A few weeks ago I incorrectly forecast that it would only take me a few days to post the answers to a trend quiz I set. It goes to show you can’t even trust the sceptics. The quiz challenged you to overcome the trend tricksters’ abuse of the nominalist fallacy by correctly identifying the real trends among the false ones simply by reading their names and a short description. Here’s a quick reminder (the answers are at the bottom):

• A) “Sleep is the new sex”: increasingly over-tired and over-stressed, people now think of sleep every 7 seconds and love a good quick one (a nap, that is)
• B) “Back-clash” : a growing surveillance culture, health & safety overload and crap X-Factor music leads to a return of punk values
• C) ”Tech fatales”: they’re out of the closet and driving marketing decisions, this is the emergence of sultry, nerdy chicks who dig gadgets
• D) “Geriatric-olescence”: the rise in third and fourth age rebels who forgot they were too old and start to revive some teenage habits
• E) “Screenagers”: the rise in kids who celebrate more over scoring a Pro-Evo goal than one they score on the school pitch

And the real ones are: A), C) and E). How did you do?

Karl Pilkington might be an exception. But the rest of us like being clever and we normally know how to spot someone who’s not. Despite the proliferation of names of degrees (David Beckham Studies), general “-ologies” and job titles (waste management services executive), we’re still pretty good at seeing people for who they are.

Not so for trends. At a recent talk on trends given by Chairman of The Value Engineers, Paul Walton, a challenge was set to the esteemed audience at Langholm Capital’s HQ: can you detect a nonsense trend from a real one just by reading its name and a short description? There was a good point being made. There’s been a horrendous proliferation of trend names over the past decade or so – an effect of what Paul terms the ‘trendemic’. And while there are good reasons for marketers wanting more information on up-to-date trends, a rise in quantity of information (as we know) doesn’t necessarily correlate with a rise in quality. The trendemic has delivered us into a world where we’re no longer very good at seeing trends for what they are, so what we want is quality but what we get is quantity.

And like any unsatisfied consumers, we marketers need to ask for more and demand better. We increased demand for trends in the first place, triggering a ‘trend-rush’ on the supply side. And now the excitement’s over, we need to start making sure we’re getting value for money. We need to know our information on trends is legitimate and we need to be certain we can tell the difference between a trend that’s a bit David Beckham and one that’s the genuine article. I can’t imagine you don’t agree but if you still want further evidence and read this post partly because of the promise of its title, let me give it to you in the ultimate form of proof: the online quiz.

I will the set the same challenge to you that Paul set to his audience. It’s designed to see if you can overcome the flip-side of what philosophers call the ‘nominalist fallacy’; the belief that something is genuine and worthy of explanation if it has a name. So below are five names, each with a short description in much the same style many trends are presented. Can you detect which are bogus (ie. we just made them up) and which are legitimate? I’ll give you a day or two to consider and write a post with the answers soon. Good luck!

• “Sleep is the new sex”: increasingly over-tired and over-stressed, people now think of sleep every 7 seconds and love a good quick one (a nap, that is)
• “Back-clash” : a growing surveillance culture, health & safety overload and crap X-Factor music leads to a return of punk values
• “Tech fatales”: they’re out of the closet and driving marketing decisions, this is the emergence of sultry, nerdy chicks who dig gadgets
• “Geriatric-olescence”: the rise in third and fourth age rebels who forgot they were too old and start to revive some teenage habits
• “Screenagers”: the rise in kids who celebrate more over scoring a Pro-Evo goal than one they score on the school pitch