Tattoos And Piercings Are Just Two Elements Of The Body Art Trend
I’ve had this article in my vault for about a month now. Since I saw a company I was going to write about included in TrendWatching.com’s latest report, I figured I ought to push this out sooner rather than later.
The company is called ColorOn and the trend it was credited to, in the article, was the “clever convenience” trend. These are things that make life a little easier, even if it’s more of a “want” than a “need.” But this isn’t the trend I’ll be writing about today. ColorOn is also part of the overall body art trend.
I know what you’re saying: Body art is older than oral communication, so how is this a trend? Well first off, regular tattoos and piercings are growing in popularity at a high rate and are increasingly accepted in our culture.
According to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 24% of Americans between 18 and 50 have at least one tattoo, as reported by USA Today. In 2003 that number was 15%; an increase of 62% in just three years (this survey was taken in 2006). The survey also found that 36% of Americans ages 18 to 29 are tattooed. The word tattoo hit a four year high in Google searches this year.
You can tell this is a growing trend because employers are relaxing their dress codes to allow for tattoos and unique piercings because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find employees without them.
And secondly, there are a zillion different creative ways to express yourself as we have more than just tattoos and piercings.
The World Body Painting Festival is happening right now in South Korea. Zimbio is calling it this falls hottest fashion trend. I don’t know about it being the hottest (go goffered hair!), but it certainly is heating up I’m not going to argue on what is or is not art (because it’s the most ridiculous argument ever), but you have to admit that some of those are amazing.
Here are some other forms of body art that are growing in popularity:
- Laser etching on skin.
- Laser tattooing on fingernails.
- Scarification, the art of using a scalpel to carve tattoos.
- Body Branding.
- Hand painting (Pic by Guido Daniele).
I know you guys love the jewels in the teeth, but don’t worry, tooth bling doesn’t seem to be one of the growing body art trends. However, dental tattoos ARE becoming more popular, shown here in Google Trends as tooth art. You probably haven’t seen one yet, so here is a pic from BoingBoing. Creepy eh?
Domain names should be easy to create for this trend. Beyond that, there are several different ways you can tackle sites or mini-sites for body art (other than the obvious general blog or site):
- Rate My Tattoo (or facepaint, or tooth, or whatever)
- Catalog of designs
- Photo sharing site
- Tips and tutorials
This is a reader-oriented niche. People would be more than willing to proudly display/share their art or knowledge of the art. Reader submitted content is free content!
So how far are people willing to go for body art? Trepanation?
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Hosting Crash
Hosting went down last night. I’ve been with Lunarpages for about 4 or 5 years now and that’s the first time it’s ever gone down. And strangely enough, now that it’s back up my Twitter widget doesn’t work, which was meant for situations such as this one.
Still no complaints. Lunarpages is easily the best hosting account company I’ve ever worked with. They’ve fixed the 3 or 4 problems I’ve had and even moved me to a PHP5 server the same day I asked for it.
Great company.
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TrendWatching.com Releases July/Aug Briefing, TrendDomaining.com Had A Few Right
TrendWatching.com has posted it’s bi-monthly briefing early this morning. These briefings are free and every domainer should check them out when they are released. It is an essential tool as far as I’m concerned. This edition is INNOVATION AVALANCHE (link fixed), as they claim there is more innovation happening right now than ever before. This report discusses 41 copy-worthy innovative ideas.
This is a great site. I’ve used a couple of their reported trends to register domain names. They have a huge trend report that they put out at the end of every year predicting all of the next years trends. At $800, it isn’t for the average Joe. But it would be a wise investment if you could afford it.
So, if you’re in a lazy mood, here is the Cliff’s Notes version of the briefing:
The first 3 innovative ideas are based on the premiumization trend. You take every day normal products or brands and, well, pimp them. For instance, stylish fire extinguishers or the Hi-Q tire company. Premiumization was predicted to be a top trend in 2008, and it’s living up to the prediction.
Ideas 3 and 4 are hyperlocal trends. Sound familiar eh? That’s because I’ve blogged about hyperlocal dating. They go on to say that we spend 49 weeks a year in our local worlds, making the hyperlocal trends inevitable. I agree 100%.
Ideas 6 through 11 are based on the “crowd” or “crowdfunding” trend. These companies are using scores of people to execute their business platform. From a community-managed brewery that donates one third to charity, to rewarding companies that “do good” with mobs of shoppers. This trend is focused on empowering the public, and there are some pretty nifty ideas listed in this report.
Ideas 12-14 focus on the “FREE” trend. Companies are looking for ways to profit off of free products, and a few of them have made it work. Universities are giving away free notebooks that are plastered with advertising. The students get free materials, the University makes a little profit (or breaks even) and the advertisers get impressions; 96 a semester if you’re counting.
Ideas 15-18 are “ItGredients.” This is predicting the next it-ism in the food and beverage industry, such as red espresso; made from red tea and much healthier than regular espresso. Also featured: chocolate covered ants. Yum. They also talk about high-end juices. I almost wrote a post about high-end juice a couple months ago. I figured it wasn’t a trend that domainers could not capitalize on enough to warrant a full post.
Ideas 19-23 are “Tryvertising.” Along with premiumization, this trend was expected to be one of the biggest for 2008. This is another trend I almost wrote a post on. SeatGuru is an example; they have detailed info on the seating layouts of commercial airplanes. This will help you choose the best seat for your next flight. Other examples would be a site that helps you find hotel rooms with the best views and restaurant ratings not for restaurants themselves, but individual dishes they serve. That way, you can “try” them out before you actually purchase.
Ideas 24-28 are based off of making radical eco-friendly decisions that can greatly benefit your company. Examples given were pedal-powered street vendors, solar powered kiosks, mattresses made from recycled materials and something I blogged about: First Look. First Look sells detailed reports to businesses that wish to generate their own power using wind, solar or whatever. This can be extra helpful to domainers who are looking for green geodomain names.
Ideas 29-32 are the “Meconomy.” Not only did I think about blogging about this trend, I have a half-written post on it already. This trend is the personalization of EVERY-FREAKIN-THING: Baby movies, M&M’s, magazines, etc. This is a trend domainers would be interested in as you can plop a “me” or “my” on just about any domain name.
Ideas 33-36 are the convenience economy. This trend focuses on doing things faster, simpler and better. Things like bike stations, they say. They also talk about press-on eyeshadow. This is another topic that I have a working post on. It’s not totally focused on eyeshadow, but is about a bigger, different trend.
Ideas 37-39 are feeder businesses. These are businesses that feed off of other businesses and/or trends. For instance, a company that will put your items on eBay for you. Without eBay the company doesn’t exist.
Idea 40 is the “Eco-Iconic.” We’ve gone from eco-ugly to eco-chic to eco-iconic: proudly showing off your trendy, efficient personal eco-friendly goods. They give a solar-powered lawnmower as an example. I’ve I blogged about personal solar power here.
Idea 41 is “Off=On.” The success of the online revolution is leading to many companies taking advantage of it. Some of them are even mirroring the online world in their offline manufacturing processes and procedures. They give a chocolate company as an example.
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Guest Post: New Domain Registrations - Cheap Hot Tip For Great Domains
Many of you, including myself, are always looking for new sources of domains. You’d be surprised to know I spoke to Monte Cahn about a good source on Moniker’s DomainMaster radio over two years ago about this little-known secret, and I’ve helped many of my clients with this angle:
Take a look at online manufacturing industry catalogs and product pages. Find an industry, and investigate it, such as plumbing, electronic, auto parts, chemical, agriculture, etc.
There’s an easy way to find generic domains (do NOT nab product model names or anything with a ™ next to it). Surprisingly, the catalogs of these companies’ nicely define their products’ generic descriptions. That’s right. The catalogs of these companies are defining the generic description of their own products, and most of them don’t buy those domains while they’re designing the catalog. Some of my domains I found this way I sold within a year. I still have some popular ones that make some PPC too, like impactsprinklers.com and chemicaladditive.com. These are big products, and I bought them “OOTB -out of the basket” (New registrations).
With the evolution of marketing the domain name industry and the epiphanal marketing necessity for companies to own their prodserv online, they eventually will back up their popular products with buying the generic domains for them. It’s been done in the past, it’s being done now, and it will be even bigger in the future.
It can be time-consuming, and addictive. It also can be very lucrative. Be careful, learn a lot about the niche industry you’re thinking about following for finding their most popular product generic domains. Use their catalogs and product pages! A goldmine for domainers if you take the time to research.
Okay, now somebody owes me something.
Guest Blog Post by Stephen Douglas, Successclick.com
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Totally Tweriffic Twitter Trend Tool
Twitter has a gem of a domaining tool that no one knows about. This is something that’s not on their page: it’s hidden. It’s called Search.Twitter.com. The name is self explanatory.
So I did a search for “new trend” and it was quite obvious what trends people have been talking about. This is hitting up trends pretty early on. Twitter and texting is about the first thing people do when they communicate now-a-days. It’s usually too late to get the category killer domain names once a trend hits the news. But I hit one or two using this search engine.
This is what I found:
Apparently Christina Aguilera and Tyra Banks have started a new trendy hairstyle called Goffered Hair. I registered:
- Goffered.com
- GofferedHair.com
This is something I noticed myself during the Olympics but never really thought of it: lenseless glasses. I saw several tweets of this and one referred to this article. I registered:
- LenselessGlasses.com
A big trend right now is making an avatar of your manga self. You take your face and manga-ize it. I registered:
- MyMangaAvatar.com
- MyMangaSelf.com
- MangaSelf.com
Other weird trends I read about: Fish fighting, cats in purses, pre-tween beauty waxing, precycling, SIGG bottles, white hair, insourcing, large ariel font and short wedding dresses.
These are trends that I otherwise would never have found. I was able to hit them up super early before they got into mainstream media.
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