JWT forecast: Top 10 trends in 2013

Consumers are more likely to get hooked on recreational pursuits, destressing activities and new technology in 2013, according to a report by JWT, one of the world’s largest marketing and advertising companies.

In its eighth annual forecast, JWT named top 10 trends that will shape consumer behavior and mind-set this year, based on insights from the response of over 1,000 adult survey respondents from the United States and the United Kingdom.

In the report released early December, “new technology continues to take center stage, as we see major shifts tied to warp-speed developments in mobile, social and data technologies,” JWT said in a statement online.

“Many of our trends reflect how businesses are driving, leveraging or counteracting technology’s omnipresence in our lives, and how consumers are responding to its pull,” it added.

The report also highlights the impact of stress and happiness on well-being and how businesses are addressing it.

The top 10 trends are:

1. Play as a Competitive Advantage: Adults will seek for themselves unstructured playtime and recreational pursuits to balance out their busy lives. Playtime isn’t just for kids anymore as adults begin realizing that unstructured, purposeless activity stimulates imagination, creativity, and innovation—all competitive advantages.

2. The Super Stress Era: Stress is mounting across the globe. As it gets more widely recognized as a serious and costly issue, governments, employers and brands alike will ramp up efforts to help prevent or reduce it.

3. Intelligent Objects: Everyday objects will get smarter and technology will be embedded into everything: from shirts, to watches, to glasses. As ordinary items become more interactive, these intelligent, tech-infused objects will help us to easily measure, navigate, and augment the world around us.

4. Predictive Personalization: As we generate more data than ever and data analysis gets more sophisticated, brands will be able to predict what a customer needs or wants. Predictive Personalization will usher in very precisely tailored offers and communications.

5. The Mobile Fingerprint: Our smartphones are evolving to become wallets, keys, health consultants, and more. Soon they’ll become de facto fingerprints, our identity all in one place.

6. Sensory Explosion: As our lives get more virtual, we’ll place a premium on sensory stimulation. Brands will look for more ways to amp up stimuli as consumers will expect more potent products and experiences.

7. Everything is Retail: Shopping is shifting from an activity that takes place in physical and online stores. Transactions will take place in new places and on new platforms, thanks largely to mobile technology. Brands must get increasingly creative in where and how they sell their goods.

8. Peer Power: The peer-to-peer marketplace is expanding in size and scope, moving beyond goods to wide range of services. We’ll see it start to upend major industries, from hospitality and education, to tourism and transportation.

9. Going Private in Public: In an age when living publicly is being the default, people are finding creative ways to carve out private places in their lives.

10. Health & Happiness: Hand in Hand: More of us will see happiness is the key to achieving good health, and vice versa. We’ll increasingly understand that happiness and health go hand in hand.