LSN : Daily Signals : Stat: Visual shopping drives Gen Z decision-making

Natuurhuisje frames nature as the protagonist in new brand campaign

Natuurhuisje, The Netherlands

The Netherlands – Dutch holiday-rental platform Natuurhuisje has launched a campaign that positions nature as an active presence, patiently waiting for travellers seeking awe and quiet. Anchored by the tagline ‘Ik wacht op je’ (I’m waiting for you), the work casts the outdoors as a protagonist rather than a backdrop, inviting urban audiences to slow down and reconnect.

The television spot moves between macro and micro perspectives, from underwater shots to aerial forest views and light filtering through leaves, creating a visual language rooted in wonder rather than escape. The approach reflects insights showing that Natuurhuisje customers book specifically to experience nature and solitude away from crowds.

Running across TV, cinema, outdoor, radio and social, the campaign was developed by Amsterdam-based agency Gardeners. It differentiates the platform from mainstream holiday parks by emphasising the relative isolation of its 18,000 properties across Europe. By foregrounding proximity to nature, alongside its commitment to donate 5% of revenue to local biodiversity projects, Natuurhuisje addresses the gap between consumers’ desire for nature connection and accommodation that truly delivers it.

Our previous analysis shows a growing shift towards brands and consumers co-creating with nature. This spans realism-led, nature-rooted travel journeys, identified in the Souljourn section of our Optimised Odysseys report, as well as nature-augmented technology innovations redefining human-environment interaction, as highlighted in Symbiotic Signals.

Strategic opportunity

Consumers are seeking grounding. Move beyond nature as a backdrop and position it as an active participant – use the soundscape, colour palette, rhythm and atmosphere to shape your product or experience offering

Foresight Friday: Rose Coffey, senior foresight analyst

Every Friday, we offer an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, senior foresight analyst Rose Coffey explores nostalgia, post-truth and the time economy.

: We are only midway through January 2026, yet social media has already been gripped by nostalgia for a decade ago. Searches for ‘2016’ reportedly surged by 452% last week (source: BBC).

Across social media channels, artefacts pulled from personal digital archives are being resurfaced – grainy selfies complete with dip-dye hair, Kim Kardashian-era contour and Snapchat puppy filters.

This is a reflection of how a decade of media acceleration has reshaped our experience of time. Social platforms now operate as vast memory infrastructures. Cloud storage, camera rolls, Stories and algorithmic resurfacing mean the past is no longer recalled – it is repeatedly shown, collapsed into the present.

: Notably, 2016 was also the year ‘post-truth’ was named the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year (source: The Guardian), coinciding with the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election. In hindsight, these moments read as early inflection points, where political upheaval and platform-driven media dynamics began to fundamentally destabilise shared notions of truth, authority and temporal continuity.

Filip Ćustić, pi(x)el, 2022 at Somerset Houses’s Virtual Beauty exhibition. Photography by David Parry, UK

This distortion is also reshaping perception of the self. In The Great Beauty Blur macrotrend we explored how algorithmic culture flattens visual language while intensifying identity confusion. As personal archives grow, individuals are not just revisiting who they were, but also repeatedly confronting how they looked, presented and performed online.

: Together, these signals suggest the next phase of the time economy will be defined by how brands handle memory and identity in parallel. As consumers mine personal and cultural archives, nostalgia functions less as escapism and more as a tool for identity authorship – a way to curate continuity across fragmented timelines. For brands, the opportunity lies not in slowing time down, but in understanding how people are actively using the past to perform, remix and stabilise who they are now.

Quote of the week

'This reinvention of 2016 as some kind of joyous pinnacle, then, proves our relentless capacity for nostalgia, the ability to transform even the bad times into something worthy of reminiscing over from a distance of just a few years'

Katie Rosseinsky, senior culture and lifestyle writer (source: Independent)

Stat: Visual shopping drives Gen Z decision-making

Pinterest, Global

Global – Gen Z is redefining how we discover, curate and shop. According to Pinterest, 69% of Gen Z agree that visual results are more helpful than text or reviews when deciding what to buy – a clear signal that traditional product descriptions are losing influence.

According to the platform, users scroll ads 150% slower on Pinterest than on other social media apps, meaning brands appear as part of identity exploration rather than interruptions. AI tools, such as the new Pinterest Assistant (currently in beta in the US), further support visual-first decision-making, allowing users to explore products through conversation and images. Almost three-quarters (71%) of Pinterest users report discovering products and ideas they wouldn’t otherwise encounter, showing how visual-first discovery is reshaping purchasing behaviour.

Fashion discovery is evolving, guided by emotional cues and powered by generative AI. Next-gen tools such as Pinterest Assistant go beyond static product results, delivering styling suggestions aligned with consumers’ emotions, as highlighted in our Mood-matching Fashion report. For more on how discovery is evolving, head to our Innovation Debrief 2025: The New Age of Discovery report.

Strategic opportunity

Embed your brand in Gen Z’s visual discovery journeys by creating aesthetic, shoppable imagery and using AI-powered tools to go beyond algorithmic recommendations, delivering products that align with moods, trends and personal identity