TR.BIZ: 4.16.2026

From Pinterest's non-tech move to death doulaing, this is your late-mid-week check-in 💫

NEW: Q1 analysis Trend Report: Trend Report™ is available to download here.

Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Report™. Today, we’re covering Pinterest’s offline experience, Artsy and Artnet joining forces, death doulas trending, clowns coming back, and Madonna’s dancefloor play.

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🩹 Branded: Pinterest’s great weekend at Coachella

If you’re new here, let it be know that — in this house — we stan Pinterest. The platform continues to be a leader not just in trend watching but in meeting the cultural vibe (a la: being measured with AI, despite hiccups). How do they put this in action? We saw a great example of this via their Coachella activation, which was very much not what one would expect: they offered an offline, phone-free experience, playing into tech fatigue while helping people truly be-in-the-moment at this year’s festival (which, as Dayna ⚡ Castillo and I were DM-ing about, felt more designed for people at home versus irl attendees). To better understand how they came up with this, I was able to briefly chat with Sara Pollack, Global Head of Consumer Marketing at the Pinterest, about the activation. Here’s what she had to say —

What was the process of settling on an “offline” experience?

Coachella is one of the most documented and broadcasted events in the world, yet there’s a growing fatigue with always being on. And that’s exactly the tension we wanted to lean into. People come to our platform to figure out who they want to be, what they want to wear, and how they want to show up – but the goal isn’t to keep them scrolling. It’s to help them live their life. That idea is at the heart of our latest brand campaign: the best thing you can find online is a reason to live your life offline. And Coachella felt like the most natural place to bring that to life.

So we asked ourselves: what would it look like to create a space designed for presence? What happens when you take phones out of the equation? How do people move, interact and create differently? From there, we got very intentional about the design. Guests lock their phones away at the entrance. Inside, people can create custom charms and experiment with beauty looks inspired by our festival trends using products from our partner e.l.f. Cosmetics, and step into a playful, “poptimistic” photo moment. There’s also a printed “Joy Guide” they can personalize and even mail to themselves, so they leave with something physical from the experience.

Why do you think young people are attracted to being phone-free right now? What did attendees think?

Nearly half of U.S. teens say they spend too much time on social media, with many believing it harms people their age – and we’ve seen that awareness growing, especially with Gen Z. When everything is content, it can start to shape your IRL experience. People still want inspiration and discovery, but they also want space to actually experience their lives. At Pinterest, we’re not trying to keep people on the platform – we want to inspire them to act on what they find.

At Coachella, there was a beat of hesitation when people put their phones away, but then they eased into it. People were more present with each other and stayed in the moment longer. Attendees said it felt surprisingly freeing, that it was easier to meet new people and strike up conversations they might not have otherwise. One of the things that stuck with me: attendees said they didn’t realize how often they reached for their phone until it wasn’t there.

There’s also something deeper happening around identity. Being offline, even briefly, gives people the freedom to explore who they are without that immediate feedback loop. And that’s often where the most interesting creativity comes from.

We can expect the same buzz this weekend around the festival, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more swarm to Pinterest’s experience given the events of last weekend. While Bieber watching YouTube was kinda funny, it certainly emphasized something we all feel: we gotta get offline and live in the moment, which plays into the brand’s new message of living instead of posting so you can better understand who you are. Now that’s something we need to pin to the back of our heads.

📲 Tech Talk: Artsy and Artnet join forces

Some very interesting art-tech-economics news: “Artnet and online art platform Artsy are coming together under a single leadership structure. Chief executive officer Jeffrey Yin will lead the unified company, with Beowolff Capital founder and CEO Andrew Wolff as chairman. Both platforms will retain distinct websites and brands.” While I love both of these platforms for different reasons, my immediate reaction was that finances feel like they’ll be even more central to their respective worlds. Is that bad? Not necessarily, but I big sales only mean so much when little artists and little gallerists are struggling given the space’s becoming consumed by vampiric tech. Is this something they’re considering? I posed this question to Yin: here’s his take —

We have an exciting opportunity to better support both galleries and the artists they champion, especially at a moment when many across the industry are under significant pressure. By bringing Artsy and Artnet together, we can build a more connected ecosystem for the art world online—one that combines market intelligence, discovery, commerce, journalism, and new operational tools to help galleries expand visibility, reach new collectors, and grow more sustainably. That matters especially for small and mid-size galleries, which are often more exposed to market shifts, operating with lean teams and limited bandwidth, and doing some of the most important work in the art world by supporting emerging and underrecognized artists. We want to make their jobs easier by making gallery operations more efficient, so they can spend more time focused on the artists they champion. And because artists are at the center of this ecosystem, we’re equally focused on using our content and audience reach across both brands to help introduce artists’ works to new audiences and give galleries a larger platform than many could build on their own.

Here’s the thing: art — like television, like book publishing, like fashion — is an industry, and it is good that such forces dwelling in between culture and the market are coming in to assist the smaller in the market. A micro-theme reflecting the macro theme of this decade is that the art world has been a bit battered, which some say has let up in 2026 but very much seems to not-be the case as the K-economy messes around here too. I hope such a fusion really does make the working artist and gallerist’s job easier given too many faves have shuttered in the past few years. Here’s to keeping a little hope in the art world alive 🥲

👀 Trend Watchers, I: Death doulacore

Did you hear that Nicole Kidman is becoming a death doula? She is! This follows the death of her mother, which made the actor think, “I wish there was these people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care.” Mind you, just two months ago, the director Chloe Zhao went viral for also saying she was going to become a death doula, to help her better cope with life’s end. This is funny because…this is exactly a learning, prediction, etc. that I explained in the brand new, you-should-get-it, Q1 2026 Trend Report: Trend Report™ as it ladders into a few trending subjects of the past few months. Here’s how I see it, directly pulled from the Report Report™ —