The newspaper delivery van still drives up our street at 4am on Saturday morning. You can hear the rolled, plastic wrapped weekend edition thud onto the neighbour’s lawn as the driver takes aim from the window. And even at 4am you can’t help wondering if this service will be meaningful to enough people to last another year. How does this matter in a world where a new story broke before the ink was dry and while the delivery driver slept?
The answer is clear and yet the presses are kept going.

Shifts in relevance are not just tied to products and services impacted by the digital economy. Legacy brands in all kinds of industries are being squeezed because they have become less meaningful. They stood still while their customers moved on without them. There were plenty of agile competitors waiting to take up the slack.

Twitter has no trouble trumping the weekend newspaper. Chipotle thrives while McDonalds struggles. Harry’s easily persuades 100,000 men to stop buying expensive branded razors.
Airbnb reaches 25 million guests with a million listings.

There is more to market shifts than decline in demand. The success of a product or service is dependent on more than capability, distribution, marketing and reach. Yes all of these tactical advantages matter, but they need to be organised in service of where the customer wants to go, not simply around what’s working to bring in money today.

It isn’t the biggest or most innovative brand that wins—it’s the one that’s most meaningful to the people it serves.

Image by ScaarAT.