Influx

MTV was born at a time when videos were the prime promotional tool for the music industry; videos were celebrated and no expense was spared like with Michael Jackson’s Thriller .

The video generated interest and attention for the album and drove people into the stores to purchase. Music videos became culturally iconic and this free content allowed MTV to thrive and sell advertising on the back of zero production dollars.

Fast-forward to 2007 and consumer behavior has shifted radically, the music experience is centered on the computer and the portable player-iTunes and Apple rule.

Videos and MTV no longer play the essential marketing role for the music industry that they once used to.

“The way MTV used to be the place where you had to have a video playing as one of the key legs of the stool, iTunes is now one of the key legs of the stool,” says Chris Douridas, an influential deejay at public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica, California.”

WSJ

As a consequence, for the core teen demo, MTV is no longer the “oracle of cool” and hasn’t been for a long time.

It’s just like The Gap, who built its brand as the editor and instigator of a cultural movement of “casualness”, the brand lost relevance when it could not longer own the idea as it become widely adopted and morphed into other things, like The Gap, MTV, hasn’t been able to keep pace with the times.

With changing times and technology, these brands couldn’t sustain their original roles, unlike Nike who has managed to ride wave after wave, with a combination of cultural sophistication, savvy and elasticity.