§ Field Notes · a behavioural research library
Field Notes.
Not a blog. A growing body of disciplined research on how to read European markets through behaviour: the evidence we build on, how Cadence is built, what the continent is doing, and what it means for a brand. Every figure names its source.
Foundations
The evidence we build on, and the discipline about where it stops.
0001 Music predicts markets. We asked what it predicts next. We did not invent this idea. We found robust science, tested it ourselves, learned where it breaks, and built a product that stays inside the evidence. 0002 A survey is a dot. Momentum is a slope. Surveys are excellent at measuring attitudes. Behaviour is often better at catching momentum, because it is observed as it happens rather than asked weeks later. The two answer different questions. 0003 We backtested our own product four times. Every test failed. We pre-registered whether music predicts demand, tested it four ways, and it failed four times. We published every result, including the failures. Negative results are still results.
Methods
How Cadence is built: one comparable measure, reconstructed over time.
0004 To compare eleven markets, you need one ruler. Raw signals cannot be compared across countries. Different chart sizes, languages and brand footprints distort every measure. This is how we put a number in Spain on the same footing as a number in Sweden. 0005 We rebuilt two years of Europe using one engine. Almost nothing moved. We reconstructed eight quarters across eleven markets on a single method, with a filter that ignores one-quarter noise. The finding is stability, and one archetype that did not exist a year ago.
Applications
The engine in market: what Europe is doing, and what a brand should do about it.
0006 A market read is not one instruction. The same quarter points four desks four ways. Grocery, luxury, automotive, finance. Split this quarter’s France read by desk and the same data says attack on value, lead on desire, firm up premium, and hold on trust, all at once. 0007 France and Germany are the same archetype. They feel nothing alike. Both markets just reached Resilient, the felt recovery running ahead of the economy. They got there by opposite roads, and that gap is the whole case for reading the texture, not just the label. 0008 Europe is trading down. Not by the same amount. Trade-down is the most consistent behaviour in Europe this quarter, and the least uniform. The same move, the discounter against the national grocer, runs at wildly different intensity market to market. 0009 The neobank wave breaks differently in every market. Here’s where it wins, stalls and recedes. One structural trend, three local outcomes. The neobank wave is the clearest case of why a continent-wide behaviour almost never becomes a continent-wide strategy.