11_:CBMT

This past week, MTV celebrated the 10 year anniversary of TRL by pulling the plug.

By canceling TRL (”Total Request Live” for those even farther away from MTV demographic than I am), MTV eradicated the last vestige of DNA in their heritage:  music videos on television.

For the past 15+ years - at least since the day the first “Real World” aired in 1991 - MTV has been steadily moving away from its music video roots.  In 2008, in an age where anyone and everyone can download music videos anytime/anywhere, TRL was fast becoming a relic, a dinosaur.  

The idea of spending time in front of the TV while other people pick videos to watch?  Please.  That’s so…’81-’04.

Faced with ever-increasing eyeball competition with MySpace (with which MTV just signed a pretty innovative deal), Facebook, YouTube, and a nearly infinite number of other video/music/interactive/user-gen/entertainment/etc/etc websites, MTV put both feet firmly in the future and defined itself and its brand beyond TV.

A bold move.  And in a way, pretty rare and refreshing.

How many examples exist of companies officially and boldly moving away from the core products/offerings that made them successful in the first place?

IBM comes to mind–selling it’s PC division to China’s Lenovo to focus almost exclusively on IT-related consulting services.

Nintendo—a 110+ year-old company that gave up its roots in playing cards, taxi cabs, and “love hotels*” in the mid-20th century to pioneer electronic gaming.

(*) Not making this up.  Between ‘63 - ‘68, Nintendo augmented its playing card business with a taxi company, a fledgling TV network, an instant-noodle company, and a chain of “love hotels.”  I kept encouraging them to highlight this colorful part of their heritage when we launched the Wii, but they were never game for some reason.  ”Love Hotel” would at least make a good Wii game title, no?)

To me, the point at which companies make some kind of “final departure” from the thing(s) for which they were originally known is an interesting study.  Why do they do it?  Is the core business obsolete?  Has the “moat” protecting their market gone dry and they now face an array of new competitors?  Do they realize, like MTV, that its business is like a shark:  it has to constantly move forward or it dies?

I have the same interest in - and often apply the same inquiry to - the way companies communicate.  Do we have this kind of meeting because it’s the way we’ve always done it?  Do we rely on certain types of communication vehicles/channels because it’s always worked in the past?  

Put another way, do the methods, tools, and channels companies use to communicate evolve as quickly as their constituents’ tastes or needs?

This is where, in my opinion, agencies play their best and most vital role:  presenting the case for intelligent change/evolution/growth in a way that clients and corporate cultures - so often incented to stay the course - can embrace.