The META Trending Trends: 02018

An Analysis of 13 Global Trend Forecasts → 19 Most Reported Social Shifts

Introducing The META Trends
02018’s Prologue

When the air gets brisk, the stockings get hung, and the “Out of Office” notices get shared, it all means one thing: trend reports are coming.

Today, organizations attempt to flex their cultural foresight savviness by authoring a number of trends for marketers to leverage in the year to come. In the highest form of irony, the trend report has become the trend. But with so many to read and not enough time, I decided to read them all from you, conducting a meta-analysis...

I combed through 300+ trends from 13 reports by: Forrester, Foresight Factory, JWT, Sparks & Honey, Ogilvy, Fjord, Landor, Facebook IQ, Trend Hunter, Contagious, Deloitte, Edelman, & Mindshare. (Good luck tracking these down with link rot.)

Why do this? Conducting a meta-analysis increases our “sample size” of trends and accounts for individual author bias, allowing us to recognize what’s agreed upon. We can calculate reliability as a proxy for accuracy.

After my analysis, I’m excited to share the top 19 prevalent, overlapping trends for 2018. Below, you will find the most recurrent trend themes, personal descriptions, and how each organization named their trend.

The 19 02018 META Trends: