stop chasing trends, build formats.
trends are rented attention. formats are owned assets. the brands that compound build the second, not the first.
chasing trends is an exhausting treadmill that builds no equity. repeatable formats get easier over time, build recognition, and compound into a real content engine.
the trend treadmill is seductive and exhausting: chase the sound, copy the format, do it again next week, forever, with nothing to show but a feed of other people's ideas. the brands that actually build something do the opposite — they create formats they own and repeat.
— 01trends are rented
a trend gives you a brief borrowed boost and then it's gone, replaced by the next one. you're always starting over, always reacting. chasing trends builds no equity — you're renting attention with someone else's idea and you can never stop paying.
a trend belongs to whoever started it, and participating late gets you an audience that recognises the trend rather than you.
it also has no residual value. once the sound or the structure is spent, nothing accumulates from having used it.
and the production cost is the same as making something of your own — which is the real argument against it.
— 02formats compound
a format — a recurring series, structure or franchise that's distinctly yours — gets easier to make and more recognisable every time you run it. the audience learns to expect it, you get faster at producing it, and it becomes an asset you own rather than a trend you borrowed.
returning viewers are worth several times a discovered one, and formats are the only reliable way to produce them.
and it makes production sustainable, because a format removes the invention step from a busy week.
— 03use trends to feed formats
this isn't anti-trend — it's about priority. build your formats first, then let the occasional relevant trend slot into them. the format is the engine; the trend is fuel you add when it fits, not the thing you chase in circles.
treat trends as a research channel. the ones that work tell you something about what your audience responds to, which is information a format can absorb.
so when a trend performs, ask which mechanism made it work and build that into something repeatable.
and cap participation deliberately — one in five posts at most. beyond that the account has no identity of its own.
— 04how long to give a format
a full quarter, unchanged, before judging it. formats fail on abandonment far more often than on design.
and when one works, make more of it rather than something new. the instinct to vary is what keeps most accounts unrecognisable.