How to Live Simultaneously in Two Worlds, Digital and Earthly

The marketing and communications chain JWT has continued its eight-year tradition this year by publishing a list of trends that will influence consumer behavior in 2013.

According to the Zagreb agency Studio marketing JWT, the local branch of this global network, more than seventy JWT planners from 24 countries participated in the research, along with interviews with over 15 experts and influential professionals from the retail, media, technology, urban planning, psychology, and education sectors. The result of this engagement of global experts is a list of ten trends that will most significantly impact consumer lifestyles, and thus their purchasing habits, which will greatly assist marketing heads in deciding where to direct communication. The story will, quite predictably, revolve around social networking, but also a new perspective on health and the understanding of happiness for consumers who are revising their life values due to depleted household budgets. But let’s take it step by step.

Playing Against Stress According to JWT’s report, a niche with potential in the coming year is that of games for children, specifically so-called unstructured, free play. Such time spent with children serves as a counterbalance to modern technological games, the boom of which is a result of organized, packed schedules of parents. Games that encourage creativity, imagination, and innovation will be the focus of families who have realized that children indeed need a break from the harsh reality. This is precisely the reason why JWT has included stress on the list of trends. According to them, this ‘era of super stress’ that is coming is increasingly recognized as a serious health and economic problem, so governments, employers, and brands will have to do much more to prevent or reduce it. Clearly, companies that manage to do this with products and services that are, as the English would say, ‘on budget’, will have an advantage, as the lack of money and insecurity are fertile ground for nasty stress.

Hi-tech at Its Peak While some companies may tackle these problems, those in the technology sector will face the challenge of how to transform ordinary, conventional items into hi-tech devices or so-called smart objects. The trend, JWT notes, is that everyday items are evolving into smart technological devices with expanded functionality.
– As more and more ordinary items become interactive, intelligent objects, our interaction with them becomes more interesting, enjoyable, and useful – they state, adding that a great example of this is the Google Glasses project. Namely, this is a project that will fully come to life in 2014, but its refinement and preparation for public launch are expected next year. Preparation is indeed necessary as high-tech glasses provide a new perspective on a world where you literally wear your computers on your nose. In line with the development of sophisticated high-tech items, ways will be developed for brands to discover what consumers want. The trend of complete personalization indicates that data analysis will become more efficient, and consumers will generate more measurable data than ever. Brands will thus be able to predict behavior, desires, and needs and offer tailored and precisely targeted services.

Stimuli for All Senses This trend, albeit at a slightly less sophisticated level, will also develop on social media, so brands are expected to pay more attention to their profiles on Facebook for the purpose of listening and precisely targeting consumers, seeking qualified experts, social media managers, who will know how to extract the most information from users and get closer to them. And in 2013, consumers will be even closer to their smartphones, which will become wallets, keys, health advisors, and, in fact, identities in one place. In 2013, JWT continues, we can also expect a sensory explosion. In the digital world, brands rely on sensory stimuli, so those in the earthly world will also have to make an extra effort to encourage consumers to engage their senses. A great example of this is the move by Dunkin Donuts, which equipped buses in Seoul with special technology that emits the smell of coffee when the company’s jingle is played on the advertising screen.

Shopping is Everywhere Following advertisements that smell and emit sounds, the trend of ‘ubiquitous selling’ is quite expected. According to JWT, shopping will continue to transform next year from a classic activity in physical stores or on websites into a completely new experience. In other words, if you have a smartphone in your hands, almost everything can become a retail channel. It is up to brands to make the best use of this and be as creative as possible in whom and how they sell their products or services. One such creative brand is Mattel, which, in collaboration with Walmart Canada, set up a ‘pop-up’ store in the subway with accompanying three-dimensional installations and QR codes that allow customers to access products there. Exchange in the broadest sense, JWT states, will be one of the key concepts of 2013. The so-called peer-to-peer market will expand in size and scope, encompassing not only products but also various types of services, from accommodation and education to tourism and transportation. In other words, it is likely that traditional hotel chains will face competition from online companies that operate as intermediaries between consumers who offer nothing more than hotel services, i.e., accommodation services, in their homes.

Life Values From these trends, it is clear that the line between the digital and earthly worlds is becoming increasingly thin and that everything points to the fact that augmented reality is becoming a certainty, not just a mere prediction. For this reason, the protection of privacy or identity is becoming one of the important areas that consumers will address and where brands can step in. One such brand is the Argentine Norte Beer, which distributed ‘photo blockers’ to interested local bars. These are devices that emit a strong light that destroys photographs taken with mobile phones, thus saving guests from the potential embarrassment of posting compromising photos on social media. In addition to privacy, consumers will be interested in health and happiness in the coming year, or the concept that a happier person is healthier and vice versa. It is up to brands, therefore, to offer the best combination of both, just as Nestlé did in Australia with its ‘Happily Healthy’ project. And, concludes the JWT team, the secret to companies’ success in 2013 will be their ability to adapt to dual demands, such as happiness and health, and, more importantly, to learn that consumers live simultaneously in two worlds – digital and earthly.