Many brands think of themselves as permanent. In fact, the lives of great brands can be quite fleeting, particularly if they don’t fully embrace digital media.
Circuit City, Kodak and Blockbuster all appeared very robust as recently as the 1990s. But now lead a zombie-like existence, not quite dead but not quite alive either, according to Peter Horan, president of Answers Media Group and former About.com CEO.
“I really love disaster movies,” Horan said. “I love ‘Independence Day.’ I watch it every time it is on TV. I tear up at the end of ‘Armageddon,’ when Bruce Willis put Ben Affleck into the chute to go back up into the space ship. The core premise of a good disaster movie is that you wake up every morning going on with your regular life: getting your car washed, buying groceries. And unbeknownst to you, this big-ass meteor is flying through space and is about to blow the earth into a hundred million pieces. And that is in fact, what business in the United States has been like for the last 20 years.”
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