The law of fads and trends
The faster something grows, the faster it can also die.
That’s a lesson from a book I constantly return to, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, a readable and enlightening guide to how to make something stand out.
One of their laws is “The Law of Fads and Trends.” It goes like this:
There are two types of success: fads and trends.
A trend is a fad whose demand is slowly satisfied.
A fad is a trend whose demand is satisfied too quickly.
When you experience success, focus on intentionally growing slowly rather than satisfying every request.
What could have been a fad becomes a trend.
The underlying lesson: slow growth is worth more than fast growth.
As creative people, the people and projects we most often compare ourselves to are the most visible ones. The ones that tend to succeed from fast growth and viral posts.
In our weaker moments we find ourselves looking at their socials with jealously, wondering why their success can’t be ours.
But where does that path lead? How quickly will it be over?
The modern rush toward immediacy causes us to forget an obvious truth: real things grow slowly.
Cultural movements aren't manufactured overnight. They accumulate and gather force through dedicated effort and persistent vision. They are never a fad, and only appear as a trend on the longest of timescales.
The current systems aren't designed for this. They reward performance over substance and do not think beyond now.
When we play by their rules, the ceiling stops at viral fad. But when we play according to our own rules, the whole universe is ours to define.