (Gmail) – worked perfectly when I was there last weekend and saved us a lot of time in finding the right bar for Friday night 😉 IF my friend James tags me on Instagram, THEN save the picture (GDrive) – helpful one to ask him to remove it and save the world from my less appealing party pics. IF I add an image to the “receipt” folder, THEN save it onto my GDrive – sorry OneFifty, I’ll never forget those business trips expenses again… Here’s an example of how simple it is to set up: As I said in the beginning, learning a bit more about your life before automating it was a very interesting process and – let’s face it – we all have those little tasks or things in life that we are likely to forget, waste time on or simply too lazy for, but what do we really do about them? After just one week I found that automation had a huge impact. I highly recommend trying it out! My big focus for week 2 will be food and sport. Let me know any suggestions!

Every month this year, we’re living a different trend , identifiable through social. But you know that…  This month, we’re tackling one of the most interesting, broadest, and longest term trends: automating your life. What do we mean by this? The trend is services which either do things for you, or tell you what to do, based on your data and lifestyle. Why do people want this? It simplifies things, allowing their needs to be better met, and their time to be used more efficiently. When you consider that an adult makes about 35,000 decisions a day (226 on food alone!), you can see both the appeal, but also the market opportunity. What are examples of these services? Well, Spotify’s recommendations can improve the quality of your listening (largely), for no effort. Amazon’s Alexa means you don’t even have to lift a finger to order a pizza. Strava optimises your exercise, for nothing more than taking your phone on a run. A, I (Anne-Catherine) am going to let automation improve my October. This will broadly fall into the following areas: Work Entertainment Travel Wellbeing (exercise, health, food) If you’ve got suggestions of how I should do this, let me know. Here’s my starting point: Work At OneFifty we already use Slack and Todoist to increase our efficiency levels, so to add to this… Boomerang , for Gmail. Swiftkey , when typing on my phone. IFTTT Todoist / Slack integrations Entertainment Only listen to Spotify’s recommendations – no proactive suggestions, for whole month… Clothes We can’t find any good recommendations beyond wearing the same thing every day, a la Mark Zuckerberg. Thoughts? Travel Let CityMapper decide every route for a month Wellbeing Use  Eat This Much  – an automatic meal planner for my food preferences, budget, and schedule. Based on my goals and activity level, use daily workout recommendations from Nike+ Training Club . As a sense of scale, let’s examine why automation is growing on social at the moment: A minimum of 26 million people rely on their smartphones to keep themselves organised (we added up “installs” from the Top 5 todo apps with a 4+ star rating on the GooglePlay store to gather this information). In the context of increasing personal productivity and efficiency levels, relevant automation services such as IFTTT, Fitbit, Siri and Alexa have been mentioned about 15,000 times since the beginning of 2017 in the UK. The past quarter has seen a 22% increase in social mentions compared to last year’s quarter. Facebook VP David Marcus announced during this April’s Facebook F8 conference that ‘there are more than 100,000 bots available on Facebook Messenger today’. That’s up from 33,000 last September (2016). We’ll be updating you on progress… and I look forward to your suggestions on more automations! #automation #september

Ah September. You bring stormy weather (thunder and lightning occur most frequently in the 9th month of the year), spiders and that tingly back to school feeling. What is it about this time of year that gets us reaching for the reset button? I didn’t schedule the start of my new job at OneFifty with our blog themes in mind, but it does seem like a funny coincidence I’ve decided to leap into a fresh new environment in September.   Or is it? After a huge spike the week following New Year, the next most popular time to look for a new role is in late May, early June. Given it takes an average of 3 to 4 months to interview and secure a new role, those in that spike stand a good chance of walking to their first day sometime in September. Is too much of a stretch to think visualising a new start in September could be a common impetus behind a job hunt in June? For so many reasons, this month feels like just the right time to sink our teeth into a new challenge, perhaps something the start of the new academic year has ingrained into us over the years. We’ve had the whole of summer to gradually unwind and regroup, so we feel capable and determined to push ourselves towards a few more targets before the end of the year. This month is the start of the farming calendar when new tenancies traditionally begin and those working on the land begin to sow new seeds after harvest. Even though most of us no longer have any link to agriculture, this rhythm, as old as the hills, might still be influencing the way look at September. Keen to know more about what a new start at OneFifty involves? I’m reliably informed there’s a whole interview with me coming soon, so consider this a teaser… #trend #consumertrends #september #reset #socialtrends

