9: How to Become Irrelevant

The chapter title here is meant with a touch of irony, as no company wants to become irrelevant - but somehow it seems to happen. It can happen if you do not work hard enough at keeping in step with the changing demands of your customers, and it can happen if you work very hard at resisting the changes in the environment. And while it would seem ridiculous to suggest any company would do either of those things, many do both as a matter of habit.

(EN: Reading ahead, this chapter seems like quite a lot of cheerleading without much new information or research - I'll preserve some notes anyway.)

• Long-standing organizations place a priority on tradition - many insist on resisting changes in the name of preserving heritage, and end up getting left behind
• Loyal customers may just be waiting for a better alternative to present itself. Many firms are shocked at how quickly they are abandoned by customers with decades of loyalty when a new competitor comes along. This is the result of complacency and arrogance.
• Market research to remain relevant to customers is an easy target for budget cuts. It is a short-term savings that does long-term damage.
• Customers change at different speeds - some cling to their old products while others switch to the new, so the numbers can be deceiving until the majority of customers are embracing change, by which time you may be too late to catch up to them
• An aging body of customers is a good sign that you are losing relevance: the older customers cling to your brand out of tradition, but you are not attracting any new ones. While it can be profitable to serve them, your demand will dry up as they die off. (EN: This is what happened to Oldsmobile, and will soon be happening to Buick, whose market is over 60 years old)
• Extinction is the natural consequence for species that do not evolve with the changing environment. It's not just corporations: nonprofit organizations, political movements, and even countries fall when they fail to keep in step with the demands of their societies.
• You do not need to attempt to climb aboard with every fad that comes along - differentiating between a temporary fashion and a permanent change takes skill, but is necessary to preserve what is critical and ignore what is superficial.
• Speaking of which: the changes that matter tend to be slow and gradual. Your product fulfills a human need that does not change; there are just more efficient ways to satisfy that need. Unless you're dealing with fashion merchandise or things that change at a whim, most products have not changed in significant ways for decades, and few really need to.
• Tradition means having integrity and preserving your core values. These values are the reason customers will continue to value your brand. So long as you deliver the value in an efficient and effective manner, you will retain your core relevance.
• The things that people value deeply tend to be timeless. Many brands have survived a century or more. The author presents the example of Brooks Brothers, a clothier founded in 1818 that remains a strong brand. Their core value is high-quality, fashionable clothing. The precise lines and items they provide change with the whims of fashion and society, but they maintain those core values.
• Another example is Rolling Stone magazine, which was founded in 1967. Its core demographic of baby boomers abandoned the counterculture, joined mainstream society, and became rather affluent. The magazine might have remained devoted to music and youth culture and changed its audience, or it may have changed its focus and followed its existing one. In the end, it tried to do both and lost its integrity.
• Some brands age with their audience, others attempt to remain fixed - the latter is often the harder path because a brand is associated to one generation may not be attractive to another. When it attempts to tart itself up, the result is as ludicrous as middle-aged people who attempt to dress in the latest youth fashions and use the "lingo" of the younger generation.
• It's also impossible for some brands to be relevant because the products fall out of favor. Consider that people once shopped at record stores, dropped of photos for processing, used pay phones, sent faxes, read daily newspapers, rented movies at stores, and used travel agents to book trips. They no longer do, and for any of these businesses to attempt to remain relevant would be a losing proposition.
• But at the same time, the basic human needs remain, and firms that predict the changes can be prepared. Unfortunately, history doesn't provide many examples. The entire music industry fought the idea of electronic distribution, leading bookstores refused to take the Internet seriously, and travel agencies insisted that they added value. They went down fighting, but went down all the same.
• She finally mentions the problem of brands that change before the market is ready, noting that it is often difficult to get the timing quite right.