TFTK operates where culture is being formed and helps clients act on it first. We don’t just report on culture. Our cultural credibility is earned by shaping it. When it comes to sniffing out what’s worth, we take early risks, so our clients don’t have to.

 

TFTK’s proposition is fuelled by the-first-to-know™, a bespoke innovation diffusion model that combines insider knowledge of cutting-edge cultures, academic rigour and marketing agility to provide a robust framework for strategic business decision-making. It seeks to answer the question: how can we detect minor details that hint at something radically new at early stages of the cross-over cycle of ideas from idiosyncratic towards eventually becoming the norm?  

 

Consumer research is good at understanding existing behaviour; trend forecasting is good at looking at the macro-picture; innovation consultancies are good at ideation; specialist recruiters are good at finding ‘experts’; cultural insights and semiotics are good at cultural codes and narratives. 

 

TFTK combines elements of all, but it operates at the margins and starts from the premise: work with Innovators (from our Trailblazer Web), who are already living emerging cultures. 

 

Developed over decades (called cool cycles of reinvention™), the-first-to-know™ consists of a cultural framework to monitor change and its own innovation diffusion, focusing on the Innovator, the type preceding the Early Adopter on the innovation adopter curve. By combining these two elements, we gain insight into cultural shifts while they are still forming, not after they’ve been named. 

 

The-first-to-know™ is not trend forecasting. We don’t track consumer behaviour data to predict future scenarios. For us, the future has already happened because we start from the embryo, where new values are being formed. At this stage of an idea’s cross-over journey, we experiment, independent of client projects and absorb any risk. Over time, hypotheses crystalise. Our approach is a futurology by looking at the past.

 

The first to know model gives you the head-start you probably didn't even know existed because the Innovator universe is difficult to access. Through the prism of a cool cycle, TFTK's model proposes two cross-over timelines happening in parallel, and in stages mirroring each other, underground and overground. The focus of the model is on the underground journey, which is the formation of new values on the basis of which major cultural shifts occur. New ideas develop within Innovator communities, first. Momentum starts building, around five to six years before becoming visible to the wider market.  While the mainstream market starts from the Early Adopter as an indicator of new trends, the Early Adopter is a trend follower according to the-first-to-know. There are four categories of Innovators on the innovation diffusion curve sifting through ideas before they reach the Early Adopter. Our skill is to select what behaviour already exhibited by an influential minority, as a reaction to the mainstream, would be the most relevant, for a business challenge or cultural aspiration, respectively.

 

When supporting innovation challenges, our foresight for the risk-averse mainstream brands and businesses is based on looking back, not looking ahead. What's new to the mainstream has already happened years before according to the first to know. This guides our ‘retrospective validation’ approach for our strategic innovation offering to reduce uncertainty and shorten time to market. For activation, it enables our partners to be the first to be associated with future talent. Here, we rely more on fast changing trends and fads, capturing the zeitgeist, as it happens. By the time the mainstream finds out, you’ve already missed the party!

 

As much of a passion as it is work, the-first-to-know™ is continuous work in progress. The three books (so far) outline all of this – and are critically acclaimed by marketing peers, received public accolades and are taught at leading universities.