As part of September’s ‘life reset’ , the trend OneFifty is living this month, we’ve identified four ways in which people reset: renewing, restarting, upgrading, and starting something new. Four noble members of the team have each taken up one of these challenges. Katie’s challenge is to start something new, and for this we’ve decided to let social data determine her new hobby. To find out exactly what hobby Katie should take up, we first turned to Facebook Audience Insights, which would be able to give us the key demographic stats on a variety of different interests and hobbies. We started by inputting the key criteria which would need to remain the same for each search: Katie’s gender and location. This would then filter down our search to only women living in London, a good starting point for then refining hobbies by age, education, marital status, and job. The next task was to think of some hobbies which might be taken up by women Katie’s age – this lead us to the Google search query: ‘what are good hobbies for women in their thirties?’ (she tried to claim 20s, no one’s believing that…). Aside from some unsurprising popular choices such as yoga and horse riding, we found some pretty interesting suggestions: pole dancing, foraging and knitting, to name a few. After some serious deliberation, we had our shortlist: baking, ballroom dancing, horse riding, pole dancing, knitting, yoga, volunteering and foraging. Some interesting facts from our findings: 21% of London women who are interested in pole dancing work in a management role, and are 50% less likely to be married. London women with a university education make up 68% of those who are interested in knitting, and make up 70% of those interested in volunteering. 34% of London women who are interested in foraging are aged between 25 and 34; the largest age category for this hobby. Whether this means foraging in the woods or through people’s bins remains unconfirmed. With the percentages given for each demographic category, we took an average to produce an overall compatibility score. And the winner was…. Baking! Here are the stats: 25-34 years old = 35% Married = 47% (London women are 13% more likely to be in this category) University education = 67% Work in management = 25% (London women are 4% more likely to be in this category) In addition, this year the baking conversation gained 242,570 mentions on Twitter from 177,900 users, with 60% of chatter coming from women, and 35.4% from London. On top of that, some of the top influencers within this baking conversation, such as Suzy Pelta and Juliet Sear , are women in their thirties who live in London. It seems as though Katie and baking were destined to come together for September’s life reset. As to be expected, everyone in the office was delighted with this outcome, and can’t wait to be Katie’s guinea pigs this month as she treats us all to some (hopefully) Bake Off worthy creations. The fact she has barely baked before is not a concern. There will be no soggy bottoms in this office. #baking #data #2017trends #Socialdata #consumertrends #socialtrends

You probably know by now that every month of 2017 we’re living a different consumer trend, identified by social media. To name a few: we have turned vegan for a month, braved the London roads cycling and become master gin tasters (not all in one go!). This month we’re exploring beer, and the rising trends within it as a drinks category. In the UK the average person drinks a huge 72 litres of beer per head every single year , with 11,000 beers to choose from. From chocolate, to avocado, to bacon, there is every flavour to quench anyone’s thirst. No wonder beer still makes up the biggest percentage of alcohol drunk across the UK. Although total UK pub beer sales have decreased by 2.9% between 2015 and 2016, the social conversation shows no sign of slowing down. Over the past year more than 3.7M people have mentioned it and there’s been a general increase from September last year to now, with volumes of conversation increasing in a general upward curve. Graph shows hot topics of conversation within the beer conversation There are particular areas of beer which have shown significant growth. Craft beer has exploded onto the UK beer market and has seen 40% growth in sales a year since 2015. This is reflected in the social conversation, which has seen 13% growth in specific mentions of craft beer on this time last year. The secret to the growing success of craft beers may be partially linked to its female popularity. On Facebook, women are as likely as men to like pages containing content about Craft beer, whereas men are more likely to be interested in pages that mention beer generally (and are not craft specific) males are far more are more likely (13% more in fact) to be interested in it. This is different to tweets mentioning craft beer, which have a far more male skew (70:30). This indicates that women – although interested in craft beer – are not (yet) willing to openly associate with craft beer, which could be linked to prior preconceptions and the male stereotype of a ‘beer drinker’. Other beers drunk such as lager and Bitter have seen a smaller increase in social conversation. Interestingly they are both commonly talked about in association to brands, whereas craft beer is generally mentioned in a general term of ‘craft beer’ At OneFifty this month we will aim to try as many beers of possible to let you know if craft beer really is a good as all the social mentions suggest. Which is why we’re off to The Great British Beer Festival. We’ll also be looking at the data in more depth too and see what the most recommend beer is on social, more on conversations between genders and the top beer apps. Cheers. #2017trends #beer #culturaltrends #consumertrends #socialtrends #beertasting #socialmediatrends #trends

