A high quality future
‘Premiumisation’ has been a buzzword in the food and drink industries for some time now. It started, at least in my experience, with booze. Years ago, I was working with a major spirits brand and they were telling me how people were buying less, but better.
The drivers of this trend appeared to be manifold.:
The high cost of living meant that people couldn’t afford to be undiscerning about what they drank. If they could afford one drink, they wanted it to be a good one.
The shift in status carriers from the real world to the digital meant that a good Insta post of you in a high-class bar with an expensive drink was a better earner than the ability to sink ten pints in the pub.
The growing focus on health and fitness meant that people didn’t want the calories or the hangover that prevented them going for a run/to the gym/to yoga the next morning.
The prevalence of smartphones meant that people were afraid of being drunk in public, because they might be photographed or videoed and that footage might end up anywhere - or everywhere.
While the young have returned somewhat to historical drinking habits after what looked like a rapid drop-off in consumption, data suggests it is only a return to trend. The long term trend is for fewer people to drink at all. And for many of those that do to drink better.
Beyond the Booze
This trend is visible in other places than drink. We can see it in meat consumption, for example. Less but better. Better for the animal. Better for the consumer. Better for the environment.
We see it in holidays. One of the massive growth trends I highlighted to a client a couple of years ago was the explosion in demand for five star hotels and luxury rooms. If we’re going to fly - and spend what little disposable income we have right now - we want it to be top class. It’s not the super-wealthy driving this trend, it’s the rest of us.
In spite of the Shein wave of super-low cost options, we’re also seeing it in fashion. Established brands trying to climb the quality ladder to appeal to more discerning customers seeking items that will last more than a single wash cycle.
We’re even seeing it in national policy. Look at China’s stated goal - and incredible progress - moving from volume manufacturing to engineering excellence and higher value. India is pursuing a similar path as part of its Viksit Barath programme.
Positive - And Continuing
For me this can only be seen as a positive. Making and buying less stuff, and repairing before recycling, is a critical component of tackling climate change. But it also just makes for a better quality of life. Things that feel good. Things that work well. Things that last. Things that have memories attached. More of this and less of the disposable culture feels like part of a very positive shift for humanity.
There are signs it will continue as well. Going back to food for a moment, some believe GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide are already driving changes in food culture. Even if you’re not taking weight loss injections, you’re likely to encounter people who are - especially amongst the most influential groups. And food manufacturers and retailers are already responding with meals that are smaller but more nutrient dense.
If you look at the (eventual) destination for the automotive industry, it’s self-driving cars. As long as we get the business model right (vertical integration between manufacturer and operator), there’s an enormous incentive to build fewer cars with a much higher rate of utilisation, but that last a very long time, that are repairable and upgradable.
Even my laptop is a good example: the company Framework makes laptops that are designed to be upgraded and repaired for a lifetime.
The Downsides of Quality
If I’m right about this trend - and I will question it in a moment - we should be clear that it isn’t an unmitigated positive. Our economy runs on commerce. Volume as much as value. Per Sam Vimes’s ‘Boots Theory’ of economics, more money flows through the system buying lots of low quality stuff than it does a smaller amount of quality goods.
I’m no economist but I think it would be fair to suggest that if we enabled everyone to buy fewer, higher quality goods, the economy would be smaller. Things that last need less frequent repair or replacement. And the likely higher cost of parts and servicing for these higher quality goods may well not offset that.
The flipside is that with a shrinking population in the latter half of the century, maybe we want to create less work but at higher value? Maybe we don’t need an economy as large with fewer people? Especially if we treat the people like we treat the goods, focusing as a society on raising people with high quality health and education, who can be productive and self-sufficient for a long time with lower costs on the state in terms of healthcare, benefits and crime.
But that’s maybe a post for another day.
AI Slop
Not all of the signals point to a high quality future.
Automation allows us to make more stuff with less effort. Some automation also enables higher quality. But this is not true of much of the output of AI tools right now.
Take the three automated sales pitches I received this week, all irrelevant to me. It’s not that I haven’t had irrelevant sales pitches from humans who haven’t done their homework before (or who were just given a call sheet and no expectation that they would research the people they were targeting). But AI has undoubtedly made it easier to spam large numbers of people with less of the embarrassment of screwing it up that comes from doing this as a human.
The same is true of a lot of AI-generated text, imagery, and video. I find people often measure these things by the wrong quality metrics. Just because the text is comprehensible and coherent doesn’t mean it’s a useful or enjoyable piece of prose. Just because the video resolution is great, and it looks plausibly like it could be from a Hollywood film, doesn’t mean it’s telling a story that we actually want to watch. There are human values here that for all their incredible sophistication, AI just doesn’t get yet.
I don’t want to sound like I’m knocking AI. I use tools like Gemini, Sora, and Claude Code daily. They are an incredible boon to my productivity. But they don’t replace the most important parts of me, in the work that I do.
Making a Mess
Slop isn’t just restricted to digital content. Disposable vapes for example, a product that should have been regulated out of existence before it was even conceived. The most appalling waste of resources.
Nonetheless, it feels like there is a enough of a movement towards quality to be called a trend. And enough momentum to take it seriously. And to consider that, in spite of its challenges, perhaps this is a future we should be pushing for.