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NEW YORK, NY; July 12, 2016—Here’s the Pokemon GO story — “How Pokemon GO Took Over The World And Why There’s No Point In Ripping It Off,” a commentary by The Wrap’s Phil Owen — you need to read if you’re wondering how to cash in on the craze.

For years I’ve been warning people that building their business plan on being “the next Beatles,” “the next Disney,” “the next Andy Warhol” is to set yourself up for failure. If you do that well, great — and hopefully you can be prepared for how to prolong the life of the property or project. But most business propositions aren’t going to hit the stratosphere.

Years ago I asked Clive Davis, the legendary music business impresario and then Arista label-head, how surprised he was when the single “There Goes Another Love Song” off the Outlaws’ debut album was a hit “out of the box.” “Not surprised enough not to know what to do.”

It was a brilliant answer that I’ve quoted often, and that has informed much of my research into and thinking about pop culture over the years.

I don’t agree 100% with Owen: I suspect there will be a market for other Pokemon GO-like augmented reality games. They just won’t be the phenomena that Pokemon GO is, and as long as the creators don’t scale up for being “the next Pokemon GO” at least some will be viable.

The critical question is how long Pokemon GO can be sustained and, for Nintendo, whether it will have a salutary affect on sales of Nintendo game systems, games and licensed merchandise. (See my recent post, “Sustaining Licensed Properties In A Multi-Platform Universe.”) Generally, the faster a fad takes off, the faster it crashes.

FYI, if you’re a gamer of a certain age thinking it’s time to cash in on your dusty classic Pokemon collection, eBay had 440,296 Pokemon items available when I just checked, 95,548 of them trading card collections.

Need competitive research? Someone to bounce marketing strategy off of? To educate corporate officers about licensing? Contact me at ira@iramayer.com.