JWT Intelligence Launches Future 100 Trends Report

The Innovation Group, the trends forecasting consultancy of J. Walter Thompson Intelligence, today released its Future 100: Trends and Change to Watch in 2016 report, featuring original analysis and insights on the most dynamic trends in the year ahead.

In the second annual report, the 100 trends are categorized across 10 sectors, including Culture, Tech and Innovation, Brands and Marketing, and Lifestyle, exploring everything from Post-hipster Visual Irony and Sustainability Nagging to Cannabis Culture and Holographic Healthcare.

“In 2015, we’ve seen that consumers are joining the dots in multiple areas of their lifestyles, taking a holistic approach to brands and consumption, and we expect this to strengthen in 2016,” says Lucie Greene, Worldwide Director of the Innovation Group. “Diet, beauty, wellbeing, mind, body, fitness: all are viewed by the consumer as one big ecosystem to maintain. Brands, once judged on their desirability and products, are now being judged on their value systems, on whether they are innovators, on whether they are promising to change the world.”

As trends and innovation continue to change rapidly, The Future 100 report helps brands preview emerging trends and understand the cultural shifts that have inspired them, providing context for why these changes are happening, and analyzing what this means for brands who want to stay on the cutting edge of what engaged and informed global consumers care about. 

Trend highlights from each sector include:

Culture 

Un-tabooing Womanhood — Menstruation, leg and underarm hair, underwear hygiene, and various other previously taboo aspects of femininity are being unearthed and brought to the forefront by fourth-wave feminism, new women’s interest media, and a fresh string of outspoken heroes and blogs.

Tech and Innovation

Silicon Valley’s Next Frontier: Infrastructure — Public infrastructure is emerging as the latest grand utopian ambition for the tech elite, as Hyperloop Technologies advances its plans and Google builds new infrastructure for the wired city.

Travel and Hospitality 

Cuba — Cuba’s tourism market is set to take off: Travelers are rushing to see the last of the old Cuba, even as brands are competing to be the first in on the promise of Cuba.

Brands and Marketing 

Neuromarketing — A buzzword for years now in the agency world, neuromarketing is finally moving into the realm of serious science and yielding actionable predictive insights for brands and forcing more traditional market researchers to take note.

Food and Drink 

Inhalable Cocktails –– This new exotic trend in cocktail culture is allowing drinkers to absorb alcohol via the eyes and respiratory system.

Beauty 

Freckles — Part of fashion’s general celebration of all things redheaded, freckles are a must-have and with new products consumers add freckles where they don’t appear naturally, consumers are now celebrating individualism in all of its full-freckled glory.

Retail 

Satellite Retail –– Retailers are turning to data gathered from satellites to track traffic to stores in real time.

Health 

Stool Banking — Consumers are now storing samples of their personal bacterial ecosystems —also known as fecal matter — for future use in new medical treatments.

Lifestyle 

Grow-with-You Toys — New toys enabled with artificial intelligence can respond to a child’s vocabulary, interests and other traits, and evolve along with the child as they grow.

Luxury 

Extreme Dining — The latest dining experiences to entice luxury consumers are extreme, and about accessing remote, rare and theatrical settings amid the wonders of nature.

To access the full report, including all 100 trends, see the Trend Reports section of the newly relaunched JWTIntelligence.com. Find an executive summary of the report on the J. Walter Thompson Intelligence SlideShare.