🫄 Business opportunities in the fourth trimester

Happy Trends Tuesday!

Today we’ve got:

• 1 trend alert

• 1 piece of operator wisdom

• 1 article you should read

• 4 tabs we have open

Let's get to it.

🚨 TREND ALERT

New parents need more support. They’re often blindsided by how overwhelming caring for a newborn actually is.

This postpartum period is getting increased attention, along with demand for better products and services:

Despite rising interest, most postpartum gift options (even the high-end ones) consist of generic spa products or baby supplies.

We did some digging to find out what new parents really need:

1. Reddit-approved postpartum gifts and baskets. Design a postpartum/new-parents site that provides affiliate links to products, or offers a build-your-own-basket service. r/BeyondTheBump shows that in-demand items include:
   • Food you can eat with one hand
   • (Huge) water bottles with straws
   • Lactation snacks (also trending on Google)
   • Compression socks (make attractive ones for moms already)
     
     
2. Cleaning services targeted towards new parents. Specifically, differentiate your offering by using natural/nontoxic products, or by reducing noise.
   
   
3. Biophilic design. A common request is to not include flowers or plants in gifts, as they burden new parents with something else to care for. But research suggests greenery has a positive effect on both mood and breast milk quality. So, you could provide new parents with artificial plants, plant wall art, or indoor plants that thrive on neglect (yes, they exist).

🎯 MARKETING PSYCHOLOGY 101

🧠 OPERATOR WISDOM

Fall has arrived on our side of the world, but it’s always brand activation season.

Whether it’s the Met Gala (yep, that’s a brand activation for Condé Nast) or a pop-up in your local town square, an innovative activation can increase brand awareness and engagement.

Here are three keys to nailing your own experiential brand activation:

1. Get weird. Challenge your brand to step outside its comfort zone and shine new light on your product. To create bold activations, keep things unconstrained at the start:
   
   • Think big — huge! Then scale to what your budget can tolerate.
   • Let your creative teams run wild for a while, and stay open to all ideas.
     
     
2. Plan like hell. There’s nothing worse than spending cash to create an experiential brand activation only for it to turn into an embarrassing, or even dangerous, snafu. Before launching a brand activation campaign, it’s important to ask some key questions:
   • Do you have all permits/licenses/insurance in place?
   • Do you have all equipment/supplies far in advance?
   • What are the contingencies if Plan A fails?
     
     
3. Document, document, document. Brand activations cost big bucks. Get extra mileage by using the moment to capture lots of content. And don’t miss out on the UGC (user-generated content) opportunities — encourage the crowd to snap, post, and hashtag, and reinforce this encouragement with bold branding throughout the event.

🔥 ARTICLE YOU SHOULD READ 

Not every startup success story starts with an MBA-educated, Y-Combinator-backed entrepreneur.

Sometimes all it takes is a great idea paired with an unmet need and a healthy dose of drive.

But there are other ways to set yourself up for success aside from experience and money, and we’ve compiled an exhaustive list.

Read more.

OPEN TABS

🏅 Lead the way: Here’s everything you need to know about adaptive leadership.

📧 Read me: This archival article unpacks what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

🎥 YouTube: Why newsletters can be worth millions of dollars.

👀 Future of work: The companies that are pulling off a four-day workweek.

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