No one really wants to die. Even those who want to go to heaven don’t really want to die to get there. But death is something we will all experience, we just don’t know when, where or why.
This last week was a tragic one for Northeast Ohio. We woke up on Monday to a High School shooting in Chardon in which the outcome was every parents worst nightmare. Then, just a few days later, we heard about a precious young friend of my daughters who died tragically in a car accident. All so young and their deaths were not in the natural order of things.
And, so began a week of funerals in which many tears were shed and memories shared. Through the tears there were also smiles and welcome sounds of laughter as we viewed photo boards set up by the family. Photographs help us to grieve by remembering happy moments together. Picture collages are a welcome and common part of many memorial services.
This week as I was surrounded by grief and photography, I got to thinking about Kodak and how it succumb to the same tragic fate. At one time, they had one of the most innovative research departments in the world and were the very ones that built the first digital camera in 1975. This technology basically is what destroyed Kodak because they never totally embraced the digital revolution.
Up until the early 1990s, Kodak was considered one of the world’s most valuable brands. Technology is what eventually did them in. The brands that will survive today are the ones that are able to innovate, adapt, evolve and change quickly recognizing consumer shifts and trends before their competitors. In other words, those that change with the times will be around tomorrow!
This means that branding is more important than ever before! Why? Well, today marketing is about values and connecting with your audience. If you want people to know about a company and remember what it stands for then you need to be relevant and compete heavily for attention in a very loud world.
Sadly, many companies like Kodak fail to adapt and change with the times and in doing so, stop caring about listening to their customers’. The combination of these two factors along with lack of advertising often leads to their demise.
The tragedy is that many companies, just like too many young people, die premature deaths. When that happens it breaks your heart.
Have you ever mourned the loss of a company? If so, tell us about it and why you think it happened.
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I so completely agree with you Charene. My own family business, Schreibman Jewelers fell prey to this very thing. I started playing with technology in the early 90′s and spent over a decade trying to convince my aging parents to take the leap. My mother was open, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. Hence the sad result:( I am convinced that we would have taken our brand which was already exceptionally successful and been able to compete powerfully.
Wow, thanks Beth for sharing your own family business experience with changing technology! Lets hope we are very open to the changes that we will see in the next 30 years! Can you imagine how things will look then?