Idou? No, I don't!

 I read this morning that Sony Ericsson is ditching its Walkman and Cyber-shot phone brands because they're no longer in touch with today's consumer.  They're launching the Idou (really?) to compete with the iPhone.  I don't know what everyone else thinks about this, but I just think this is ridiculous.  Sony and Ericsson became a powerbrand - fusing technology and music and using the Walkman equity helped to fuel their prowess in the music-phone arena.  Walkman and music are synonymous.  If Sony are worried that Walkman and 80s music are synonymous (all cassettes and bad haircuts, instead of digitised to appeal to the iTunes generation) then I think they should have upped the ante with the brand, not ditched it altogether. 

 And Idou?! What does that possibly mean?  It feels far too close to iXYZ for comfort and smacks of piggy-backing on the current touch-screen phone technology.  Sony aren't as ahead with their iPhone challenger as their competitors, but I don't see why everyone has to follow suit.  Isn't it time someone lead the market in another direction rather than bowing to popularity and losing precious brand equity in the process?

The end is just the beginning

I was given some pencils the other day, they're Royal Institute of British Architecture pencils and they've got "This pencil is made from recycled video cassettes" on them.  My mousemat is made from a recycled tyre - it seems everything today was something else yesterday.  But the pencils have really hit me.  We're living in such a fast-paced multimedia 3.0 world that yesterday's video cassettes are today's pencils.  I remember video cassettes fondly, it was only 7 years ago that I spent endless Saturdays in Music Zone buying £3 videos.  It seems that today, both 'Music Zone' and 'Video' have been consigned to the annals of history.  

The world is getting faster and faster and it's a sign of our technological advancement fuelling as well as serving consumer need.  As this cycle quickens, so does our consumption.  Here today, gone tomorrow, NEXT! mentality prevails.  I know that the world has grown and advanced more in the past 50 years than it has the last 500 (something like that anyway), and that is quite amazing.  Is there going to be a point when we will be writing with some sort of retinal space magnets made out of recycled RIBA pencils?

So what can brands do in this changing landscape?  It's important for brands to stay ahead of the game and anticipate change.  Once the seeds of the demise of coloured pens and pencils have been planted, Crayola should be one step ahead and apply its equity creatively into the latest area its field is headed, ideally pioneering that step change.  This isn't always the case for all brands and they crumble.  But as the world gets faster, brands are going to have to be more alert and agile than ever before.