SHOW NOTES
In this episode, Phyllis interviews Dr. Devon Powers, professor of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. Known for her influential work on branding, consumer culture, and promotional industries, Dr. Powers offers insight into the evolving world of trend forecasting, both as a cultural practice and a speculative force. Reflecting on the role of forecasters as cultural interpreters, she discusses how they construct narratives out of scattered social cues and, in doing so, help shape the futures they claim to predict. The episode dives into how platforms like TikTok and developments like AI have transformed trend emergence, and how branding, futurism, and influence not only what we consume but also how we live.
The discussion expands beyond consumerism into deeper political and social currents, touching on rising authoritarianism, and how in chaotic times, people cling to authoritative figures for direction and meaning. Grounded in both historical context and forward-thinking critique, this episode is a thoughtful meditation on the narratives we accept, the futures we co-create, and the quiet but powerful actions that offer hope.
* Note that this episode was recorded in February 2025.
GUEST BIO
Dr. Powers is a Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan, specializing in the study of consumer culture and the dynamics of cultural intermediation, circulation, and promotion. Her research delves into how trends emerge and evolve, the role of branding, and the history of popular music. She is the author of several notable works, including, On Trend: The Business of Forecasting the Future (2019), Writing the Record: The Village Voice and the Birth of Rock Criticism (2013), and co-editor of Blowing Up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture (2010), a collection analyzing the complexities of branding in modern society. Her scholarly articles have been featured in esteemed journals such as Communication Theory, New Media & Society, and the Journal of Consumer Culture.
Beyond academia, she has contributed to popular outlets like Wired, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, bridging the gap between scholarly research and public discourse. Powers earned her Ph.D. from New York University and her B.A. from Oberlin College. Before joining the University of Michigan, she held academic positions at Drexel University and Temple University. Her work offers valuable insights into the mechanisms of cultural trends and the interplay between media, culture, and consumer behavior.ble insights into the mechanisms of cultural trends and the interplay between media, culture, and consumer behavior.
TRANSCRIPT
But today, we’re not here to talk about me.
We’re here to talk with one of my favorite academics and oldest friends, the brilliant Devon Powers.
She’s the author of several notable works, including.
I’m going to start actually from the oldest to the newest, because the newest is the one I’ve read.
And my favorite book, which I assigned in a course in 2020 before the whole world blew up.
And its influence on consumer behavior.
And it is fascinating, and everyone should read it.
I mean, read all of her books, but um, do as I say, not as I as I’ve done.
And she is just brilliant and amazing and always has insights that I’m like.
And, um, she’s sticking her tongue and saying no, but it is 100% true.
Oh, also I forgot to mention that Dev0n and I are also friends with former doing Social Research.
The doing Social Research podcast guest Mike Allen and I was just saying we need to have.
I dropped the ball on coordinating a little reunion, but anyway, I’m so excited that you’re here.
We have known each other more than 25 years, which is crazy.
I know I thought I was 25 years old and.
So we were just talking before we started about politics stuff.
But and I was like, Oh my God, we have to just stop talking so that I can get it all on the podcast.
But before that I just want to back up and I want to.
I always like to start with asking just what research are you doing these days.
So um, I am working on continuing my research on trends.
So that was trend forecasting and my last book was mostly about.
Existed, musically, existed, and then it became ticktock.
It existed, but it really didn’t take off until 20 in the United States.
Anyway, it didn’t take off until 2020 really and kinda more.
Not that we didn’t think about it before, but we think about it a lot more.
Um and there’s a class that I teach, and I taught it before COVID and I taught it after COVID.
Are we going to study like, you know, the malliard trend or like you?
I don’t know what that is, but.
You know Brad summer, like, are we gonna study that stuff and we do a little bit, but trying to.
So that is where my energy has kind of been placed lately.
What is the trend if I can go back to basics here?
A trend is a lot of different things, but I think about it basically as a pattern in.
So for example, we could talk about trends 1 trend.
I always tried out because it’s a.
Phone and that is a broad based change.
They’re tending to live by themselves for longer.
Or maybe they get married and then they separate from that person and they live by themselves.
Or maybe they never get married at all.
And and there’s a number of different reasons for that.
Um, which is like, you know, let’s say there’s a dance that’s that’s attached to a song.
That’s also a pattern that’s being.
The time has just two days rather than 20 years.
It’s like you can blink and then miss one.
How do you how do you account for that?
Like, how do you do that in your research?
Like, do you feel like you’re?
Constantly having to like catch up or how does how do you find that with that the temporality of it?
The current I shouldn’t say always there are media historians out there.
There are theorists out there.
And so the decision that I came to when I was probably in Graduate School was like, I’m a history.
