Marketing lessons
Why do strong brands follow trends rather than fads?
Not everything that grows quickly is building value. The law of acceleration explains why, in marketing, the most solid dynamics are not the ones that explode overnight, but the ones that consolidate over time as recognizable and sustainable trends.
The law of acceleration states that marketing builds value more often on trends than on fads. Fads explode quickly and burn out just as fast; trends grow more slowly but truly change market behavior.
What is the law of acceleration?
Among the marketing laws formulated by Al Ries and Jack Trout, the law of acceleration helps distinguish between two phenomena that are often confused: the fad and the trend.
The principle is simple: successful programs are not built on fads, but on trends. In other words, what seems to explode rapidly can fade just as quickly; what grows progressively, consistently, and less spectacularly tends to have a deeper and longer-lasting impact.
The law of acceleration therefore invites us not to confuse noise with direction. In marketing, not everything that suddenly accelerates is meant to last. In fact, the most sudden phenomena are often the ones with the shortest lifespan.
A fad and a trend are not the same thing
A fad is a phenomenon that captures attention quickly, generates imitation, creates visibility, and seems to trigger a collective rush. It often follows a vertical dynamic: it rises fast, dominates the conversation for a limited period, and then deflates once it loses novelty, exclusivity, or the ability to surprise.
A trend, by contrast, moves more slowly but in a more structural way. It does not depend only on the novelty effect, but on a real change in market behaviors, expectations, or priorities. It is less spectacular at first, but more solid over time.
For a brand, being able to read this difference is decisive. Chasing a fad may deliver immediate results, but it often leads to fragile tactical choices. Intercepting a trend, on the other hand, makes it possible to build positioning, consistency, and long-term relevance.
Why this matters so much in today’s marketing
In an ecosystem dominated by social media, platforms, micro-trends, and increasingly rapid attention cycles, the pressure to react is constant. Every week, a language, format, channel, or dynamic emerges that appears impossible to ignore. For many companies, the risk is turning marketing into a sequence of pursuits. This becomes even more evident in a context where search itself is changing shape, as we also explored in Search with AI Mode.
But constant chasing rarely builds a brand. It may increase short-term visibility, but it often weakens the brand’s overall identity, makes communication more inconsistent, and reduces the market’s ability to associate the brand with a clear meaning.
This is where the law of acceleration becomes useful: it forces a simple but strategic question. Are we reacting to a spike in attention, or are we investing in a real change?
How to read acceleration in practice
There are fairly clear signals that help distinguish a fad from a trend.
- A fad often generates rapid imitation, quick saturation, and content that looks very similar across the board.
- A trend, instead, produces deeper adaptations: it changes the way companies design their offer, communicate value, or build relationships with their audience.
- A fad lives on urgency and visibility.
- A trend lives on continuity and progressive transformation.
Think, for example, about the difference between chasing a single viral format and structurally investing in brand comprehensibility within generative engines. The former may deliver temporary exposure. The latter changes, in a more lasting way, how the brand is understood, described, and recommended. This is the shift we also analyzed in From SEO to GEO: how AI is changing brand positioning.
The risk of chasing fads
The main problem with fads is not that they are absolutely useless. It is that they are often treated as if they were a strategy. When a company changes tone, format, message, or platform every time the market becomes agitated, it ends up making the brand less readable.
This has at least three negative effects. The first is dispersion: energy and budget are absorbed by activities that do not always build cumulative value. The second is a loss of consistency: the audience struggles to understand what the brand truly stands for. The third is vulnerability: when the fad passes, little or nothing remains that can be transferred into lasting value.
In strategic terms, the real cost of constant pursuit is not only operational. It is semantic and perceptual.
The law of acceleration in the age of SEO, AEO, and GEO
Today, the law of acceleration is not only about traditional branding. It also concerns how brands structure themselves to be understood in digital environments.
From an SEO and GEO perspective, constantly chasing micro-fads, random topics, or disconnected content can make a brand’s semantic profile more fragmented. By contrast, working on real trends helps build a more coherent presence over time.
From an AEO and structured data perspective, this also means organizing content, entities, services, and messages in a stable and understandable way, instead of chasing only the novelty of the moment.
