Consumer trends 2015

TRENDS 2015 THE INSIGHT POINT JUAN ISAZA

Class of 2015
We arrived at this Trends 2015 edition with the feeling that the previous year has gone too fast and that many of the
topics mentioned on 2014 are still valid. However, new signs appear and show us that the 2015 will have contrasts,
impossible barriers to map, data that will begin to impact our daily lives and, above all, a lot of speed.
Perhaps the contrasts will be the most interesting part. We will have to be very attentive to the political and ideological
changes because nothing is written in stone. People will keep looking for new ways to make their lives easier,
improving as human beings and being more connected. But above all, they will assume fully the opportunities given
by technology. Perhaps the most difficult endeavor in this edition has been to draw the line between topics. As the
fourth trend clearly states, borders are so difficult to trace that almost all the trends recorded in the report found
common ground either by technology or cultural changes.
Brands, as always, have the great challenge of relevance. Marketers will have to work relentlessly and fastest than ever
to find the best ways to connect with people, identifying the medium and the message that add value to their lives.
I hope this report will be useful and inspiring. That 2015 brings us innovation, open minds and many
opportunities to break paradigms.

The 8 of 2015
TENDENCIAS 2015 THE INSIGHT POINT JUAN ISAZA
T1. Ideology is mix
T2. Authentic living
T3. No middlemen
T4. Paper frontiers
T5. Be my coach
T6. Virtual comfort
T7. Neospecialist
T8. Quantum life

T1: Ideology is mix
In many ways, but most notably in the political and economic, the world will suffer a kind of "bipolarity". In this
new form of "cold war" with economic powers looking to different sides, it is impossible to reach consensus on a
single north. New allies and, above all, new ideological references will strongly impact daily life.
According to The Economist, 2015 will be a year of global divisions economically, culturally and politically. The year begins with China
now officially as the world's largest economy after 140 years of American supremacy. The debate on the state reform and structure will
appear on the agenda of many nations. Asian countries like Singapore can be the model that in the past were the United States or
European countries. 
 
A recent article, HBR challenged China's ability to lead the world http://bit.ly/t1china. The economic progress of the East is not enough.
It is perhaps the natural transition of a superpower that is born and another that seek to demonstrate that it is still alive. But the world
will have many doubts. For this, he will try to live seeking the best of both sides. Fukuyama, in his latest book, discusses the limited
power of democracy for prosperity. The idea of a single model or a single formula seems increasingly untenable. Enemies of one day
will be supporters on the following week.
People will see how the major economies will discuss inequality while the more "socialist" countries (one of the terms that along with
"capitalism" will become increasingly harder to define) will discuss innovation and development of new markets. Private initiatives in
many Western countries talk about social compromise and we will hear the echo of expressions such as Oxfam, the British NGO which
has launched a campaign against inequality (bit.ly/t1oxfam ).
Half the world will be promoting awareness about excessive consumption and its global impact while the other half will be growing
their consumption. It will not be about getting to a middle point, instead it will be about going from one side to the other like a switch.
It is a bipolarity that makes the person some days decide to feed his dream of being rich, and other days decide it is worth it to bet on
being happy.
For Brands: Brands that want to get attention must offer alternatives to consumption. Innovation remains obviously important
for consumers but it will be even more powerful when new products and services also come with options for reducing
consumption. Be inspired and follow the conversation of movements such as The Minimalist with his famous presentation at
TEDx (bit.ly/t1minimalist) and whose movement will release a documentary this new year..

T2: Authentic living
Authenticity is no longer a competitive advantage. It's much more than that. It is a requirement without it is
impossible to establish a relationship of any kind. People will worry about getting to know more. With the fuel of
social networks, we will understand that there are always more and more things to expose ourselves.
In 2015 we will see more examples where people show us that reality is something completely defined on an individual scale.
And one of the consequences is the difficulty to group consumers into homogeneous segments. It is partly why
Trendwatching speaks of the post-demographics era. This goes far beyond the customizable designs or products made to
order. Here is a quest for that unique and personal fingerprint.
The DNA analysis services like 23andme (bit.ly/f223andme) have shown that despite the legal limitations to reveal genetic
factors related to health, there is a growth in the number of users looking for the source of their genetic ancestors to know
them better and perhaps connect with genetically similar individuals or even close relatives unknown until now. And this is
why How the World Sees you (http://bit.ly/t2world) is one of the best selling books on Amazon. Or, even more successful
Strength Finder 2.0 (bit.ly/f2strength), a text whose power is given by an interactive test that allows users to know their main
business strengths online. There is an unmeasured desire for people to get to know themselves (http://bit.ly/t2conocer).
In a different corner, but also as part of this obsession with authenticity, we will see people trying to show a more real side of
who they are. More and more celebrities showing the world their real life, sexual preferences or the way they think and live. The
Economist predicts that the return to 9-5 work will be the way to demonstrate that the perfect worker is no longer who works
obsessively day and night. On the contrary, people seek to show that they have a real and natural life. Meanwhile, many
companies will continue encouraging the development of the personal life of each of their employees with measures such as
limiting access to email while on vacation, for example.
For Brands: Social networks have taught us that whoever does not act as a human dies of irrelevance. One of the most talked
about books of the previous year was The Human Brand (bit.ly/t3human). Understanding the value of human as an essence of
relationships is perhaps the best way brands can achieve empathy with people.

