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Pokémon Go is the epitome of intelligent marketing. The most successful marketing campaigns, or trends, follow a few simple criteria.
Capture your target audience. Traditionally this is usually those who are most impressionable, with the most buying power or influence, and typically classified as adolescents or young adults. Done successfully, your target audience will be product ambassadors.
Timing is crucial. Any marketing campaign must understand the key demographic well enough to know when the time is right. Too soon, and no one is listening. Too late, and everyone has moved on.
Lastly, know when and how to evolve. Longevity and trend may very well be mutually exclusive, however, trends also flow in cycles. Still, with each cycle, key elements are often altered to recapture an audience. It is because of these cycles, and fueled by nostalgia, that Pokémon Go may have an unusually wide age demographic. Having evolved from its lower tech origins, smart phones easily entranced, not only young gamers, but their parents alike.
Note, Pokémon’s slogan is simply brilliant. While loyal gamers are absorbed by this very notion, the truth is in the marketing team’s reality, of catching all of us. Check and mate!