Playing on the Popular to Score Points with Readers

“IU or Purdue: Which license plate is more popular?” read the headline in the Retro section of the Indianapolis Star. (IU might have a numbers advantage; its enrollment is larger, John Tufts concedes.) Having captured attention through the headline, IndyStar went on to examine data supplied by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles:

• the top ten most popular distinctive license plates in Indiana as of July 2025 (the list includes Hoosier Veteran, Heritage Trust, Pet Friendly Trust, Breast Cancer, and Professional  Firefighters)
• which Indiana college and university license plates are available at BNV
• license personalization options and their cost

The article concludes with news about the next game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the IU Hoosiers (Friday Nov. 28).

“The appeal of a trend is the need and the want to ‘fit in’ with society. Essentially, we follow trends because we don’t want to be left out and because it’s easier than making our own path,” Austin Price posits in the Regis University Highlander. People like to know what other people are doing. “In fact, following trends makes consumerism easier for us to comprehend.”

As content marketers, knowing that our readers like to keep up with the trends, we scour websites, blogs, magazines, and newspapers for clues about “what’s happening” in our clients’ fields. Ironically, staying savvy about what’s trending allows us to establish each client as a thought leader, both keeping abreast of – and starting – trends.

The IndyStar article with all those license plate statistics illustrates an important point: it’s the audience’s curiosity gap that creates a marketing win. Which university license plates are most popular? (And, yes, as we’ve learned at Say It For You, by definition of their having found their way to your content, readers have curiosity about some aspect of your profession or business.)

“Playing on the popular”, raising and then answering a question about trends, is a way to score points with readers.