Believe In Yourself; But Believe In Trends More

We're all looking for something to take us to a better place-workwise, that is.

How do we do that? Follow trends.

When you’ve got one example, it’s a “noticeable situation.” When you’ve got two examples, it’s a fact. And when you’ve got three examples—welcome to a trend.

A trend is something that is just happening—the way ads are becoming smaller by the second (and disappearing, thank G-d); the use of tiny devices that are almost ear-sized for us to check who wants to reach us; the tendency for movies to be built around consumer products like Ben Stiller’s haircut or a particular type of Mercedes (crap slogans, wicked cars)—and that is happening in a significant enough way to portend real and widespread change.

The trends enjoyed by a few today will be experienced by many tomorrow, and virtually all next week. And a PR person that wants to excel needs to be a great, not good, trendspotter who can separate the wheat from the chaff, distinguish today’s passing fancy or fading passion from tomorrow’s hot new item du jour.

In lots of businesses — media, entertainment, marketing, fashion or stock-market-related professions — knowing the latest trend is a prerequisite for success (or even survival). The message is clear: you miss out on a trend, you’re out on the street.

I asked a friend, a journalist, why she thought we are so fascinated by trends. “Simple,” she said. “The trends happen without fail, and we find ourselves in the middle of them, and we want to identify what is happening.”

The most important rule in spotting trends is the rule of talking to experts.

Here’s how:

1. Pay attention to people you believe in. Get in touch and ask questions.

2. Ask really good (and useful) questions. Have total belief in your sources and make them know this.

3. Find visionaries who can teach you new ideas, and try to tell them one thing they weren’t aware of. People who are true visionaries know they can take a new person’s idea to another level. So they are thankful to respond to your call/e-mail. It’s important to learn to recognize the difference between true visionaries and slick BS.

4. Be aware of where life is going. Pay attention to the signs that something — big change — is on the horizon.

5. Great trendspotters are always evolving, learning, and growing. Remember that Italian class you’re always thinking of taking? Right.

6. Don’t just read the Arts section. Be well-rounded. In marketing, and in life, nothing succeeds (even success) like a person who is knowledgeable and, er, interesting. And stuff.

Since You Weren’t Reading Carefully, I Made Another List

Here is a sum of what you can do today. It has more group action—in case you didn’t feel like reading before:

1. Follow leaders — pay attention.

2. Use the Net for everything (forget privacy concerns—they’re nonexistent and almost funny now, so go, click, and be merry),because at any given time you can follow the thoughts of approximately 1.5 million random, just-as-fascinated people. A nice number—and one I didn’t have to make up.

3. Collect data on areas that interest you. Hey, one thing that everyone
forgets—and I know I said it before, but I can’t stress it enough—get a napkin and write it down. Even if you don’t ever look at thepage again, the brain works in oh-so-mysterious ways. I do this with my always-neglected shopping lists that I don’t bother with before I "dial up" the Chinese Delivery Guy.

4. Get on mailing lists about things that interest you. It’s so easy to do that now. Gosh, in the old days you had to send SASEs (for the confused, that’s self-addressed envelopes with stamps—or snail). Today you just shoot an e-mail to someone or click a link. I mean, jeez, there’s no excuse.

5. Use separate e-mail addresses just to collect separate information. Get a Hotmail or Gmail account for spam. In these cases, e-mail is—dare I say it—worthy.

6. Subscribe to trade publications. Man, you can get so many of them gratis. In trade magazines you read passionate and often interesting articles on things you had heretofore thought were dull. Plus, you get to see others work hard to explain what you found inexplicable.

7. Talk to experts—arrange to meet. I’ve said it before, and that means I mean it.

8. Don’t ignore indicators. In 1929, the only ones who made it through the crash were those who read newspapers. And really read ’em. By the way, myyahoo.com and mywashingtonpost.com—all that stuff you think you want to know—are not good enough. Expand your wings, broaden personal focus, all those other clichés . . .

9. Just do it over and over again. Nike had a point, albeit a repetitive one.

10. It is indubitably a must to be informed. But come on, talking about being interested in order to succeed is so obvious. If you don’t know this, then close the book. Today, it’s more urgent than ever to be interesting since that would put you in a class by yourself—people tend to like you better because you are a hotbed of “hmm, cool fact” in a society where people repeat the same one-liners daily.

It is better to be remembered for who you are than simply nodded at.

11. Stay awake. I like my lattes with lowfat.

*****Twitter @laermer