JWT's 100 things to watch in 2013

JWT, the world’s best-known marketing communications brand, today released its annual list of 100 Things to Watch for the year ahead.

“Our list spotlights developments that are bubbling up across sectors, including travel, technology, food, retail and sustainability,” says Ann Mack, director of trendspotting at JWT. “It also reflects broader shifts that we’re forecasting for the year ahead, including the rise in Peer Power, Predictive Personalization and Intelligent Objects.”

Many of JWT’s Things to Watch are technology-centric, including the proliferation of “appcessories,” digital ecosystems, flexible screens and responsive Web design. The list also includes new foods or ingredients to watch (faux meat, teff), new types of goods or businesses (quiet products, shopping hotels), new behaviors (mindful living, privacy etiquette) and ideas with the potential to ladder up to bigger trends.

JWT’s 100 Things to Watch in 2013, unranked and in alphabetical order (descriptions of each can be found in the “2013 and beyond” section of JWTIntelligence.com):

1. 3D Bioprinting
2. Adult Playgrounds
3. African Tech Stars
4. Allergen-Free
5. Alternative Brand Currencies
6. Ambushed by Amazon
7. Appcessories
8. The Arabic Web
9. B2C/P2P Partnerships
10. Bee Venom
11. Biometric Authentication
12. Blocking Social Media Bores
13. Chia Seeds
14. Click-and-Collect Shopping
15. “Cloaking”
16. Coaching Brands
17. Cool Techie Camps
18. Crowdsourced Translation
19. Cutting out the Middleman
20. Cyber War
21. Dads in the Aisles
22. Data Scientists: The New Hotshots
23. Decline of Chinese Bling
24. Desalination
25. Detoxifying Life
26. Digital Ecosystems
27. Drones
28. ecoATM
29. Egg Freezing
30. Emotion Recognition
31. The End of Voicemail
32. Faux Meat
33. Fitness Beyond the Gym
34. Flexible Screens
35. Food Sharing
36. Frontier Markets
37. G20 Devolves to G-Zero
38. Gender-Blurred Toys
39. Geofencing
40. Green Growth
41. Handwriting = Hieroglyphics
42. Hotels in Africa
43. Human-Centered Tech
44. Humane Food
45. Hyper-Personalized Customer Service
46. Impact Sourcing
47. Imperfection
48. Individual Attention
49. Instant-Erase Apps
50. JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out)
51. Live-Streaming Life
52. Low-Cost Robots
53. Low-Tech Device Charging
54. Media That Gets to Know You
55. Medical Smartphones
56. Menu-Free Dining
57. Midcalorie Foods
58. Mindful Living
59. Mobile-Optimized Goes Mainstream
60. MOOC Stars
61. Nature As Antidote
62. Neurotechnology
63. New Digital Royalty
64. News Bites
65. NFC Tags
66. Objects With Attitude
67. Offset Thinking
68. Online Groceries
69. Paperless Education
70. Passwords 2.0
71. Patchwork Earnings
72. Personal Data Ownership
73. Prime Time for Second Screen
74. Privacy Etiquette
75. Quiet Products
76. Reduced-Guilt Candy
77. Responsive Web Design
78. Retailers Enable Recycling
79. River Cruising
80. Self-Service
81. Serialized Digital Fiction
82. Set Jetting
83. Shopping Hotels
84. Social Media Hacks
85. Standup Desks
86. Stress-Monitoring Apps
87. Sugru
88. Tablet Shopping
89. Tech-Enabled Farm-to-Fork
90. Teff
91. Trade School
92. Trust Ratings
93. User-Based Insurance
94. Variable Pricing
95. Vegetable Boxes
96. Vertical Farming
97. Video Games As Art
98. Window Shopping
99. Wireless Charging
100. Yogurt Shops

This is the seventh year JWT is publishing such a list, a complement to JWT’s annual 10 Trends forecast. Some of the things JWT has spotlighted in the past include Crowdsourced Learning, Gen Z and Smart Clothing (in 2012); P-to-P Car Sharing, YouTube the Broadcaster and The Nail Polish Economy (in 2011); Mobile Money, Coconut Water and Bacon Everywhere (in 2010); Lady Gaga, Crowdfunding, WikiLeaks and Gluten-Free (in 2009); Radical Transparency and Staycations (in 2008); and Barack Obama, Jennifer Hudson, Companies Going Green and Age Shuffling (in 2007).