Catch The Craze Learning to take advantage of trends

You're painfully aware of the latest craze that'sengulfed the nation. Unnerved by its omnipresence and intrigued bysociety's fervent embrace of the trend, you find yourselfcowering in a corner, questioning your ability to predetermine itspopularity and pondering the various ways to profit from itsbounty.

Recognizing trends or, better yet, detecting emerging ones, isone of the biggest keys to success for most BIZ Experiencess, but noteveryone is able to extract opportunity from a trend, let aloneprofit from one. While certain trends don't cater to followers,like the innovative Pet Rocks, some do offer fertile ground forfollow-up businesses to make their mark.

Take Paul O'Brien and his Krispy Kreme delivery service.Until the demand for the delectable pastries begins to wane or thefranchise opens a store on every corner, O'Brien has a veryalluring business on his hands. Early-morning pick-ups at the VanNuys, California, location pack O'Brien's SUV with severaldozen donuts, which he then delivers to office buildings andresidents, charging double the in-store price.

Then there are BIZ Experiencess who can see a trend coming, like34-year-old comic book aficionado Lou Bank, the self-proclaimed"Big Dog" behind Vancouver, Washington, marketing anddesign company Ten Angry Pitbulls. Bank entertained the idea ofbringing the comic properties of the Japanese phenomenonPokémon out from the specialty comic-book stores and into themajor toy chains months before the fad hit full-force. Whileattending New York City's International Toy Show in January1999, Bank took note of a manufacturing tactic that assembled thepopular Dark Horse comics into packages of four. Realizing othercomic properties could benefit from this approach, Bank called upsome friends at Viz Communications, publisher of the Pokémoncomic, and nailed down the distribution rights to the Pokémoncomic-book property. "For six months, I had exclusive rightsto try to place the comics in toy stores," says Bank. "Isuspect that if I'd waited until March, I wouldn't havegotten in."

Instead of handling the packaging himself, Bank sold the rightsto a third-party distributor and, at press time, had achieved themajority of his company's revenue through the million-pluspackages sold. "It was a matter of picking the right propertyearly and getting lucky," he explains. Assured he's gotthe next two hot properties covered, Bank won't divulge hisgift of prophecy. "Somehow, I keep lucking into it," hesays. "It's just a gut feeling that's right more oftenthan wrong. You know Spiderman's tingling spider sense?That's all it is, a tingling."

A tingling that Arnold Brown, chairman of New York City trendsanalysis firm Weiner, Edrich, Brown Inc., knows only a select fewpossess. "There are BIZ Experiencess who instinctively recognizean opportunity in a trend, and then there are the rest of us whohave to think about it," says Brown. That means being acutelyaware of everything going on around you and being able to translatetrends into practical concepts. But aside from that, if a conceptmakes sense to you, it probably makes sense to someone else. As forthe problems that may arise with jumping on a hot trend that tooquickly turns tepid, Brown offers a cut-and-dried piece of advice."It's a crapshoot," he says. "There's justno scientific way of knowing."

Thou Shalt . . .

Ok, now that you've identified the phenomenon, how do youjump on it? Iconoculture's Trend Commandments offer some soundguidance.

• Cast as wide a net as possible.

• Sift through the clutter for cultural `passionpoints'--look for things that elicit an emotional, visceralreaction.

• View everything as a sign requiring decoding--focus on themeaning of things rather than the things themselves.

• Look for connections, parallels and analogies--make linksbetween trends popping up in different categories.

• Look to the margins--trends tend to bubble up from the fringesof society.

• Don't confuse trends with values--think of trends asindicators of deeper social values.

• Use history as an active resource and as a source of memorymarketing.

• Expect and capitalize on backlashes. Trends usually reversedirections.

• Creatively surf trends instead of attempting to startthem.

• Focus on application, not prediction.