Lottie Hill is a senior behavioural analyst at Canvas8 with a background in psychology and an eye for spotting trends in numbers. Specialising in data and analytics, she’s spent the last four years digging into cultural insights for clients like Meta, Google, and Adidas. Outside of work, you’ll find Lottie travelling as much as her bank balance will allow or working on her latest lino printing project.

Once a signifier of luxury or novelty, custom products and services are now within reach of the everyday consumer, thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence, algorithm-led platforms, and the COVID-era digitisation boom. Today, everyone wants to be the main character of their brand experience. 

Personal Worlds

In a hyper-connected world, it feels like everything previously ‘insider’ is more available than ever: from behind-the-scenes access to the lives of public figures to travel experiences immersing people into worlds previously deemed unattainable. But while people embrace this community-based inclusivity and unprecedented access to their icons, they still yearn for touches of exclusivity to define their status.

As the age-old understanding of exclusivity is eroded, people are redefining status for themselves using a broad range of factors beyond solely economic ones. This new iteration of status is often based around increasingly niche and local signifiers – from luxury dupes to the rise of members clubs and closed-community spaces based on shared interests. Status is becoming a mode of belonging and connection with like-minded people.

People are erecting walls of their exclusive communities, relying on more subtle markers of identity. This is apparent with middle-class people fetishising working-class aesthetics, athletes turning to niche sports like padel, and social media groups organising around niche interests – spawning companies. As status-defined micro-trends on social media accelerate, brands face a challenge to keep up. If previously certain legacy items were automatically associated with exclusivity, now people are much more trusting of the UGC-defined vision of what status means. More than ever, speed, knowledge, inventiveness, and being plugged into the community determine what – and who – is in.

Insider Status

United States

United Kingdom

Media and Entertainment

TV, film, and social media video

Wes Anderson has launched a new type of film club, Galerie. Counteracting content overload, the platform offers a carefully curated selection of original videos, essays, and live events. The launch points towards the premium placed on expert-driven, exclusive content tailored to niche audiences.