The Rooftop Film Club believe that ‘great films deserve great locations’, and they certainly lived up to their promise of providing an iconic city backdrop. We were in the centre of busy Shoreditch with a panoramic view and a stunning sunset. I’d made it; here I was, little old me, living it large in the big smoke, pretending to be a hipster, in my new start-up job. So I hear you asking, what’s this outdoor cinema gig you’re going on about? Well, this month we had the hard job of living our latest social trend, ‘outdoor cinema’ . The search interest in outdoor cinema has more than tripled since 2012 with consumer interest (expressed through Google search) showing us that July is the month to go. We looked at the data and the clear winner in creating social conversation volume was La La Land, raking in 180 mentions in our 3 month sample. So of course (for educational purposes only) we went to experience it for ourselves in one of London’s well-known open air cinemas. We booked in to watch the film at Queen of Hoxton’s rooftop cinema and we were pleasantly surprised with the visit. They transformed the usual rooftop bar setup into a deck chair filled outdoor cinema within 10 minutes. Before we could even pick up our bags to find a seat, Anne-Catherine (the organised German) had already pushed past half the crowd in order to secure the perfect spot. In all fairness, they were actually pretty good; pleasurable distance from the screen, right next to the bar and easy access to the exit for when the boys decided they’d had enough of the ‘soppy rom-com’. You’d expect that being in London town, under a flight path, we wouldn’t be able to hear the film above the outside world noise. Our fear was thankfully unfounded. On arrival we were kitted out with state-of-the-art wireless headphones, allowing us to enjoy the film completely distraction-free. The film was thoroughly enjoyed by all (boys included), it’s easy to see why it is still so popular months after being released. The pool-party scene seemed to be the communal favourite, where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone cross paths once again. She’s flirting with him while he’s playing keyboards in a cheesy costume with a tacky cover band. Her lip-sync to the song she’d requested, “I Ran”, was undeniably one of the films most enjoyable scenes. The outdoor cinema experience in itself was something to remember. With a barbecue grill, cocktail bar and one of the nicest roofs in Shoreditch. We all enjoyed the experience and I’d genuinely look to go again. So if you’re tall, dark, handsome and preferably under 25, I’d be more than happy to accompany you 😉 #lalaland #outdoorcinema #socialtrends #trends

We’re continuing to live our social trends each month, with veganism , cycling , gin , health reset , gardening and marble being those we’ve identified, and lived, so far. This brings us to July’s pick – outdoor cinema. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a large cinema screen assembled outdoors, in a park or rooftop for example, to be enjoyed in the open air. Check out @frangarnonflectar and @hannah_miles  on Instagram to see which London outdoor cinema’s they visited.   So why are open air cinema’s trending this month? There’s a clear push by brands to promote their events and movies. This started back in 2013 when Samsung partnered with The Nomad  and  Häagen-Dazs with Luna Cinema . Today, we see a very brand driven conversation with summer ticket competitions and event announcements dominating the social conversation (Luna cinema alone accounts for 25% of the overall conversation). People going and talking about outdoor cinemas are somewhat “social butterflies” with many options to have relaxed evenings out. We found the audience most engaged with this topic is urban (predominantly London) and socially very active – in an online and offline world. They are aged between 25 and 44 with 79% being women. Other brands or media that they have an interest in are, for example, London Foods, TimeOut, The Londonist and Event magazine.  As summer properly starts, open air cinemas are becoming a big deal for urban cosmopolitans. We’ve had a look at how our chosen trend compares to some other popular social activities for relaxed summer evenings this year: Mini golf and Escape Room. “Outdoor cinema” had out-talked both competitors in the July and August, where it was almost twice the size in total mentions. Compared to last year’s June, we see a 26% increase in volumes. The conversation around “outdoor cinemas” isn’t the biggest by volume, but a good example of an experience worth sharing on social. There are between 300-350k monthly active users on Facebook showing an interest in “outdoor cinema”, Twitter mentions were just above 20k mentions in the UK over the past year and we estimate there to have been around 50k Instagram mentions. To set those numbers in context, Glastonbury had thirty thousand people generating fifty thousand mentions in the last 7 days. Search interest in outdoor cinema has more than tripled since 2012, with mentions of “open air cinema”, “rooftop cinema” and “outdoor cinema” beginning in early April, and continuing until late September. Consumer interest expressed through Google search shows us that July is THE month. This isn’t really a surprise as this is when British weather is most pleasant (and least risky) to be sat outdoors for a substantial period of time. When we compare this Summer trend with “pub quiz” (a typical year-long interest for us Brits), the interest in “outdoor cinema” overtakes it in the month of July only. With 2014 being a year to remember, as it was the first (and surely not the last) time this occurred. The question now then, is how will we be living this trend? There’s an interesting audience insight here that makes us want to explore a) how brands can expand audiences outside of a London focus and b) what it needs to grow in a fairly brand driven conversation. So pull out your deck chairs, pack the picnic basket and take a look at our calendar , where we’ve put together a small selection of some of the best open air cinema’s that will be screening across the UK this July. #outdoorcinema #socialinsights #socialtrends #trends

