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What Is The Difference Between A Fad And A Trend (redux)?

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.

What Is The Difference Between A Fad And A Trend

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4 responses to “What Is The Difference Between A Fad And A Trend (redux)?”

  1. Holycow Avatar
    Holycow

    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

    Reply
  2. Holycow Avatar
    Holycow

    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

    Reply
  3. Eric Avatar
    Eric

    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.

    Reply
  4. Eric Avatar
    Eric

    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.

    Reply

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