Aljan De Boer

Why organisations work with Aljan de Boer

• A structured research model, not trend commentary. TrendsActive’s trend model draws on two decades of social science research – psychology, sociology, anthropology – to convert cultural signals into strategic implications. Audiences receive a framework, not a list of observations.
• Direct access to what 400+ CMOs are actually doing. As Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth, de Boer works inside a practitioner network of senior marketing leaders navigating the same pressures he describes. His insight is tested against real decisions, not desk research.
• The IRG Growth and Impact Studies as evidence base. His talk on humanized growth draws on two large-scale global studies produced by IRG in partnership with the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford – giving commercial teams a peer-reviewed foundation for strategies that go beyond shareholder primacy.
• Translation from complexity to commercial action. Where other trend speakers describe what is happening, de Boer’s focus is on what organisations should do about it – specifically for brand strategy, customer understanding, and growth planning at C-suite level.
• Named-brand consulting experience behind the research. TrendsActive’s client list includes Disney, Vodafone, and Hugo Boss – organisations where the same analytical approach has been stress-tested against real strategic choices.

Biography highlights

• Head of Inspiration, TrendsActive – Netherlands-based trend consultancy applying social science to brand and business strategy
• Community Director, Institute for Real Growth – leads CMO leadership programme and connects a global community of 400+ senior marketing leaders
• IRG Impact Study, produced in partnership with Saïd Business School, University of Oxford – foundational research underpinning his humanized growth framework
• Board member, Dutch Platform of Innovative Marketing, for close to a decade
• Regular speaker and moderator, Dutch Marketing Awards; three-time winner, Best of MIE
• Senior Lecturer (Hoofddocent), Iris Academy; advisory and teaching roles in marketing and trends

Biography

Brands lose relevance not because their products deteriorate, but because the people they serve quietly change around them. Aljan de Boer has spent the past two decades helping commercial leaders see that shift before it becomes a crisis – using social science, not sentiment analysis, as the primary instrument.

As Head of Inspiration at TrendsActive, de Boer works with a methodology that draws on psychology, sociology, and anthropology to decode fundamental changes in how people think, trust, and make decisions. The consultancy’s client list runs to major international brands across consumer, financial services, and technology sectors. Its trend model is designed not to describe what is fashionable but to identify what is structurally different about the human context organisations are operating in.

Alongside his work at TrendsActive, de Boer serves as Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth, where he leads a global CMO leadership programme and connects a practitioner network of more than 400 senior marketing leaders. The IRG’s work – including its Growth and Impact Studies, developed in partnership with the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford – provides the empirical backbone for his argument that durable commercial growth requires creating value for colleagues, customers, communities, and capital markets simultaneously. He calls this humanized growth; the research quantifies why it outperforms narrower models.

The result is a speaker who brings an evidence base to questions that typically attract only opinion: what is actually changing in consumer behaviour, why geopolitical and generational pressure shifts brand expectations at a structural level, and what a marketing or commercial leadership team should concretely do next.

Key speaking topics

• Sociocultural trends and brand strategy
• Humanized growth and multi-stakeholder value creation
• Consumer behaviour under economic and geopolitical pressure
• Generation Z and generational change
• Future-proofing organisations through social science
• ESG and sustainability as commercial strategy
• The polycrisis and its implications for business

Ideal for

• CMOs and senior marketing leadership teams
• Chief Commercial Officers and growth strategy leaders
• Executive committees preparing for medium-term strategic planning
• Corporate conference programmes focused on brand relevance, customer strategy, or commercial resilience

Audience outcomes

• A structured framework for identifying which sociocultural shifts are commercially significant, and which are noise
• Clearer understanding of the specific psychological, sociological, and generational forces reshaping customer and employee expectations
• Language and evidence for making the case internally for human-centred growth strategies, grounded in the IRG research base
• Sharper perspective on what Generation Z’s formative context – climate anxiety, political polarisation, pandemic – means for brand and product strategy
• A practical lens for translating societal complexity into near-term decisions on brand positioning, customer engagement, and organisational priorities