This month we’re exploring the growing interest in gardening , and as such, I thought I’d share my personal experience. The story of my allotment I took possession of my allotment five years ago. Took possession misleads one to the basis of it – I pay £25 a year ( a princely sum) to rent it from Wallingford town council. You can read about the history of UK allotments here . I’ve always loved the outdoors, and found living in London challenging. For all the benefits of one of the world’s great cities, it feels unnatural (literally and metaphorically) to me. I and my wife moved to Oxfordshire, and got a garden (at last). Not only did I love cultivating this to be an aesthetically pleasing space (flowers etc), but I began to grow some vegetables in containers. But I wanted more – more veg, more scale, more challenge. The allotment was the solution. The dream of self-sufficiency within my grasp. Only weeds shoulder-height (and I’m 6ft+), and neglect of the plot stood between me and gardening glory. That and teaching myself about gardening. What do I do with my allotment? Well, at the size of a five-a-side football pitch, the horticultural world was my oyster. The first year was really just about weed removal. These days there is a semblance of control, with about a third of the plot (rotating) deliberately unkept at any point in time. I grow a combination of summer and winter vegetables, and try to be broadly organic, which presents challenges as I don’t have the time to do the weed and pest control manually that requires. The limited time I can devote to it also influences some plant choices – I favour things which require relatively little direct intervention, and if they can suppress weeds (like potatoes), even better. The output is decent: we have enough potatoes to last us eight months of the year (and I’m greedy), and likewise onions, for example. Soft fruits are there (gooseberries, blackcurrants, strawberries, raspberries) but they are relatively space ineffective for their yield across the year as a whole. There are some personal favourites which, as I’ve learned with time, I’m increasing or decreasing. For example, this year marks the end of my efforts with asparagus (much as I love it, the 11 months of weeding and large ground required vs the one month of yield just isn’t worth it), whereas rhubarb continues to occupy ever greater areas of my heart and land, with its flavour, lack of attention needed, and long cropping period. My family have mixed feelings. My wife enjoys the outcomes (i.e. the veg) but is less keen on the time it takes or the somewhat spartan appearance. My 18 month old son, however, is a devotee, enjoying the freedom to roll in mud, dig at will, and be occasionally helpful planting onion bulbs, bean plants or dig out weeds. Overall, I spend somewhere around 3 hours a week on it. I think 8 hours a week consistently across a two year block would see me reach allotment perfection. Why do I have an allotment? So, why do I have an allotment, a seemingly incongruous choice for (vaguely) young man who otherwise lives and breathes the internet? Principally: Health /environment – regardless of one’s exact interpretation of science, eating more vegetables one has grown one’s self is undoubtedly good for you Taste – simply put, food you’ve grown yourself tastes better. That’s a combination of the psychosomatic effect of growing it one’s self, the freshness when picked ‘to order’, and varieties one wouldn’t be able to buy which may be poor commercially, but great in flavour terms. Switch off – there’s no screen when you’re gardening, which has a positive effect (every so often) on my well being Pace – you can’t (within reason) rush plants. They grow with the seasons. That’s a useful lesson for a firmly ‘type-A’ individual. Connection with past – I have keen gardeners on both side of my parental line, but also our shared past – an understanding of what truly happens to feed us all. Cost saving – now this is variable, and certainly isn’t the main objective, but it’s undoubtedly true one can save money. My choices aren’t geared around this – my potatoes won’t save me much money, although my rhubarb saves me significant amounts, as do my tomatoes. But it’s definitely there. Am I alone? One thing I’ve been surprised about is others’ surprise. Allotments, let alone gardening are perceived as somewhat antiquated. Certainly not for millennials (I just scrape the technical definition, if not the pejorative definition). But, whenever I talk about it, people start to express their shared enthusiasm, or desire for similar. It validates our research. But yet it rarely gets the acknowledgement by brands it metrics. I’d argue it’s the single most-effective way to engage me in content, for example. We need more allotments – physically and emotionally, in my view. #gardener #allotment #gardening #garden #2017trends #trends

