Tag: Business

Would you read it?

Posted on by philipdodson

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That piece of content, that email, that newsletter, that Tweet, that Facebook update that you are about to send, would you read it? Will it make a difference?

Would your potential or existing audience read it? Would they miss it if you didn’t send it? Is it going to have a significant enough an impact that they will actually react?

Is it remarkable?

We need to strive to create stuff that would be missed if we didn’t hit send.

Otherwise, it will be lost in billions of updates, emails, Tweets, and content that people pressed send on without that simple check ‘would you read it?’.

Trend forecasting

Posted on by philipdodson

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I was listening today to one of my favourite podcast, 99% Invisible, and the discussion was centred around the very influential and well-used trend forecasters like WGSN.

Many big brands use such companies to get a steer on what’s the next big thing, especially in fashion and other retail.

The challenge is, though, that as these companies have become more and more relied upon, it is almost difficult to know who is influencing who. Is it the research or is it the trend forecasters that are deciding what’s next?

As the never ending cycle of changes in trends has developed, clearly to ensure we are throwing away and constantly updating to the latest fashion in whatever, more of us have grown tired of this manipulation and have wised up.

So increasingly the ‘latest’ trend is becoming a flop.

If you want to stand out, create something different and make your ‘art’ for your customers, not the whole world, you need to ditch the analysis, the trends, the stats, the data and build your thing from the heart, from instinct, from inspiration.

We all buy based on often things we can not describe and it is irrational, the decision comes from what speaks to us. Not from some mass produced trend.

Stand out and ditch the trends if you want to make a splash. After all, no matter how you try to ‘dress it up’ the mini-skirt has been reimagined many times.