Saturday, January 2, 2010

My past due "Happy New Year, let's prepare for 2010" blah blah blah post

Like most people, the last day of 2009 and the first day of 2010 pretty much merged together; and you probably couldn't tell the difference between the two, if it wasn't for the cheap plastic "happy new years" hats, and/or the typical "let's prepare for a positive, prosperous, fruitful, fulfilling new year" talk. Even though I enjoyed myself, the New Years Eve party that I went to was full of people who were trying to be too cool, putting on a facade of who they thought people may want them to be.

A huge thing I saw in 2009 was brands trying to change who they were because of the state of the economy or because other brands were changing (don't worry this ties in to the paragraph above). Pepsi, WalMart, Bounce (dryer sheets), Sierra Mist, Gatorade...all of the Pepsi Co. products, and many other products that I can't think of now changed their logos. I personally think it hurt all of those brands. Change is most definitely needed, but it's not a good thing when you're just doing it to fit the mode. Nike is one of those companies that has been the same at their core since they started. Their objective was never to appeal to everyone, but to have a communication to their target audience, athletes. John Jay, one of the worldwide creative directors of Wieden and Kennedy (the agency that helped revolutionize Nike), once said this in a lecture about brands, "They should appeal to their target audience and the masses will follow".

People love people who are themselves. Let's begin 2010 with finding out who we are, and embracing that.

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