The Law of Acceleration


The Law of Acceleration - Law #21 under the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

SAVAS Law of Acceleration

“Successful programs are not built on fads, they are built on trends”. A fad is a wave in the ocean, a trend is a tide. A fad gives a lot of hype while a trend gives very little.

‘Speed thrills but kills’ this saying applies almost at every stage and situation of our life, business decisions included. Whenever you make a hasty decision, there is a serious threat of you making a wrong decision. Similar to this, a decision maker should have the knowledge or the talent to clearly differentiate between a fad and a trend. Like mentioned in the tagline, a fad is much like a wave in the ocean that is quick but weak within to sustain the test of time. A fad is something that can get started very quickly but only time will tell whether it will stand the test of time or not.

The Law of Acceleration talks about the tendency of business decision makers making the mistake of jumping the gun trying to be the first to catch the band wagon. Most of such decisions have ended up falling facedown. There is no harm in thinking to be the first to capitalize the situation, but how much of home work have you done about the new trend is what matters. Answers to some of the very basic questions such as ‘Is the new wave of change really a game changer? What is it replacing or changing in the current market? Will the change survive for a minimum period of 5 years? and so on will help one understand the change better.

The answers to the above basic questions will help you understand whether or not should you get into it. Unsure about the future but yet want to make the best of the current situation is something that every business would end up thinking. Nothing wrong in thinking so. All one has to do is get into a systematic investment plan, be it financial investment or resource and time. ‘Never put all your eggs into the same basket’ a wise man once said. Similarly, never take the risk of investing heavily and risking losing everything if it does not work. Instead, it is always better to take a distance approach where you test the waters first with a minimal investment and then gradually increase the inflow as and when you keep seeing positive signs. We should also be careful not to flood the market and kill the product. Instead, keep a constant flow such that the demand is never fulfilled and there should always be a healthy gap between the demand and the supply.

Take the India vs Pakistan cricket matches for example. The two teams called arch rivals in the game used to play a limited number of matches in a year or two and were regarded as the most watched matches in the game of cricket. There were instances where both the countries would have a partial shutdown economically when these two teams met on the field as majority of the citizens on both sides where hooked to either the radio or the television to follow the match. In recent years the number of matches between the two increased and the matches have now become somewhat an usual thing that not many are keen about anymore. It is therefore wise to keep up the demand and never ever fulfil the needs completely.

Marketers in today’s digital world are more informed and educated to identify as what is reliable and what is not. They can now keep a closer look at the proceedings in the market with plenty of market intelligence tool churning out massive amount of data and coming out with meaningful and substantial reports. Analysis such as the What If, Logical Progression and Predictive analysis have made the marketer’s life much easier than before.


Prrashanth SAVAS author

About the Author

Prrashanth H Nagaraj is the Founder and Managing Director of SAVASInc. He comes with around 16 years of professional experience across multiple industries such as Engineering, Banking, Insurance, IT, ITES and Digital Media. He is graduated in B. Eng. from University of Mysore and has a MBA degree, specialized in International Business from the University of the West of England, UK.