3rd March, 2010

Wow! You look 10 years younger

Posted by Navin Harish - 1 Comment

Look around you and you will see a lot of young, small companies are giving the larger, established ones a run. Maybe it is the youthful appeal of those companies that the 100 years old corporations lack, or maybe it is something deeper.

If youth is what people want and if youth is what is beating you, you may want some of that youth appeal too. What do you do? How do you get that youth appeal?

The real reason is the agility and adaptability of the young companies, this is what makes it easier for them to try out new things. They don’t have the baggage of doing things in a particular way.

When challenged by such companies, how do you respond? If youth is what people want and if youth is what is beating you, you may want some of that youth appeal too. What do you do? How do you get that youth appeal? You hire an agency – an agency that has given a youthful appeal to other companies. This is where I’d like you to stop and look a little more carefully. See if the companies in your agency’s resume were young and trendy to begin with. After all it’s not a challenge to make someone young look young, the challenge is to make and old company look young.

As a teenager you won’t suddenly find your dad cool if he colours his hair and wears a torn jeans, or maybe even get a tattoo, you may actually find it creepy. The same is with your agency, you need to be sure your agency is not trying to put on a fresh coat of make up on you.

The choice it now leaves us is what is desirable and as always, a little harder to follow. To be really youthful, you need to change more than your appearance, you need to change from within. To avoid your competition from challenging you, you have to challenge yourself, challenge what you do, how you do it, and what you stand for. The secret is to be relevant, to be more aligned with your partners and customers and the world in general.

If you have to borrow something from young companies, it is not their appearance, it is their core.

1 Comment

Rahul Goswami

March 6th, 2010 at 1:05 pm    

Very true. However doing this requires a lot of courage and most of the people assigned this task lack the courage of making a bold decision. I know this from experience as I work for a creative agency and we have suggested such changes to clients but all they are interested in is cosmetic changes. It wastes a lot of money and gets no results.

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