The Rise of Geek Chic: Leading edge lifestyle and the new premium market (2005), keynote presentation by Dr Lida Hujić at INSIGHT 2005 marketing conference (Centraur Media).
A new study into the rise of the Geek Chic social phenomenon shows how trend-based consumer research can be applied to specific business problems in order to inspire future looking brand challenges.
A unique insight into leading edge lifestyle values and how these get disseminated, thus creating new types of consumer demand and by extension new opportunities for brands
A consumer segmentation, which identifies a new consumer type, an early adopter who is neither what's traditionally been understood as the luxury market nor what's traditionally been understood as the youth market and yet is driving new consumption trends
A separation of fashion fad from trend with long-term growth potential, supported by real life brand examples as well as retail and publishing case-studies.
This piece of research created a lot of international buzz at the time. It's been presented at various conferences in the UK and abroad. The 'New Premium Consumer' article in Brand Strategy and the 'Hoxtonite' feature in The Guardian (same idea, consumer language) are taken from this study. It would inadvertently become the foundation idea for the book 'The First to Know: How Hipsters and Mavericks Shape the Zeitgeist' (2011) and subsequently TFTK's cultural framework for insight and innovation, which, in turn, was developed into the-first-to-know innovation diffusion model as proposed in the book ‘The 2.5%: Small Group, Big Influence’ (first published, 2019).