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Today, brands need to exploit every opportunity. It means that they need to pay careful attention to trends, obviously to identify them, but also to get the timing right.

Things are just happening faster and the window of opportunity is much smaller these days. Consumer products are becoming much more like fashion items, with much shorter life cycles than ever before. To exploit them you simply have to be faster which can be a problem in corporate cultures where process gets in the way. One of the biggest problems is fair of failure. Today's marketing executives are paralyzed by fear of failure, so ideas to get tested to death and by the time all the indicators say go, the opportunity has gone.

It was true in the craze for alternative malt based beverages, a fad that Diageo exploited well initially, with Smirnoff Ice, launching in 2000/2001. However, the market soon became flooded with similar products as Business 2.0 describe "The alcopop boom took off with Diageo's U.S. launch of Smirnoff Ice, which was hailed as an upscale option and tasted like carbonated, boozy lemonade. Backed by a $40 million ad campaign, the product was an instant hit, selling 22 million cases in 2001. A frenzy followed, with brewing companies partnering with spirits brands to release more than 50 malternatives backed by ad spending of drunken-sailor proportions."

Diageo exploited the first mover advantage, but then got sucked into believing that the category growth was there to stay. Consequently, they took a huge hit with the failure of Captain Morgan's entry into the category.

Coca-Cola recently admitted that they got its timing wrong with the launch of C2

Adidas is currently missing out on an opportunity, albeit a niche one, to market shoes based on Zissou trainer featured in the movie Life Aquatic. Adidas don't have the shoe and although consumers want it, it's an opportunity they can't exploit because of pre-existing systems.

On Friday, Kraft announced they would be launching a range of products based on the South Beach Diet. Perhaps, this launch will be a little too late, Nielsen Bookscan reported that by October 2004, South Beach book sales had plunged to 20,000 copies per week, compared with 70,000 in March.

All this suggests that marketing structures need to change. Marketing needs to be more like a SWAT team than a Senate Committee. Marketing executives should be allowed to fail and learn from their failures. Their marketing communication partners need to be true partners at their side; showing how they can get the messages out faster, cheaper and highlight trends that their clients can exploit. The days of 8-week production turnaround times are well and truly over. It will mean placing more and more emphasis on the web, where things can be done faster and cheaper. That's everything from research, testing, communication launch and even trend analysis.

Brands that succeed will be the ones that blow up the structures and process that haven't really changed since consumer marketing began in the 1950s. The winners will be the ones that can re-invent the model.

Marketeers searching for inspiration, should take a look at the Spanish retailer Zara. It's the pioneer of "fast fashion"; a system that allows it to exploit trends and get product out to maket quicker than any of its competitors.