Seth Godin, I love your work. But your knowledge of fashion trends is reassuring. If you knew what I know about fashion trends, then you’d be better than me at both marketing and fashion. And then I’d be in real trouble.
Thankfully not.
Talking of marketers gaming signals, Godin recently mused;
A few celebrities wearing Uggs in the middle of the summer sends a signal to fashion wannabees everywhere: these are hot. It doesn’t matter too much if they actually are hot, all that matters (to these wannabees and the retailers that serve them) is that in the past, when beautiful people in Santa Monica did something, it was an effective signal to the market.
What Seth doesn’t know, but most fashionisers do, is that a few celebrities wearing Ugg boots in Summer doesn’t make create a fashion trend, but creates an unfashionable celebrity.
If anything, we’d stop taking our cues from that celebrity altogether.
Still, I can see where Seth was coming from. Even if he might have been wearing Crocs when writing.
