New year, new trends

No, I’m not talking about what will be gracing the window fronts of fashion retailers. With a new year come new resolutions, new habits, and new attitudes. As a marketer, anticipating these new trends can be critical. For example, while all things digital has been growing for a while now, the Internet is aflutter forecasting a trend in 2014 that will see people put down their devices. 

JOMO.

A competitor to the very successful FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) acronym, JOMO is here to help people embrace the Joy Of Missing Out. Trend forecaster JWT has listed JOMO as one of its top 10 predictions for 2014, and explains it as living mindfully and switching off.

The Huffington Post explains JOMO, and it’s interesting to see even companies like Google embrace ‘silent mindful lunches,’ where you won’t see any phones or laptops sitting alongside your chicken salad.

What will this mean to social media this year? Will people really switch off and stop uploading their most recent meal?

With JWT predicting another trend being the end of anonymity, with surveillance technology fast growing to soon track every single purchase decision we make, it’s not a surprise that people are turning away from their screens. For a marketer, this seems like a double-edged sword, providing more insight but also more resistance.

In our Ethics and Regulatory Environment paper, we often discussed in class the shifting position of using technology to learn more about consumers and tracking people’s habits. While there is no hard and fast answer as to what’s wrong or right, I think that JOMO could be a great movement. Not only will it give people more time to themselves, it can also be the step that pushes companies to find more engaging and innovative ways to connect with their customers. 

Hongi Luo: Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School.