Demand is increasing for products with ingredients from regenerative practices (from leather belts to breakfast cereals) and a strong carbon story. Regenerative Travel is a thing now.

Consumers will better understand, and expect, CSR and “sustainability” goals to include regenerative practices, carbon metrics, inclusivity, and ACTION towards modernizing and diversifying American (and other) farms and farming practices.

Netflix (Party) and Disney+ (GroupWatch) launched ways to stream their content together but alone.

Online streaming platforms quickly added video and “group” or “party” functionality. Long-term, these changes could impact the sharing economy — for example, people gather together in-person to watch movies streamed and projected on walls and garages instead of going to movie theaters.

As we live in a world of (perceived) scarcity, people’s expectations are rising for pricing, value and values. The old marketing trope of “More for Less” must also now include some indicators of “better.”

From Whole Foods to Walmart, expectations for what “better” means are rising — and transparency is king in communicating these factors about every practice of how a brand gets things done, no matter the price point of the product.

Initial phases of the pandemic saw increased levels of panic buying, anxieties that school systems didn’t have alternative plans, and general frustration that the federal government didn’t have pandemic contingency plans.

From grocery shopping and airline travel to healthcare and school systems, people’s expectations have risen around established safety knowledge and protocols, and for how the institutions around us should and could be better prepared for whatever comes next.

“The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the lack of visibility many organizations had into their offshore suppliers and manufacturers, leading to a call for greater supply chain resilience and traceability.”

A “call for greater traceability has led many businesses to consider moving pieces of their supply chain to local regions — for U.S. companies, that means back to North America.”

The barriers to adoption of carbon-friendly farming practices are melting away. Major players like Cargill and General Mills are making moves with pilots of regenerative operations, lawmakers are paying more attention to ESG metrics, and even co-ops like Land O’Lakes are working to stabilize carbon markets and make them accessible to farmers.

Companies – and even whole industries – look for ways (new and old) to win in the carbon game. Terms like “carbon neutral” become marketing gold. As the systems for monetization are streamlined, whole industries will look for ways to get credit for carbon.

While people stayed home and cooked almost every meal for a year, they also accelerated the growth of emerging markets like plant-based proteins, immunity boosters, and foods certified as “regenerative organic.”

Americans are expert grocery shoppers now – they have a whole new set of evaluation criteria for what they purchase to put in their bodies. Categories once as simply explained as “vegan” now face complex messaging from plant-based to alternative meats, field-grown to lab-cultured. “Organic” has catalyzed a debate about soil and water. Skepticism is at an all time high.

While caseloads in the U.S. are decreasing, various shortages in goods and services show no sign of slowing pace. Humans have become acutely aware of how interconnected systems rely on each other, and how disturbances can disrupt the availability of seemingly unrelated supplies. 

Building materials, the adhesive used to attach handles to paper grocery bags, living room furniture, and (really) almost anything imported from ketchup packets to kitchen tiles to steel parts face supply issues well into 2021. Unsurprisingly, the cost of building a house has increased exponentially.