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We prioritize
humanity in business

Ultimately, organizations are here to fulfill human needs and create value for society. If you don’t do that well enough, you are not in business. That means organizational success depends on how much it can understand people (employees and customers) and serve them in a more relevant and meaningful way than your competitors. And yet, it’s challenging to do that right. That is why we help organizations rediscover the deeply human ways they can connect with people and society. Our approach involves utilizing sociocultural trends, which we have captured in our proprietary Human Context Circle TM. These trends help you to gain a better understanding of the human context, make sense of societal shifts, and human-proof the future of your organization. A future is human-proof when organizational, marketing, innovation, and communication strategies are inspired by and resonate with deep human needs, values, and behavior.

Our
team

We’re a boutique consultancy, founded 20 years ago, focused on enhancing marketing through research, trends, and creativity. Our diverse team, spanning social science, psychology, design, and management, specializes in human-centric approaches to branding, marketing, and organizational issues. We’re a sincere, impactful team dedicated to smart and relevant solutions for our customers.

Signals

In our blog, we track global events, interpreting their implications for brands and organizations based on sociocultural insights.

Our
clients

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A bi-weekly newsletter in which we keep track of what’s going on in the world and translate based on our sociocultural knowledge, what this means to brands.

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist

Kees his purpose is to help ambitious leaders and brands to human-proof their business. In 2003 he founded TrendsActive, a trend consultancy enabling brands to become more human centric.

Kees consults global brands like

  • Disney
  • The Coca-Cola Company
  • Asics
  • Discovery Channel
  • Swiss Life
  • Vodafone

and many more.

Next to being the founder of TrendsActive, he is also initiator of the first academic trend master for executives at the University of Utrecht and is initiator of various trend studies and white papers on subjects like trust, meaning, visual culture & generations.

Aljan De Boer

Keynote speaker

Aljan has been widely recognized as an inspiring professional speaker on the critical trends that will shape society in the decades to come. He works as the Head of Inspiration at TrendsActive, a trend consultancy from the Netherlands using social science to human-proof business decision for brands like

  • Disney
  • Vodafone
  • Hugo Boss
  • ASR
  • Rabobank

Next to his role at TrendsActive he is the Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth where he inspires and connects a global community of +400 CMOs.  

He has been on the board of the Dutch Platform of Innovative Marketing for almost a decade. Regular speaker and moderator for the Dutch Marketing Awards and 3 times winner of the best of MIE. 

Kim Pillen

Consultant

Before Kim Pillen started as a trend consultant at TrendsActive, she worked for four years as a creative strategist at Dept. For brands such as Philips, bol.com, Beiersdorf, JBL, and the Consumers’ Association, she built (online) campaign, brand, and social media strategies. After four years, she decided that she wanted to better understand people and society in order to advise brands more effectively. That’s how she ended up at TrendsActive. Here, she can do what she loves most: digging into people’s needs and then working with brands to see how and where they can be relevant and meaningful.

Sjoerd Raaijmakers

Associate Partner

Sjoerd is a purpose-driven creative entrepreneur with over 20 years of strategic and operational executive expertise in the media, entertainment, and agency industries. He led VICE Media in Benelux and the EMEA region for 15 years. Sjoerd is skilled in strategy development, digitalization, and human-centered content development, production, distribution, and monetization.

Mina Baginova

Strategy Consultant

As a social anthropologist, Mina leverages social sciences to solve big questions and build impactful strategies for diverse industries and organizations globally. With experience in over 23 cities, she uses cultural and behavioral insights and various frameworks to decode human behavior and society, both deeply and broadly.

Douwe Knijff

Researcher

Douwe is fascinated by how people work. With a background in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (Bachelor) and Psychology (Master) and an analytical mind he tries figure out how societal shifts manifest themselves through social culture and human behaviour.

Meera Radhoe

Junior Trend Consultant

Meera is a young creative who strives to inspire, create, and think ahead of the curve. Equipped with her background in market research and fashion, she has developed a deep passion for contemporary subcultures, foresight, and understanding the mindset of people along with cultural shifts.

Nicola Baxter

Finance

Nicola Baxter has worked for over 17 years at GfK, after which she became Head of Finance and Managing Director at Brand Trust GmbH in Nuremberg, Germany. Since 2019, she manages the finances of TrendsActive. She holds an MBA from Technische Hochschule Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm.

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist