Research
Revealed: The way hot trends of 2008
By Diego Vasquez
Jan 4, 2008 - 1:07:03 AM

If you’re not sure what lifestyle curators, Prius homes or cooperative consumption are, better start Googling them. According to JWT, the country’s biggest ad agency, those are three things to watch for in 2008. Each year the agency releases a list of people, places, products, services and shifts that will help define the coming year. JWT hopes that by identifying these things, it can help determine larger patterns that will shape people’s lives in the coming years. This year, once again, technology is a common thread throughout the list, with terms such as Gphone (Google’s rumored answer to Apple’s iPhone), mobile technology explosion and eclutter making the top 80. People to watch for include British actress Keira Knightley (“Atonement”), Chinese hurdler and Olympic hopeful Liu Xiang and French president Nicholas Sarkozy. Ann Mack, director of trendspotting at JWT, talks to Media Life about how to spot a trend, eco-fatigue and other things that will help define the new year.

In our daily work, we're constantly mining and analyzing information out in the public domain, conducting qualitative and quantitative research, and talking to influencers, experts and consumers.

That's where the list begins. We then reach out to our worldwide network of some 100 trend scouts, giving them a preliminary list to react and add to. It's a month-long process that stirs a lot of healthy debate. Our New York-based group finalizes the list in the last weeks of December.
 

Just look at last year’s list and you’ll see that the vast majority of the 70 Things to Watch for 2007 were hits rather than misses.

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize; Jennifer Hudson won the Oscar; Ohio State’s Greg Oden led his team to a Big Ten Championship; and Amy Winehouse received six Grammy nominations, not to mention hundreds of headlines due to her hard-partying ways.

In terms of technology, Google's domination continued, and internet TV, the business of social networking and RSS feeds gained in popularity. And people were watching more mobile video, thanks to the iPhone, both of which made last year’s list.
 

Two of the more interesting subjects are "Facebook suicide" and "eco-fatigue." What do those mean and why will they be big in 2008?

Eco-fatigue: With so many brands using “green” these days, the word has been so overused and misused that it has lost all meaning. It’s getting increasingly hard (and tiring) for people to decipher between brands that are truly environmentally friendly and those just going through the motions of going green.

Facebook suicide: We’re predicting that a spate of remorse over radical transparency will hit as online exhibitionists prepare to enter higher education or the workforce. With admissions offices and HR departments increasingly using the web to vet prospective candidates, a good chunk of the incriminating material whirling around the cybersphere will be expunged.

MySpace pages will be cleaned up. Facebook suicides (deactivating accounts) will be committed (at least temporarily). YouTube videos will go dark. And companies like Reputation Defender, which promises to search out and destroy all inaccurate, inappropriate, hurtful and slanderous information on its clients, will cash in.

The CW's low-rated "Gossip Girl" is one of the only TV shows or movies to make the list. Why did you choose that show?

It’s become a cult hit among not only teens who are craving the next-generation “O.C.,” but among twentysomething and thirtysomething adults who find guilty pleasure in watching the Upper East Side, upper-class scandalous lives of the private-school elite. For the latter, it’s “Sex and the City” meets “Beverly Hills 90210.”

Not only that, but the product placement is fantastic, with the privileged constantly connecting via their branded mobiles and a recent episode featuring Victoria Secret as a part of the plot line.

Another thing to watch for is the third screen (mobile screens) rivaling the first screen (TV). Why will this happen?

 As mobile technology explodes, the viewing experience will improve significantly. And let’s face it: we’re living our lives increasingly on the go, so the mobile will provide an easy way to catch up on back episodes of “Lost” or “The Office.”

Within the next few years, look for more video content to be made specifically for the mobile. Shorter than 30-minute TV episodes and longer than short snippets, the videos will hold attention for as long as public-transportation commutes.  

Any topics that didn't make the list that were very close?

A couple examples: A Whitney Houston comeback was nixed because it was deemed too American a thing to watch. And Indian actress Sonam Kapoor was replaced with Deepika Padukone.

As I said, a healthy debate ensued among our trend scouts worldwide about the list.

Many of the hot people -- like British actress Kiera Knightly, Spanish actor Javier Bardem and French president Nicholas Sarkozy -- are foreigners. Can we read something into this international appeal, or is it just a coincidence?

 It’s more a virtue of having a global network of trend scouts. Being a part of a 10,000-strong, worldwide advertising network, we strive to be as global as possible when compiling this list. In reaching out to them for their feedback and picks, we are able to be truly international.

What sort of things should we watch for during the 2008 Olympics?

It’s more who rather than what. U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson and Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang to be among the athletes to watch during the Beijing Summer Games.

What's the most obscure reference on the list?

There are a couple. De-teching is this idea of removing yourself (if only for a day or a few hours) from all of your technology (your PC, iPod, mobile phone, BlackBerry, etc.).

These gadgets are supposed to make our lives easier, but quite often we find ourselves becoming slaves to them. You find yourself thumbing away on your BlackBerry on a family field trip. Or taking a business call at the most inopportune times. In other words, you’re not living in the now. You become a slave to the dinging or vibration of an email or text message. You become very reactive.

In de-teching, you turn off your devices and liberate yourself from these tech shackles. You find yourself communicating or entertaining yourself the old fashioned way. 

And then there’s mobulimia. There’s a new security blanket in town: the mobile phone. Sufferers are glued to their gadgets, thumbs twitching until they can send or answer a text; their attention wanes as soon as their phone vibrates.