T3: No Middlemen
As we have seen year after year, the role of the intermediary has been declining in popularity. This year, more
and more examples will show us that the money does not need to go through the banks, the TV did not have to
go through a cable company and, sales do not have to go through a vendor. The citizen feels that always has the
option to do it himself because there is always access and direct connection.
Perhaps the topic that best describes this point of view is the Google project called The Physical Web (http://bit.ly/t3physical)
by which it intends to get people in direct contact with objects without applications in the middle. Each object should be a
device requiring nothing more than the presence of the person and their willingness to partner. Thus the same view shows
that payments will not necessarily be managed by banks or ﬁnancial institutions, like with Apple Pay, released late last year
(expect more impact when it becomes part of the Apple Watch), allowing payments through the system NFC (Near Field
Communications). The theme of the new coins and forms of alternative investment against the traditional continue gaining
ground away from traditional banks.
HBO announced it will launch a service that does not require a subscription with a cable operator to view the contents (http://
bit.ly/t3hbo) Trustpilot (http://bit.ly/t3trust) seeks to connect people with brands so companies can have access to the point of
view of people without mediators, and Uber, despite many enemies, is now as valuable as Delta Airlines or Kraft Foods. All are
proof of the value that direct relationships have not only because technology facilitates them but also because people want to
have more and more control without ﬁlters. The power of the people, which has been in discussion for more than a decade,
will take out anyone who does not add value not only in the physical world but also in the virtual world where connections
between suppliers and potential customers integrate ever more naturally.
For Brands: We will hear more and more about communication that adapts to the changes or preferences of the consumers
with decisions that the commercial or marketing director himself can take in real time. First came the analysis charts, then
infographics and now dashboards will eventually populate the screens of the people responsible for brands and will allow them
to make decisions in a more visual way. No need for long chains of providers to change a piece of content or any other
ingredient of the marketing mix.

T4: Paper frontiers
As in past years, we continue to see the disappearance of the labels and borders. In this fluid world, it is
impossible to know where something ends and where your opponent begins. Buy or rent, study or work, sporty
or formal. All at the bottom are the same thing in a world without boundaries.
We know how difficult it is to draw borders in the world today. Also the irrelevance of the labels we used some years ago. One
of the most interesting phenomena of the previous year was the growth of websites of false or satire news, presenting the
information in the same format as online newspapers. In Latin America, the best example is Panamericana News (http://bit.ly/
t4paname) that has managed to confuse many news written in the format of a journal and raises many questions but mostly
the distance between reality and fantasy.
In terms of fashion, the growth of casual clothing and the space that it's gaining over formality to the point where the barrier
between sports and work breaks down is evident. Sports pants are the new jeans, as it happened with sneakers when they got
full office access. Already Vogue has been talking about this subject (http://bit.ly/t4track) and hundreds of coolhunters have
spotted it.
But the idea of eliminating the line will go further. The distance between the universities and the workplace breaks. There are
increasing short time education options, flexible and focused on training in the skills of doing. Labor and educational spaces
converge. The facilities to share, resell or reuse makes the distance between owning and being tenant disappear, so sharing is
the new way to buy (http://bit.ly/t4share). In business we will see mergers in positions and responsibilities. As predicted
recently by Forbes, the role of marketing and technology could end up being under the same director in the near future.
For Brands: Understanding marketing from the culture and consumer perspective and not from the traditional categories
should be a goal for this year. One must know that today we do not compete against players in the same category but against
brands that achieve a true cultural relevance. Just as car brands never thought Google would enter that industry and cable
companies never expected Netflix would come. All brands are potential competitors, in a world of no boundaries.

