Few industries are more trend following than advertising. This is a fact and in defense of the industry, it’s part of our job to know the latest in technology, fashion, literature, movies and music. And to be honest, that is one of the few things I truly miss about a full time ad job. Since I was able to access pretty much anything I wanted, I could read up on the trendiest everything. From blogs to business, from health supplements to laptops. To not fall into hackneyed clichéd territory, you needed information and lots of it. But somewhere along the line, research and staying in the know translated into making everything trendy and completely embracing what we should know is BS.
If you’re not following, do this experiment: check twitter feeds for the latest fashions, the trendiest drinks, and the most hip food suppliers and chances are you will start to see a pattern. News and RSS feeds shall be assimilated as opinions and the trendiest creatives will also probably be the most predictable. Add to this that certain idiot activities will never change. People who really don’t care about film will always watch foreign flicks to show you how sophisticated they are. People who don’t know the difference between a pilsner and chilled urine will start drinking artisan beers and appearances will be made to look like opinions.
The fun begins when people start competing in regards to who is trendier. Hemp tote bags, rimmed glasses, the latest iPhone or BlackBerry, a hi-tech Mac, the most delicious $8 smoothie and the car to die for, or so says the majority of articles. It will be nauseating, idiotic and disingenuous, and it will all happen in the name of the latest fad. But once the dumb dust settles, we’re all going to be forced to accept the one simple truth that after all, kvetching is just a fancy way of saying to bitch, it just happens to be hipster cool at the moment.
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