In the last decade a lot of research has gone into how fads spread.  Terms like “viral marketing”, “influencers” and “seeding” have been coined to describe different theories on how to marketers can encourage the spread of trends.

Very little, however, has been written about how trends die.

Until now.  A recent paper by Jonah Berger of Wharton and Gael Le Mens of Stanford looks at how quickly trends die.  Ingeniously, they’ve looked at over one hundred years of French and American census data to examine the rise and decline of popular baby names. 

The graph above illustrates this neatly.  Charlene took decades to become popular and took decades to fade.  Tricia climbed quickly and declined quickly

They found that names that become popular quickly also lose popularity quickly.  This is because the very suddenness in popularity is perceived negatively.  No one, it seems, wants a trendy baby name. 

A teacher friend of mine talks about the ‘strata’ of kids names in her school.  Ten to five years ago biblical names, such as  Zachary, Benjamin were the thing.  (My kids, born in this era, conform to this rule, of course.)  More recently, forties era names have been popular:  Jackson, Ruby and so on. 

Most importantly for marketers, Berger and Le Mens proved that, “in contrast to conventional wisdom, identity-relevant cultural products which are adopted quickly tend to be less successful overall (i.e., reduced cumulative adoption)”.  In other words, fads sell less overall. 

This is very important.  It suggests that brand launches shouldn’t necessarily start with a bang.  New products may have to feel that they’re going to be around for a long time to be attractive and your awareness of them may have to build much more slowly than we’d previously thought.