You might have seen that the consumer trend we’re living this month – identified by social data – is gardening. What makes it so big? Here are a couple of previous blogs. But to really get under the skin of it, who better to interview than the man running the social media of the world’s largest gardening charity, and leading authority on all-things green-fingered? Say hello to Ian Reynolds from The RHS… Ian, how have you seen gardening grow in popularity over the last few years? What people consider to be gardening has become so much broader. It’s not just about your garden or allotment, we’re now seeing ‘day-to-day’ gardening indoors. You don’t have to have any outdoor space to think of yourself as a gardener, it could be tending to houseplants or growing herbs in window boxes. Take myself, I definitely consider myself to be a gardener but I don’t have a ‘garden’. I am however planning out what indoor plants I’m going to have (in as many places as possible!) in my new flat. It’s not just me – if you look at gardening Instagrammers, some of them are huge and they solely focus on houseplants. Has social media changed gardening? Definitely, yes, in two main ways. Firstly it’s made it a lot more accessible. It’s much easier to find and ask for advice and share what you’ve achieved to inspire or help others. There’s a real sense of pride from others interacting with what you’ve done, so gardening isn’t a chore. Secondly, which relates to the point above, it’s broadened out the category. Take houseplants, for example, they’re one of the top things that people are sharing on social. Social has been such a great opportunity for gardening to look less fusty – and more cool! Are more people interacting with to The RHS via social? They are, and it’s been a great opportunity to deliver on our vision. Our tagline is ‘Sharing the best in Gardening’. Given our long heritage, some people think we’re closed off – which we’re not at all! Social allows us to be more open – we’re an authority on gardening but we’re also doing something fun! We want more people to enjoy it – it’s brilliant when we can help them do that. In terms of who’s chatting to us – on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram – there’s an amazing diversity and they’ve definitely got younger. Gardening, in all its facets, is for everyone now and people are far less embarrassed to ask questions. That’s what we love to help with on social – get everyone to enjoy gardening whether they’ve got houseplants or a Chelsea garden. How did you become the man behind The RHS’s social media? I’ve always loved nature and greenery. I started out at the Royal Forestry Society after doing Geography at Southampton University – but I knew nothing about Forestry so I was put into marketing! After three months I moved to The RHS and have been here for three and a half years. I really enjoy being able to communicate and help people in such a direct way. It’s also a brilliant community to be part of – we interact a lot with other gardening groups, from the National Trust to Michael Perry – better known as Mr Plant Geek (have a look at his blog or Instagram if you’re not aware of him). More than that, I increasingly see our followers helping each other out and answering questions, which is amazing. Will gardening continue to grow? I think so. Our lives are only getting busier and we’re more conscious of taking meaningful ‘time out’. Your research echoes that – people enjoying spending time gardening and producing something from nothing gives a great sense of achievement and freedom. There’s also mental health benefits which have been widely stated. There’s still work to be done by charities, groups and societies such as ourselves though. Looking back over the last 10 years, we were at a point where 66% of front gardens were green. 66% are now grey. There are huge consequences to that – nature suffers, areas are associated with poverty and environmental problems (like flooding). Also, green spaces have been proven to make us happier. That’s why we have a campaign at the moment called ‘Greening Grey Britain’, with the mission of transforming thousands of grey spaces into living, planted places. Introducing something really small and simple, such as a shrub, flower box or climber, can make a huge difference. Is growth coming from any particular groups of people? That 55+ age group is naturally interested in gardening and has been our heartland. The difference now is that they’re increasingly on social – in the past we struggled to engage with them but not so much any more. Beyond that there’s a group we call young and emerging –  children who are sharing photos of gardens. They’re now exposed to gardens far earlier, they have the means to talk about it and they’re tagging us in after to going to gardens such as Wisley. That’s brilliant. We are trying to be more relevant to more people. We have incredible show gardens but for a lot of people that’s unrealistic for them to replicate so we’ve broadened it out as to how and what we talk about gardening-wise. It’s about hitting that mIddle ground between people who like social events and love their garden, and then bridge that gap to inspire them to get into gardening. It’s why we’re involved in other shows and markets – to expose what we do to more people. It’s more than mowing lawns and cutting hedges! Finally, if some of our readers have been inspired to get more green-finger themselves, where a good place to start when it comes to houseplants? People think it’s is hard, but it’s not. There are really easy places to start – and I should know because whilst I’m great at talking about it, I’m not a natural gardener! If you’re looking at houseplants, go for a cactus. They’re very difficult to kill (although embarrassingly I have managed it… I now have 30-40 growing very successfully!). Or look at what your not so green-fingered friends are growing and copy them! Once you’ve mastered a cactus you can move up to a succulents – also pretty difficult to kill – and then maybe onto a fern. But look around you, see what other people are doing and ask questions! #rhs #gardening #socialinsights #garden #Socialdata #socialtrends #may