Non-Obvious 2017 Edition. Rohit Bhargava
kids generally don’t. Great trend names convey meaning with simplicity—and they are memorable.
For that reason, this is often my favorite part of the Haystack Method, but also the most creatively challenging. It is focused on that critical moment when you have the ability to craft an idea that will either stick in people’s minds as something new and important or be forgotten.
Sometimes this quest to share Non-Obvious ideas leads me to invent an entire concept.
My second book which focused on how likeability is the key to success in business is a perfect example of this. It was called Likeonomics and focused on exploring why we do business with people we like.
Back in 2006, I published a blog post on how content could be optimized for social media sharing. I called it Social Media Optimization and gave it the acronym of SMO. The idea spawned over a dozen services companies still in business today and even has its own entry in Wikipedia.
Finding the right name for an idea can do that. It can help a smart idea to capture the right peoples’ imaginations and help them to own and describe it for themselves. Of course, that doesn’t make it easy to do.
In fact, naming trends can take just as long as any other aspect of defining or researching a trend. In my method, I try many possibilities. I jot down potential names on post-it notes and compare them side by side. I test them with early readers and clients. Only after doing all of that do I finalize the names for the trends in each of my reports.
| NAMING QUESTIONS— How to Ensure You Have an Effective Trend Name? |
| Is the name not widely used or already well understood?Is it relatively simple to say out loud in conversation?Does it make sense without too much additional explanation?Could you imagine it as the title of a book?Are you using words that are unique and not overused or cliché?Does it build upon a popular theme or topic in an unexpected way? |
So how do the names turn out? Of course, you could see the list of trends in Part II of this book to compare some of the trend names I developed for this year’s report—but here are a few others from previous reports along with a little of the backstory behind the development and selection of each one:
Virtual Empathy (2016) - During a time when virtual reality was all anyone thinking about the future could talk about, the underlying usages that were creating the most emotional connection seemed to have the same thing in common - they amplified our sense of empathy. As a result, I paired the term “Virtual” with “Empathy” instead to create a new way of thinking about the powerful effects of Virtual Reality.
Experimedia (2015) - The pieces for this trend name came together quite quickly as I found a number of articles all talking about how social experiments were creating a new category of media stories. Putting “experiment” together with “media” works because the prefix of “experiment” remains unchanged, while a new ending creates a word that engages people’s curiosity while still being clear enough that you could guess the meaning.
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