What does your brand mean today? All of you who don’t own a company, don’t think you’ve gotten out of this one, you still have a brand. It is YOU – your brand is what you stand for in relation to the people around you, the ones you work with and the ones you love.
Brands can mean one thing today and quite literally something else tomorrow. They change just like people can. If they don’t change – like Apple has – they will go away, like Kodak appears to be doing.
Where Apple used to be the underdog computer (built on an operating system that was so much better than Windows can ever hope to be), now it is also the go to music/phone/application device to carry with you. A computer in your hand (or on your wrist). What will it mean tomorrow?
Kodak used to be Eastman Kodak, known for not just the film used to take pictures, but also the paper and the camera used to capture moments in our lives. Now they are offering companies imaging solutions – nothing about paper, film, the camera or even the moments. They didn’t adapt soon enough to the changing digital world and they’re much, much smaller than they used to be. Does anyone even think of Kodak when it comes to images or memories – anyone under the age of say, 30? Will they be able to adapt and recapture what their brand meant to so many?
Your brand – as a child, a student, an adult, an employee, a spouse, a parent, a caregiver – will change through time. Students have to work harder, given access to what we’ve learned. 4th graders are doing what 7th graders did just 6 years ago and high-school offers what was only available in college or learned in the work place.
As parents we have to learn new things – new practices – so we can teach them more. We have to keep them safe, while giving them more freedom to be independent. Adults have to both raise their children and take care of their parents, too. As our world changes around us, we cannot live on the nostalgia of the past, believing that tomorrow will be like yesterday, it won’t…we have to change and so will the brands we love.
I want to be able to be the same, but I know that I have to change, to adapt, to learn. Will I see what I have to do soon enough? I for one, cannot wait to see what you – and the brands I love – become tomorrow.
~ Dawn aka Hat Girl