Getty sell their images to agencies who are designing campaigns and so what buyers search for reveals something of the zeitgeist.Agency creative teams have well developed instincts for what is fresh and current. Forget the focus groups, analyse Getty search tends.
“Stand out from the crowd”,”rebellious” and “bold choices” have spiked in search on their website by over 100/200/300 % respectively. As Getty put it as “we become increasingly inundated with mass replicated imagery and aggregated articles our appetite for a unique point of view and stand out visuals increases” This is a trend they call Outsider in
Another telling trend is Messthetics, which is a different side of the same coin: as Getty put it ” a breakaway from predictability …the imagery is messy, grimy sweaty, visceral… it comes from our desire to break away from the sanitation and predictability of everyday life and revel in the physicality of human nature .” Think of the success of campaigns to sell more ugly fruit and veg.
In retrospect the rise of Trump and Sanders seems all too obvious …