Markets

JWT's Annual Trendspotting Folly: a Beer Sommelier for the Lady Gaga of Architecture

By Jim Edwards

Updated on: January 6, 2011 / 9:43 PM EST / MoneyWatch

Every year at this time ad agency JWT presents a set of trend predictions for the coming 12 months, a significant portion of which never come true. 2011 is no exception.

The entire exercise is a marketing effort, of course, designed to get JWT publicity that might turn into new accounts. But the agency takes it incredibly seriously, no matter how outre its guesses are, and positions the whole thing as a piece of genuine market research.

Last year, for instance, JWT's director of trendspotting Ann Mack announced that bacon in cocktails, home fermentation fruit canning, and "dry shampoo" would catch on. The year before it was vacuum cooking. We're still waiting.

Mack's modus operandi consists of assuming that something which is already going on will continue to occur (and then naming it as a "trend"); and wild guesses. This year, she took responsibility for predicting Lady Gaga, WikiLeaks and coconut water. I'm pretty sure the first two were chugging along nicely before JWT happened upon them. As for coconut water, well, how many cans do you have in the fridge?

Her 100-item 2011 list is presented in no particular order but makes more sense if you rearrange it into three categories: trendy things happening in New York or Los Angeles; things that won't happen; and things that even a moron could predict. Here's a selection of her choices:

Trendy things of interest to people in New York and LA: Beer sommeliers
Art.sy ("the Pandora of the fine art world." Can't wait!)
Bjarke Ingels ("architecture's very own Lady Gaga.")
Things that won't happen: 3D printing (too expensive and limited to be relevant)
Facebook alternatives (it'll take a long time to dislodge a business with 500 million users).
"Heirloom" apples
New Nordic cuisine (can't wait!)
Space travel goes private (it already is but it's too expensive to be relevant)
Things that even a moron could predict: Buy one, give one away
Captcha advertising (it was in the papers a few months ago)
The decline of the cash register
Entrepreneurial journalism
Gay-centric hotels (they already exist)
Mobile blogging
Mobile memes
Piers Morgan (he already has his own show)
Smoking on the fringe
Breaking the book (really, we'll read fewer paper books? Amazing.)
E-commerce via Facebook
Older workforce

The list underlines the bicoastal nature of the ad biz, and how often it misunderstands the way life is lived in "flyover" country where there aren't beer sommeliers in Nordic restaurants serving heirloom apples to the Lady Gaga of architecture.

Sure, these things may be trendy. And sure, trends are of interest to advertisers, many of whom want in on them or want to start them. But how economically meaningful, in terms of corporate strategy at 99 percent of companies, is it to know that there's a fine art version of Pandora?

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Image by Flickr user griraffes, CC