T5: Be my coach
People will help each other. Everyone is ready to be guided and to search for a guide. Technology will be key to
detecting, advise and monitor the desire of all to be better human being, better profesional and better lover.
Perhaps the best expression of this trend is that which says that today everyone needs a coach. And this will be a reality in
both the virtual world and the real world. The proliferation of applications on smartphones that help people have a better life.
To the extent that it is estimated that this year, the number of people using apps related to health and wellness will reach 500
million, according to a report from Research2Guidance (http://bit.ly/t5health).
We have coaches for many issues on which we did not think we might need outside help. Some will look for a coach to do a
better job in social media and the personal image you want to project and there will be someone who will look for a coach to
guide and accompany you when doing yoga or just jogging. We'll see couples looking for a coach to help them have a better
sex life. But in many cases, and this is perhaps the most interesting is that the coach is not necessarily an expert or someone
close. In this regard, it is worth mentioning Wakie, the application that functions as an alarm clock and helps people find
company to rise to exercise (http://bit.ly/t5wakie).
We will see the integration of devices with human coaches as is the case of GOQii (http://bit.ly/t5goqii), one of many bracelets
that helps track physical performance, but also allows to contact a personal trainer. Meanwhile, awareness of food, which is
growing in importance and the previous year occupied the attention of many, will appear with new and better ways of
support. We will see many applications and ideas which will inspire care from a guide or guru who teaches cooking or will
open the mind about new exotic ingredients with unique properties from all corners of the planet.
For Brands: It would seem obvious that the idea is to offer solutions and applications to problems of people in a certain
category or when using or consuming the products offered by the brand. However, the Apple Store and Android are full of
applications that help an infinite of things developed by a brand. Perhaps the best option, will be to bring the coaches to the
people instead of trying to be a coach. Perhaps the greatest value will be to make curation of coaching more than the
coaching itself.

T6: Virtual comfort
It is perfectly possible to move between the virtual world and the real world without sacrificing anything. The
convergence of both is the comfort zone where everyone wants to be. We will see new ideas that show us that
the world is a device that fits in our pocket.
A very bright and provocative phrase by Alvin Toffler says that soon we will need a new definition of sanity because until now
we have defined it as the ability to differentiate the real from the unreal. Just like that. It does not make sense to talk about on
and off because they are one integrated reality. Interesting to see how traditional practices and real-world objects jump to the
virtual world like with Lyve (http://bit.ly/t6lyve), a service for storing family photos as we did before with photo albums. And
the applications of what we do in the virtual world that replicates the real world. An example is the small dropper to duplicate
a color in real life (http://bit.ly/t6color).
Technology will help us better enjoy other realities. There was much talk of virtual reality devices mainly from the bet
Facebook made the previous year. (http://bit.ly/t6oculus). This is a category which will see more players coming in from top
brands to entrepreneurs. Only in Kickstarter there are oulined about 20 products related to virtual reality devices. It is quite
possible that we begin to hear more and more the idea that virtual reality is the natural evolution of relations in social
networks.
It is interesting how the benefits of data and its impact on daily life begin to materialize. The stage of talking about big data as
a promised land, will give way to solutions that begin to predict, adjust and transform the relations of people with objects and
things. Surely iBeacon will grow in popularity, a device that allows to make many things from offers on retail stores to suggest
potential partners in a bar. Many are accepting now the benefits of this technology which shows that the convergence of the
virtual and the real is our greatest comfort zone (http://bit.ly/t6ibeacon).
For Brands: Many brands have clear today that the the virtual experience must be something deeply natural and simple. The best
investment will be to redesign digital experiences. Although not perfect yet, it's worth looking Imperial Avenue (http://bit.ly/t6avenue)
and their purpose of generating a virtual shopping experience that is as close as possible to actual shopping.

T7: Neospecialist
Citizens are the new authorities. An application to vote, make decisions or get to diagnose yourself. The passive
skepticism of other years is transformed into actual power that works.
The professional judgment of a lawyer, an architect or a doctor are today an application that a customer download at will. Access to
information has made us experts citizens throughout. And, as always, the most important impact of what happens with technology is
not on devices but in the changes that occur in the lives of people. What once required the presence of an expert now people feel they
can do for themselves. Such as the administration of a real estate (http://bit.ly/1BRZncO), for example.
The consumer sees himself as an expert when he can do something that once seemed so complex (such as developing a video or
create an animated story) with tools like Plotagon (http://bit.ly/t7plotagon) that achieves a professional appearance. So is music that
increasingly has been given more tools for people to feel like a DJ, for example. One of the applications that will be talked about is
Whosampled (http://bit.ly/t7who), which puts in the hands of people the chance to explore the essence of music as they were an
expert. And ﬁve minutes of fame could come to Heyhey (http://bit.ly/t7heyhey) a basic application that allows people to modify the
voices as if they had a professional equipment for audio editing. More and more example show us that with the right app or device, we
are all able to accomplish anything (http://bit.ly/t7wearable).
We are facing a consumer with a higher "self-esteem" that now feels he can do everything. Beyond the convenience and eﬃciency,
what is remarkable is his “specialist” attitude. Social networking has made all us columnists, editors and publishers. In this sense, the
Wired article that talks about how the consumer of the future with their ability to write code and have a much more active approach to
technology is very inspiring, (http://bit.ly/t7wired). It is no coincidence that Google has opened a contest that will award $ 30 million
before the end of the following year, to the person developing a robot that can reach the moon (http://bit.ly/t8lunar).
For Brands: As we know for long time now, the big challenge is given by the growing power of the consumers. An for many
years, the recommendation was to harness that power for the good of the brand (co-creation, consumer-generated content, etc).
The position of the consumer today is much more radical. He is the specialist and the best brands can do is learn from it and
bring him the tools he needs. One should begin to challenge the concept of "brand value" in a consumer who knows that he
does not need anyone, and least of all brands.

T8: Quantum life
Our world still has his foot on the accelerator. The same that has transformed the pace and style of life. The
concepts of time and space are more flexible, more than ever, eternal love lasts fifteen minutes.
There is perhaps no mobile application that has given so much to talk about in the previous year as Tinder. Not only because
it reached a high level of popularity but also because they created a language, a way of making decisions that looks like a
gaming but makes complex decisions such as finding a partner or changing your job as easy as the swipe of a finger. That is
why Switch (http://bit.ly/t8switch) demonstrates the power that "Tinder" style achieved and reflects the need and desire to
move as quickly as possible in a hyper- accelerated world.
Many of the technological advances will be based on making faster what now takes days, hours or even minutes. It sounds
like science fiction but the project Drone Ambulance goes in this direction (http://bit.ly/t8drone) as well as the whiskey brand
that allows aging in 24 hours (http://bit.ly/t8whisky) and which achieved a total financing in less than a month, through
Kickstarter.
Impatience is the quintessential feature of Generation Z. (those born after 2000). That is why many TV channels lose their
audience of their live programs and, instead, they gained more and more people on series that people can complete without
having to wait for the next episode. Timing and speed controls people to do everything faster. Perhaps the most ordinary case,
recently reviewed by New York Times, has to do with the anxiety that the WhatsApp's "three points" generate (http://bit.ly/
t8dot) and that makes us reflect on the rhythms of our current life. No one will want to wait and instead prefer all who put
their foot on the accelerator pedal.
For Brands: As mentioned earlier talking about life without middlemen, the name of the game for brands is real time. The
slogan is to be able to plan strategy but also constantly modify their execution from the new realities. Last year we saw great
examples of brands that achieved fame and global impact with the correct tweet at the right time. We will see more and more
examples of brands able to create in real-time while conserving the strategic consistency in the long term.

Sources
The compilation of trends included here is the result of capture, ﬁltering and evaluation of many direct and indirect
sources. Among them worth mentioning:
!
www.iconoculture.com
www.trendhunter.com
www.thecoolhunter.net
www.trendoriginal.com
www.trendwatching.com
www.buzzfeed.com
www.luckie.com
www.sparksandhoney.com
www.economist.com
www.forrester.com
www.springwise.com
www.time.com
www.npr.org
www.huﬃngtonpost.com
www.psfk.com
www.emarketer.com
www.thefuturescompany.com
www.leonardo1452.com
www.coolhuntermx.com
www.trendcentral.com
www.techspot.com
www.trendland.com
www.wired.com
www.digitaltrends.com

Juan Isaza
Vice President of Strategic Planning at DDB Latina, DDB Worldwide division that brings together the markets of Latin America,
Spain and the US Hispanic market.
!
He writes regularly for his blog www.juanisaza.com and is a lecturer in various academic and business in areas such as
marketing, advertising, social networking and fashion events.
!
Lives and works in Miami.
 
Reports from previous years are available on www.slideshare.net/juanisaza
!
This document may be reproduced partially or fully provided that the source is acknowledged and it links to the website.
!
Twitter: @juanisaza
!
Design and graphic edition: Rafael Medina - Brandia (www.brandia.com.mx)
!
Thanks to Estefania Acosta for her support on translating this document from Spanish.
The original document can be accessed here: http://www.slideshare.net/juanisaza/tendencias-consumidor-2015

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