Man and you can be a historian of the present, you know.
Anytime you know if you think about it all.
The moment that we’re having right now is passing before us as we are experience again.
Oh my God, it causes me so much existential angst when I think about that.
I’m like I might as well just be.
It’s like the two for see that movie arrival with Amy Adams.
Lives has so much it’s like rent, free space and half of my brain.
And even the sort of like day-to-day ripples of culture that you might catch on or miss, right?
Like most of those are not actually social change.
So that is the attitude that I mostly take with it.
But they, you know, again, this is another philosophical point, but.
So, in a way, they’re catching up with each other as well, from own little microcosms.
So yeah, yeah, that is so fascinating.
Um, I want to go back to what we were talking about first, just sort of about applying this.
But before that I just want to go back a little bit just so that we don’t get too far.
Off the brand that I am building and also you, I am such a dork.
So there are trend forecasters.
Most people, if they’re familiar at all with trend forecasting, they are familiar with fashion.
So, and the idea of fashion kind of makes sense to people.
And that fashion process is a very.
What are the things that people will want to be wearing?
Skinny pants, skinny jeans or no skinny jeans.
That’s how I’m, like 10 years old.
So and so fashion forecasters do this process of trying.
And so cultural forecasters do very similar kinds of work, but outside of fashion.
So they might do it with food.
They might do it with just general attitudes.
So I can give it another sort of concrete example.
There’s not the sort of nuclear family.
Husband and wife and two kids.
And if you can think about that that.
Would be a strategy that’s not only.
Oh my God, I’m totally obsessed.
All right, this is the kind of thing that forecasters would help a company to imagine and do.
And there was some kind of like.
Other crazy examples in your book though, right?
Um, anytime you’re asking a company to sort of imagine the future, it’s speculative, right?
I was and there’s a way in which they call it in futurism, like 2 curves, right?
It’s sort of ascending, so let’s talk about like AI in that example, right?
So we have a we have a sort of like.
And because it exists in the space of speculation.
There is also action that can be taken in order to bring about the future that you might want.
You can see it more so in like stuff with AI or, you know, robots or something like that.
That world does not exist yet for most people.
And get ready for it in a way that’s not just about.
But again, meeting it when it arrives, but actually about bringing it into being.
And husband, who I’m currently separated from.
I don’t know how to refer to him anymore.
Nobody is going to be bringing bags to the store.
This is never gonna work like like.
Nobody has, like people, are just gonna bring like grocery bags to the store.
To this store that it becomes.
So it seems like there’s almost part of the what you’re describing is that it’s.
Sometimes I think it’s like brute force.
No, it’s like you have to prepare people for the future.
So they need to, like, get us on board and they all need to be on board with each other, right?
And I was like, no, I don’t want to see that.
But you can see that like you know, right now it’s a choice.
Interfere, like interfere with my e-mail or help me write a text message.
Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.
Like, caretaking was not way more charitable than I would like to be about it.
Wearing you down, it’s like you.
You start to like it’s becomes.
It’s how it’s like been manufactured for it to seem that way.
And that’s another thing you can see in AI like what’s the business model for AI?
So throw all of these different uses at you.
See which ones stick, see which ones we can pull back on a little bit and charge you for.
And then like, see if that works.
Do you have any set like I’m just?
But but it’s like but that’s stuck.
I was like, there’s no way it’ll stick.
But like, people don’t really.
Like, do you have any sense of like what?
Like what are the forces that make something stick or not?
I mean, I guess if you knew that you’d be a billionaire.
That’s also part of trend forecasting, right?
I believe it’s meta that has glasses now.
Um, whether it will stick this time, I think is is still unclear.
But I think the I think the ground has been laid better than it was in 2015, right?
And so the the the issue is that like in 2015?
So Fast forward 10 years and now.
That’s why I say the the the space is still.
It’s a little bit Ripper for that.
I still think it’s not quite because.
What do people really use that for?
To make really funny Tik toks of people crashing into their TV’s.
I mean, it’s like some gamers wear them.
But it still doesn’t quite have the thing where like you and.
You know, I’m not like so that.
Once that happens, if that happens, it’s still an.
Then the idea of having something like that on your face all the time will be.
Like there will be a need for it.
That’s my idea for those anyway.
Now every time I know because you were on the original Rippey Sisters podcast, the precursor.
To this and I’m always like, tell me what the trend future is.
And you’re like, that is not my job.
I am looking at the people who look at that.
I’m like, I know, but I want, like, be a psychic.
Like, it feels like everything that you just described about.
Big business corporations are trying to do.
You know there there wanting to be ahead of the curve.
Like, environmental uncertainty is really hard on businesses.
And it doesn’t make any sense to me.
I don’t understand the kind of chaos that is being created.
Um as a because it just seems so like.
I mean, there are reasons why I can see it happening, but they’re all it.
What am I not seeing that is like that?
Make it make sense for everyone.
I don’t know if I can do that.
But I guess I guess what I would say is.
I see the rise of Trump not as a surprise.
The fact that he won the election was not a surprise.
May have been unfortunate, but it was not a surprise.
Word um and again I’ll just go back to 2016 for a second.
Um, when I was writing my book, my first book, or that my last book.
Um, I was talking to forecasters in 2016 and 2017.
It was like right after Brexit and right before and after Trump had won and.
And they were sort of like, yeah, how did, what did, what did you know, they were in shock?
And a similar thing happened at the pandemic.
They were also in shock about that.
This is not very good, forecasters.
They were not looking at all of the signals and all of the sort.
Like like hints that were happening in society.
Their politics, their orientation, et cetera.
And they tend to discount the ones that are contrary to that.
So that’s one like one answer to your question.
Then I I’m I don’t mean to be like such a fatalistic kind of person.
Here I have long thought that like the response to climate change has to be authoritarianism.
Uh, it has to look like people mandating.
In a way, to live that people are not going to like, um, but that also that actually cuts both ways.
It cuts both in terms of like.
I think most people would not want.
Know. So they would have to live in a society where you had to.
And so, um, in some ways, I think that like, again, this is me kind of going off on my own tangent.
You know, if it got point though, bought deep water shortage.
Just imagine what that would have to look like, I know.
Yeah, that’s a uh, that’s probably like, you know, this is outside of my.
I’m not a political scientist.
I do not have these actually be making these assertions, but yeah.
I am all into like going down the rabbit holes and the tangents and.
And just allowing us to sort of use our critical thinking muscles and the information that we have.
Hypothesis about what could be doing it.
I think you know, like nobody knows.
You know, there’s like, preemptive get everybody comfortable with it.
It’s so fascinating to think about.
Then we add and that people, you know, people my age have.
And like one way it looks is Trump.
But it doesn’t look like a free for all you know, sort of creature comforts market the.
No Maple syrup, no Maple syrup for.
Curtailing of freedoms, right?
And so that’s kind of what I mean.
And again, not to be so it is it’s a very it’s very depressing. Hey.
You know, future to imagine, but yeah.
And I don’t think it’s going to look like that.
I think it’s going to look like, you know, putting a fork, a smart fork in your mouth and.
You’ve had your calories for the day.
There are other things like that.
This is how I speak of everything.
What, like almost 20 years ago now, I think like talking about the way sort of this use.
You know, like you think it was under George W Bush.
Which is really disturbing but.
And it’s not just authoritarian leaders.
I think that’s also what big tech is.
I think it’s an anchor in a moment of chaos that says we know the way.
Yeah, which is terrifying when you think about like Elon Musk as, like, a literal Nazi.
It’s, but I also you were saying like this idea, though of history being.
Um authoritarianism is new to the world, like that’s not.
That’s not a new trend, right?
We’re interns at the Feminist Majority Foundation.
We were working on the campus campaign for choice and the idea back then and the summer of 90.
And they take them for granted.
And I remember at the time being like there’s no way I’m gonna.
At like a bunch of women on my campus, much less men.
We weren’t even talking about men.
But like, I’m not gonna get a bunch of women on my campus to care about this issue.
That’s like saying the person who made the last basket in a basketball game won the game.
They didn’t win the game, right?
They had been playing the game the whole time and the left had not been.
And that’s what happened, you know.
I I can get into these fights with my kids sometimes.
And I’m like, OK for the like last election and I’m like, OK, we can find issues or whatever.
Let’s start with this coloration of independence.
Let’s start with like foundational ideas about like what freedom means and what it like in.
By law, and then in practice, what does it really mean?
But it’s like there has been this non-stop, very clear targeted attack and.
On it’s like they picked their battles where they were like we’re going to do abortion.
What’s the word I’m looking for?
But and also like I also think about, there’s this book that I absolutely love by.
So so package and it wasn’t supposed to come to 1 and it just came.
I just no of like the for the just cut it.
Some like fix that, but my what does there’s this.
You can choose to keep the baby.
You can, you know, you just need like informed consent.
It can feel like, Oh my God, this weird thing just happened.
What are the things that we pay attention to?
It’s and I am personally totally can be Pollyanna, where I’m like, no, I don’t be OK.
It’ll be OK, but it is there like these.
This trends are not coming in a vacuum.
I guess is what I’m trying to say.
And I think they are also not propelled by time, right?
Like I think we tend to be very whiggish about or about progress about.
