How Do You Spot Trends?

I wrote a cookbook a long time ago titled, “Cook Like A Stud” 38 recipes that men can prepare in the garage with their own tools. Sounds dumb, right? It WAS dumb. It was silly and largely a joke. Yet it was a best seller and I appeared on a lot of TV shows demonstrating recipes from the garage. But it was a dumb idea with a purpose. Back then there wre rumblings that a full time food network was going to be launched. All of us in broadcasting thought it was a stupid move. Who wants to see people cook 24/7/365? Well, since I was trained to look for trends…I remember thinking “nobody thought televised fishing would take off.” As it turns out, a lot of people like to watch people fish…so maybe they would like to see people cook. So, I wrote the Stud Cookbook…and it was a success. See, the culture was telling us they had an appetite for The Food Network (pardon the pun). The culture (viewers) was changing their habits. Be aware of trends yourself. Did you think electronic books would take off? How about Twitter? Look around. What trend is happening right under you nose that you may be ignoring? How can you leverage that new trend or buying habit shift to your advantage? Trends are easy to spot. Your friends are Facebooking it. Your neighbors are buying goods and services you haven’t seen before. Celebrities are chatting about it in the tabloids, And, your newscasters are doing stories about it. Be aware of what’s happening in the culture. Don’t let an emerging trend make a fool out of you…or worse…being out-innovated by your competitors. This is Ross Shafer for the Relevant Report.