In other words, the law of acceleration also translates into an architectural choice: preferring solid, repeatable, and coherent signals over episodic spikes that generate noise but little recognizability. This is the same principle behind HT&T’s AEO & GEO service page, where work on AI visibility starts from brand continuity rather than from chasing the trend of the day.
Strategic interpretation: how to use this law
For a brand, applying the law of acceleration does not mean ignoring what is happening around it. It means knowing how to filter. Not everything should be chased. Not everything should be turned into content. Not everything deserves to become part of the visible identity of the brand.
The correct interpretation is this: a fad may be used tactically, but it should never, on its own, rewrite the brand’s positioning. A trend, instead, deserves to be observed, interpreted, and integrated consistently into the strategy.
In marketing, speed is not an advantage in itself. What matters most is the direction that speed is taking the brand.
This is also where the law of acceleration connects with other marketing laws, such as the law of focus and the law of perspective. Focus helps a brand own a precise meaning in the customer’s mind. Perspective reminds us that many decisions should be judged over time, not in the immediate moment. Acceleration adds another filter: not everything that starts strong deserves to be followed.
Conclusion
The law of acceleration reminds us that marketing should not be guided only by the intensity of the present. Fads attract attention because they promise fast results, visibility, and participation. But strong brands do not simply chase what is moving fast: they choose what will last.
For this reason, the point is not to rigidly oppose innovation and discipline. The point is to distinguish between what generates a spike and what builds a trajectory. In a market where attention, language, and platforms change quickly, the ability to recognize real trends becomes a competitive advantage.
For those who want to read this dynamic in a contemporary way, through the lens of algorithmic reputation, citability, and visibility in generative systems, a useful resource is AI Observatory: the future of visibility in the age of synthesis.
FAQ – Frequently asked questions about the law of acceleration
What is the law of acceleration in marketing?
It is the principle that successful programs are not built on fads, but on trends. What appears to explode quickly does not always create lasting value.
What is the difference between a fad and a trend?
A fad grows quickly and fades quickly. A trend consolidates more slowly, but reflects a deeper and more sustainable change in market behavior.
Why can chasing fads be risky for a brand?
Because it can make communication inconsistent, fragment positioning, and shift budget and energy toward activities that do not build value over time.
Does the law of acceleration also apply to digital marketing?
Yes. It applies to social media, content, campaigns, SEO, AEO, and GEO. In all these areas, chasing only the phenomenon of the moment can weaken brand clarity.
How do you recognize a real trend?
A real trend does not generate attention alone: it changes habits, expectations, processes, or the market’s criteria for choice. Its growth is less spectacular, but more structural.
What is the relationship between acceleration and focus?
Focus helps a brand own a clear meaning in the customer’s mind. The law of acceleration helps prevent that meaning from being weakened by the constant pursuit of poorly aligned fads.
Why is this law also useful for SEO, AEO, and GEO?
Because search engines and generative systems read continuity, structure, and coherence. A brand that follows real trends builds more stable, understandable, and citable signals over time. To explore this evolution further, you can also read From SEO to GEO and JSON-LD, AEO and GEO.
Bibliography and further reading
Some useful sources for exploring the relationship between trends, brand growth, positioning, and the long-term creation of value.
Marketing laws
Al Ries, Jack Trout
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
The key starting point for the law of acceleration and, more broadly, for a strategic reading of the main laws of marketing.
Branding
Al Ries, Laura Ries
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
Useful for connecting the reading of trends with the building of a strong, recognizable, and consistent brand.
Marketing science
Byron Sharp
How Brands Grow
A core text for understanding how brands grow and why growth depends on mental availability, continuity, and demand building.
Further reading
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
How Brands Grow: the book that changed marketing
A useful summary for understanding the impact of How Brands Grow and its contribution to a contemporary reading of marketing.
Mental availability
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
How do you measure ‘How Brands Grow’?
A useful resource for linking brand growth, mental availability, and more concrete criteria for evaluating marketing over time.
Open research
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
Open-access reports and publications
A collection of materials, studies, and publications for a broader understanding of how brands and market dynamics work.
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