History is littered with corpses of brands who didn’t evolve

Darwin taught us that it’s not the strongest who survive, only the most adaptable to change.

The implications of this theory of evolution are widespread for almost every area of human life.

Interestingly, his words also apply to the world of brands. Because in almost every industry, two things are for sure.

One, customers will have new desires and problems. And two, businesses will gain new insights, get access to better tech and hire new people.

The combination of these changes implores brands to evolve intentionally and incrementally.

Now, because that transformation is often expensive, painstaking and complicated, it’s helpful to start with some guiding questions. No need to pay a marketing agency tens of thousands of dollars to redesign your company identity. Not yet, at least.

What might be a more accessible and enjoyable approach is to get together with a few key team members, and ask a few of these:

How could we create and capture value in new ways for different markets?

Do we have lower priced products, lower value clients and lower return endeavors that we could eliminate?

Talk about putting the quest back in question.

The only problem is, most brands get in their own way. They become hostage to their own success, refusing to do anything other than what they’ve already done.

History is littered with these brand corpses.

Kodak was in denial about changing consumer preferences, so they blew their chance to lead the digital photography revolution.

Nokia focused on hardware rather than software and got blown away by competitors with a better user experience.

Yahoo could have been a major player in the online advertising market, but they undervalued search and overvalued media.

Borders was crushing the bookstore world until new ebook technology caught them by surprise and they never found their way back to the top.

Tivo invented the entire digital video recorder category, but when cable companies stole their innovation, they sued for patent infringement fifteen years too late.

Netflix, on the other hand, knew how to evolve. If you read the founder’s brilliant memoir, one of the big moves he talks about is how good their company was at letting go.

Netflix, if you recall, dropped their a la carte rentals and switched entirely to subscription. Later, once streaming became, pardon the pun, more mainstream, they reaped the benefits.

And shortly thereafter, once they decided to own the means production as well as the distribution of it, it was game over.

Randolph writes in his book:

We had to be willing to abandon parts of the past in service of the future. Sometimes, focus this intense looks like ruthlessness, and it is, a little bit. But it’s more than that. It’s something akin to courage.

Are you brave enough to evolve? What could be dropped from your brand so that other aspects of the business can shine brother?

Answer these questions, and your brand will have something better than strength. It will have adaptability.

When the world changes, you’ll be in a prime position to leverage it.

What technological or cultural reality is your company still denying?