It is a simple truth that brands exist to create positive disruptions while satisfying the desires of their markets, customers, partners and owners.
Like any sustainable economy they must have an agility and willingness to evolve. Some have evolved in direct response to commercial imperatives and others choose to evolve for cultural relevancy. What was right and ok five years ago may not be right today or even relevant tomorrow. No one wants to have a Kodak moment when the resistance to evolve in time with seismic cultural, technological and market shifts ensures a brand becomes irrelevant and ultimately extinct.
All brands have golden years and dark days, but the challenge is always the same, what is the right thing to do to energise, invigorate and sustain our brand assets into the future. The key is reinvention.
Coke is Coke but has always spoken to every generation with the right voice and with a message just for that generation. Levi’s are jeans and always have been but they have also been a statement of every generation’s expression of self, as the worker, as revolutionary and even as the environmentalist.
Something new is upon us and it has a completely unique set of drivers, values wants and desires. The brands of today and tomorrow have a big challenge before them.
How do we become more relevant than our competitors to meet this generation of customers, followers, tweeters and subscribers?
This isn’t something we have time to prepare for. It’s time to hustle and innovate, before others figure it out and our brand has its very own Kodak moment. It’s already happened and it’s not going away.
As of 2017 the GenY cohort has staged a demographic takeover of the Baby Boomers as the most important generational group. Their new agenda values building community over one-way conversations, and over sharing is very much acceptable. How will your brands deal with that?
What does your brand have to give to this new generation?
