The Law of Acceleration – Successful program are not built on fads, they are built on trends

A fad gets a lot of hype and a trend gets very little.

Like a wave, a fad is very visible but it goes up and down in a big hurry. Like the tide, a trend is almost invisible but it is very powerful over the long term.

A fad is a short-term phenomenon that might be profitable but a fad does not last long enough to do a company much good. Furthermore, a company often tends to gear up as if a fad were a trend. As a result, the company is often stuck with a lot of staff, expensive manufacturing facilities, and distribution networks.

A fashion, on the other hand, is a fad that repeats itself. Examples are short skirts for women and double breasted suits for men. Halley's Comet is a fashion because it comes back every 75 years or so.

When the fad disappears, a company often goes into a deep financial shock. What happened to Atari is typical in this respect. And look how Coleco Industries handled the Cabbage Patch Kids. Those homely dools hit the market and started to take off. Coleco's strategy was to milk the kids for all they were worth.

Hundreds of Cabbage Patch novelties flooded the toy stores. Pens, pencils, crayon boxes, games, clothing. Two years later, Coleco racked up sales of $776 million and profits of $83 million. Then the bottom dropped out of the Cabbage patch Kids. A few years later, Coleco went into Chapter 11.

Coleco died but the kids live on. Acquired by Hasbro, the Cabbage Patch Kids are now being handled conservatively and doing quite well.

Here is the paradox. If you were faced with a rapidly rising business, with all the characteristics of a fad, the best thing you could do would be dampen the fad. By dampening the fad, you stretch the fad out and it becomes more like a trend.

You see this in the toy business. Some owners of hot toys want to put their hot toy name on everything. The result is that it becomes an enormous fad that is bound to collapse. When everybody has a Ninja turtle, nobody wants one anymore.

The Ninja turtle is a good example of a fad that collapses in a hurry because the owner of the concept got greedy. The owner fans the fad rather than dampening it.

On the other hand, the Barbie doll is a trend. When Barbie was invented year ago, the doll was never heavily merchandised into other areas. As a result, the Barbie doll has become a long-term trend in the toy business.

The most successful entertainers are the ones who control their appearances. They do not overextend themselves. They are not all over the place. They do not wear out their welcome.

Elvis Presley's manager, Colonel Parker, made a deliberate attempt to restrict the number of appearances and records the King made. As a result, every time Elvis appeared, it was an event of enormous impact. Elvis himself contributed to this strategy by overdosing early and severely dampening his future appearances, as did Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.

Forget fads. And when they appear, try to dampen them.

But the best and most profitable thing to ride in marketing is a long-term trend.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Acceleration. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can not guess what the market desires and it is difficult to benefit from all the hype. They work hard to maintain a long-term demand for their product and to never totally satisfy the demand ... they enforce some scarcity.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Acceleration as successful program are not built on fads, they are built on trends.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading additional articles that will be provided over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout.

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