Thanks to everyone who took the time and trouble to contribute feedback in answer to the question I posed in the previous post. It was brilliant to be able to pass on some wise words from some good thinkers to the graduates at Squared 2012.
After I gave my talk, and before I revealed to them what everyone had said, I ran an open space session to get some debate going and they then spent a short time honing that thinking into some key themes which everyone then voted on. The winning definition from the graduates was: "A trend is a general behaviour over time. A fad is an extreme action related to that behaviour." I then wrapped up by giving them the answers contributed by the readers of this blog, and it was good to see a good degree of similarity. I've compiled the feedback from both into a few slides below - I have paraphrased some answers slightly for the sake of brevity but endeavoured to keep the meaning as intended. Thanks again to all those who participated.
Well done Neil - some lovely thoughts and a nice output too. I hope that the guys got some value from thinking about tangible and intangible concepts and cultural effects.
From a digital perspective I have always maintained that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should from a technological POV. Technology has changed but human beings haven't (limbic brain centric etc) so the best place to start as a planner in digital is not the application of technology - its the analogue bit where the tools are ethnography, semiotics, discourse analysis and cultural context - which is where your piece fits. From there its about understanding the plumbing (coding, SEO, PPC, analytics, hosting, tagging etc etc etc).
Just my view.
Speak soon,
M
Posted by: Holycow | March 21, 2012 at 10:35 AM
Clearly, fads come and go. So a trend must be a fad that develops traction. I'm sure a lot of Social Media marketing experts would say that certain websites are a fad, while the category as a whole has become a trend with staying power.
Posted by: Eric | March 22, 2012 at 05:07 PM