How to Differentiate Trends vs. Fads: Staying on the Pulse of Pop Culture

Trends vs. Fads. Thanks to the digitization of almost every single aspect of our lives, we’ve all become accustom to immediacy — expecting our news, notifications, and responses to come in a matter of seconds. Because of this, we live in a culture that prioritizes rapid movement from one thing to the next.

Take your Instagram feed, for instance — you scroll and scroll, but how often do you look at one photo for more than a second? Most of us take a quick glance and move onto the next. Sound familiar?

Well, this translates into pop culture, which has a direct impact on what’s “in” and what’s not.

Although it sometimes can feel like something is just becoming popular before it fades into oblivion, tapping into the latest trends and fads can be a key strategy for marketers. If you yourself are a marketer or if you are involved in your businesses’ marketing strategy, it’s critical to understand what is a fast-moving fad versus trends that are maybe here to stay (albeit for a short time). For example, there have been memorable trends and fads in recent years that have made its mark on society. 

Remember the #IceBucketChallenge? What about planking?

These were social media fads that came and went, but had a significant impact on businesses and companies worldwide. The brands that are able to quickly adapt and take their own spin on fads are better able to leverage more engagement and press, simply because they had their finger on the pulse of pop culture. The key is that when you’re able to tap into these fads by creating your own campaign, your business can become a part of pop culture and become even more relevant (as many brands aim to do). 

Knowing how to differentiate a fad from a trend can be a vital factor in your marketing strategy.

Investing too much time or money in a quick-moving fad can result in wasted resources. Marketing and advertising often take time to develop, and can take so much time that a fad has already died before you could even market it. This doesn’t mean you should completely ignore fads such as the Harlem Shake videos of 2013 or the Cinnamon Challenge of 2007 — if you can produce something quickly before the fad dies down, go for it!

Trends, on the other hand, are societal shifts that are slowly adapted to over time. More recent popular trends include Augmented Reality in the media or the shift to become more environmentally conscious. If you can learn to create content that is geared towards these larger shifts, it shows your business is in it for the long haul.

There are tons of examples of huge businesses that failed to innovate with the times.

Think about Kodak, a company that was built upon the concept of analog photography. As society started moving towards digital photography, they neglected to focus on this area of their industry and thus ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2012. Today, an emerging trend is the emphasis on video content, so if your business can start leveraging video as much as possible, you can improve your chances at staying relevant.

As a brand, you want to stay on top of your game when it comes to both trends and fads.

While fads will be quick-moving and sometimes random, trends are slower shifts that you will start to see more and more of over time.

You shouldn’t neglect either, but it’s important to understand how and when to tap into both. 

Email: catherine@catherinenikkel.com

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