Trigger Trends help keep a business and its marketing relevant. Here’s what you need to know on how to decipher a trend and how to apply them.
The secret to keeping a business alive is being relevant. As the digital world takes over, we have seen many companies that were leaders in their market fall behind. Remember Kodak? Your press the button, We do the rest! Kodak was the leading photography brand of its time. Yes, Time. But when times change, we need to change with it in order not to get left behind. And whilst Kodak is still a big name in terms of photography, photography itself has adapted towards the digital sphere where the question on everybody’s lips is, Samsung or iPhone for mobile photography? Or what features does the newest GoPro have for epic adventure and action shots?
This evolve-or-die attitude not only applies to product evolution, but also to our marketing technique. We need to keep up with the times not to dry out and die. Now, we are aware that this is not some groundbreaking insight into how to stay relevant. So, more importantly, how do we do this?
The Use of Trigger Trends
What are Trigger Trends? What we at Blind Basset like to call ‘Trigger Trends’ are current events and, of course, trends that have triggered cultural movements and that we can apply our marketing. If we look at recent history, a predominant current event was the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered several lifestyle changes and trends that have remained despite life slowly returning to normal.
Let me break it down a little further.
The increase in delivery services and take-outs, working from home, online meetings… Sound familiar? What has resulted is the increase of a society dominated by technology and accessibility.
Not only can Trigger Trends be applied to processes and product concepts, but they can, and should, also be applied to our marketing.
Sam Hennig has done this flawlessly for KitKat by placing a KitKat bar instead of a meeting name in a work calendar separating various Zoom calls. For those of you who might not be familiar with KitKat’s famous slogan, ‘Have a Break, Have a KitKat’, the simple but creative image implies that there is a scheduled break where the KitKat bar has been implemented. Why is this ad so effective? Henning has merged KitKat’s slogan with one of the predominant cultural shifts resulting from the pandemic.
So, applying our marketing to upcoming trends allows for branding to be part of the present and the future. But how do we identify triggers to use in our marketing?
Trigger Trend Cheat Guide
The two golden rules of Trigger Trends? Trigger Trends must
- Be applicable across the whole of the target market audience at the present moment but yet also be applicable in the near future
- Call to the consumers’ knowledge, beliefs and/or conduct
To apply this to the example of Hennig’s KitKat ad, the Trigger Trend here relates to online working and scheduling meetings. For this to work, the consumer must be aware of the global pandemic and the upheaval from office work to working from home. Given the enormity and gravity of the pandemic, this was no doubt the case. And, as we are all aware, working from home was not a temporary short shift, but rather one that lasted over two years and one that has become the norm, pandemic or not. The trigger here, as mentioned before, was applied to an aspect of the consumers’ knowledge which in this case relates to KitKat being synonymous with having a break.
As social and cultural norms continue to shift, we as marketers need to continuously adapt to our consumers’ new beliefs, as we slowly try to leave the pandemic in the past and move on to new ways of life.
In the following weeks, we will break down current trends that can be used as Trigger Trends for marketing content. Stay tuned.