What do you what do you mean by whiggish?
Like that’s basically like this idea that like, things are just gonna get.
They’re just going to improve, right?
Like there’s weird the arc of history bends towards social justice.
It doesn’t bend towards those things.
There is nothing inevitable about.
And then it feeds into this like little tiny.
Oh well, I guess there’s this AI in my phone.
I may as well try it, and oh, it’s in my Gmail.
I guess I’ll try that and oh, they have all my data.
So it’s like that is not inevitability that is.
That is exactly what’s happened.
Trump right now as well, right?
But I say that you know, and you can feel very like, well, what’s the point?
And the point is that actually there’s there’s always space.
You know where is all this energy going to come from?
And like they are, you know, just to say we don’t have the capacity right now.
How to have a bunch of nuclear plants appear tomorrow like.
This is a multi year process and involves environmental changes or regulations or deregulations.
I don’t know if I believe that I believe this other thing.
Will you be the next president?
Because I’m, like, really inspired.
I mean, and I also like you used the word before we recorded.
You were talking also about gratitude because like, I’m just thinking we should.
Like that, you’re opening up this window of, like, wait, we have a choice like that.
I guess you know, I guess I would put that on two different registers and I.
Figure out what register works for them.
And we choose how we respond to those things.
And I actually think, you know, I’m not.
That is so gratifying to me cause I just can’t even look at him anymore.
Like one of his strategies has been to like, flood the zone, right?
And so finding out ways to not do that, to not give him power.
It’s like we choose what we pay attention to.
We choose how we think we choose.
Take for granted and we choose what we are grateful for.
And I think people have different ways in which they can show up for that too, right?
Like some people are marching in the street.
I don’t think it’s imminent that those choices will go away, but they could go away, you know.
And so that means, like, you know what?
Maybe it means going to community meetings.
Maybe it means you know one of the things that the the right has been really good at.
Again, speaking in the United States is like run for school board.
You know, like those things that people go, oh, that doesn’t really matter.
So it’s like I think that showing up really matters show up to your Neighborhood Association.
Or they can be persuaded by a nice person.
And just to bring it back to my brand, doing Social Research, how did like, do you like?
How do you think of your research as fitting in to all of these things?
I was gonna say, I mean right there.
And that to me, is like revolutionary, and it’s what you’re doing, which is you’re saying.
And whatever and that that like that to me, I think is you know this that’s scraping.
The pushing back comes from understanding what’s happening.
I I yeah, I think that’s true.
And I also think you know there’s like.
Nothing is so powerful out there that it doesn’t have the potential TV road, right?
It’s like even a concrete wall.
If you drop water on it long enough, you’ll begin to erode.
They can attribute so much power to this idea of like.
The structure and the resistance, we are the resistance.
Because like that says that we are.
Like they have all the power and we’re just trying to like, we’re just sitting over here, right?
A better conception is like, you know, we are producing these moments of interaction at every point.
And those moments can go in lots of different directions at any given point, right?
We don’t have to cede all of our again.
By virtue, we’ve imagined it, you know, and um, I said to my students right after the election.
And all of the things that made this happen existed.
Maybe we were paying less attention to them, but they existed.
That also means all of the things that we love and cherish.
Those still things still exist too, and like we like, it’s part of the flow.
And I think, yeah, I mean giving up all hope and like all of our power to.
To just say, well, it’s, you know, it’s too hard.
Doesn’t really create the world that I mean, that’s what they want.
That’s why they’re stressing us out.
That’s why they’re creating the chaos.
And because it it’s exhausting and it’s like, which is why I still say.
But but as you said like we can’t just do knitting, although I do have one of my masters students.
She just admitted her thesis and she was looking at crafts activists on Instagram.
Just looking at the ways in which people use crafts on on Instagram as a form of activism and.
Is that gonna like, end Trump?
You know, there’s something there.
Anything we’ve been talking about, things that we didn’t talk about.
I mean, there’s there’s plenty.
I think we could have probably talked for much longer, but don’t I think we’re good.
Well, I could totally talk with you forever.
I want to chat forever about all this.
Should they go to your website?
And by your book, yes, by your book.
Alright, well I’ll put links in the show note.
Thank you so much for sharing.
You have a question about Social Research.
You’d like me to tackle all my podcast or.
Um or Twitter, which I’ve never there and I don’t call it X and socio.
Mama, you could join the doing Social Research Facebook group to keep the conversation going.
There’s like five of us in there.
I’ll put links and references to everything mentioned today in the show notes.
Oh, you can also e-mail me at [email protected].
Special thanks to our sound editor Willow Rippey Young for making a sound amazing.
I’m Phyllis Rrippy, and this has been the doing Social Research podcast.