How To Be A Trendsetter
An investigative look at The Kardashians, Mark Cuban, Dick Clark, and the occasional martian
“Following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.” Mark Cuban
We all know there are entire galaxies beyond our own, possibly with complete civilizations. Intelligent life forms could be eyeing us right now, calculating our birth rates, mortality rates and why we eat spinach.
Eventually some martian sociologist will boil it down, telling interesting onlookers that we stare at luminescent screens and occasionally walk into manholes, all for one odd but compelling reason: We’re following trends.
In the animal kingdom, herding is the result of pheromones, something perfume makers have tried unsuccessfully to isolate for years. Pheromones are tricky, whereas trends are simple.
The trick is not thinking, a big part of the Kardashian family fortune.
Kylie Jenner can’t understand where her “power to set trends” comes from, other than it probably started with her sister, Kim, lying naked in a video, saying, “This better not get out.”
You don’t have to set trends to appreciate them. In fact, most of us would rather follow trends than risk starting new ones. Risk is a big part of trend-setting. One wrong move and you’re not a Kardashian anymore.
The trick is not thinking, a big part of the Kardashian family fortune.
There are marketing groups set up specifically to follow trends. A commercial did a spoof on this, where a woman is hired to tell a man when his “man bun” is passé. We can laugh at the “shortness” of trends, but not at the mentality necessary to make them popular.
We could say it represents the laziness of human nature. Give us a screen and opposable thumbs and we’ll follow like partisan ants.
From a marketing perspective, it’s good that we don’t think. When you ask your daughter why she’s wearing her dress so short, you want her to say, “It’s what all the girls are wearing.” What you don’t want is her showing up in a cowl, saying she’s joining The Church of the Aware.
“We’re not here to make waves,” someone once said, “but to surf what’s there,” an interesting analogy and certainly not without merit.
“I don’t set trends,” Dick Clark once admitted. “I just find out what they are and exploit them.”
Judging from the success of some people, it obviously works. “I don’t set trends,” Dick Clark once admitted. “I just find out what they are and exploit them.”
American Bandstand ran for 37 years, with Dick hosting from 1956 to its final season in 1989. Even advanced life forms on other planets would find that laudable.
So why, if it’s so easy, do some people still feel the need to set new trends? Why did Frank Capra, director of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Meet John Doe” tell young filmmakers, “Never follow trends, set them.”
And why would Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres and Magnolia Pictures “look somewhere else,” when he sees “the red flags”?
Surely, as a regular on Shark Tank, possibly a direct competitor with The Kardashians, he sees money being made the old-fashioned way, meaning find something and exploit it like Dick Clark.
Mark sees a different role for trends these days, what he calls “re-application.” As he told Entrepreneur, “Successful people don’t ask what consumers want. They reinvent, attract interest, then decide how to expand from there.”
Mark’s obviously thinking beyond the boundaries of what we expect — or what we think we expect.
It’s an interesting premise. Mark’s obviously thinking beyond the boundaries of what we expect — or what we think we expect.
The truth is, most of us don’t really process what we expect. We figure we’re on safe ground following whatever we’re told is the cat’s meow.
Dick Clark made a lot of money telling us what was the cat’s meow. If Dicky said it was good, he ought to know, right?
Trouble is, trend followers don’t always have the greatest judgment.
Take, for example, what ranked as the top hits of 1966. A dinky little song called “Winchester Cathedral” by The Vaudeville Band ranked at #4, while one of the greatest seminal Motown songs “What Becomes of a Broken-Hearted” by Jimmy Ruffin was way down at #38.
Obviously, you can’t pick every trend — nor is every trend worth picking. If it’s your business to choose what’s “hot and what’s not,” it might be wise to do a little “re-application” of your own.
For every trend, in other words, there’s probably something better. The only way to know for sure is to try something that expands the trend.
We don’t necessarily set trends, but we do influence them.
If you’re saying that’s not our job, you’re mistaken. We don’t necessarily set trends, but we do influence them. And let’s be clear about what makes things like advertising and marketing work in the first place.
Pundits in both fields will say that it isn’t a trend, it’s the notion that anything can be a trend. As David Ogilvy once said, “We’re not here to change peoples’ minds. We’re here to change peoples’ beliefs.”
Trends may, in fact, be the result of lazy thinking, but changing them takes a lot of work. Whether you’re ready for that work is really what separates trend followers from trendsetters.
“Okay,” he’s saying, “the way I figure it, trendsetters seem to have big butts. If we’re going down there, we’d better have big butts.”
If you’re saying, “What about The Kardashians?” let’s think back to those intelligent life forms out in another galaxy. Imagine their sociologist trying to explain Kim and her family to other martians. “From what I can gather,” he says, “they like being filmed, even when they’re doing nothing.”
“And this helps us how?” another martian asks.
“Obviously, to infiltrate human society,” the martian sociologist says, “we need a show idea. Perhaps we film ourselves doing nothing on our spaceship. Then we hit them with merchandizing. Silver suits, headgear, that sort of stuff.”
“Do you think it’ll work?” the other martian asks.
“Oh, it’ll work,” the martian sociologist says. “It’s got ‘twenty seasons’ written all over it.”
Robert Cormack is a blogger and author of “You Can Lead A Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive).” You can join him every day by subscribing to robertcormack@medium.com/subscription.
