MTV’s collapse, rapidly changing consumer taste, and business adaptability

For many who grew up on a steady diet of MTV music videos, who mimicked the dress sense of Kris Kross, Anita Bakers’ short, sleek pixie cut, Tony Tetuila’s gold-dyed hair or the late Onyeka Onwenu’s Afrocentric look of cropped hair, regal gowns, and African-inspired prints, MTV’s collapse will certainly leave a nostalgic void.

Today’s business world is fast paced with rapidly changing consumer tastes induced by technology. Consumers demand to be served with immediacy, at a location of their chosen. And on top of that they want to be consistently wowed whenever they interact with a brand. They demand consistently high customer experience in their buying journey.

Consumer experience as lifeblood

Customer experience has become the lifeblood of any business. Customer experience is the desire to be served the right product, fast, conveniently, with ease and at their price. Thus, brands have to constantly innovate and pivot to trends to fall in step with or stay ahead of consumer behaviour. Staying ahead requires adaptability, the ability of a brand to monitor trends and align its operations to such trends or consumer behaviour. The inability to adapt means lost businesses and worse bankruptcy and collapse.

Collapse of rigid iconic brands

Over the years iconic businesses have collapsed for failure to read the room and adjust as necessary. In the 1980s, Kodak was the leading photographic film maker in the world; it was a leader in camera manufacturing, producing portable, affordable, and movable cameras. Then came the 1990s when the film and camera making industry and the world gravitated towards digital operations and products. Kodak saw the signs and made halfhearted efforts to embrace digitalisation. It couldn’t adapt fast enough to the new digital world and the disruptions that occasioned, and the brand eventually came tumbling down, forced into bankruptcy in 2012.

In the era of video cassettes, CD, and DVDs, Blockbuster was the Mohammed Ali and Mike Tyson of the pack. It was the leading video-rental company and had more than 70% of the global market in its bag. It employed 84,000 people across the world and boasted over 65 million registered customers. Then came internet streaming services, with Netflix leading the way in digital disruption, and gradually consumer behaviour started shifting online for video contents.

Blockbuster not only failed to read the handwriting on the wall it became cocky to booth, believing that a king can’t be dethroned. In 2008, for instance, speaking on rising competition from streaming services, Blockbuster’s CEO Jim Keyes said: “Neither RedBox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.” The same Netflix and other streaming services that Blockbuster dismissed out of hand ran it out of town and ensured its demise.

The BlackBerry story is another instance when an industry leader failed to tap into evolving tastes to remain relevant. BlackBerry was arguably the leader in the smartphone industry. Celebrities, business and political leaders loved its tactile keyboard, which was considered fast and accurate compared to the early touchscreen phones. It was a sturdy phone with long-lasting battery life. But then touchscreen technology became more advanced and commonplace. BlackBerry was not nimble enough to respond to the growing touchscreen enthusiasm and the phone app ecosystems that Android phones and iPhones embraced. It was simply a matter of time before undertakers performed the requiem for BlackBerry.

Nokia was in a different world, way above the rest of the phone and cellular network companies. This Finnish multinational bestrode the global software and phone industry much like an emperor. It operated in 130 countries and had a workforce in excess of 90,000 across the world. It was innovative and adaptive, and rolled out its first smartphone in 1996. Nokia started out as a pulp mill some 150 years ago, went into rubber plantation, veered into cable making before eventually transitioning into telecommunications to underscore its adaptiveness. Despite these good qualities, Nokia failed to track the growing enthusiasm for Android smartphones and apps. And suddenly a giant controlling over 50% of the global phone market in 2007 could not muster a tiny 4% of the global smartphone market. Consumers literally walked away from Nokia.

MTV’s collapse and the irony

Now, as with other corporate giants before it, MTV, the music television giant, consistently failed to read the adaptation and consumer behaviour script and it is paying a heavy price for that.

Established in the 1980s to coincide with the explosion of North American music and global acceptance of pop, R&B, rock and other American music genres, MTV was the first 24-hour music channel in the United States and arguably in the world. Before the internet and social media, MTV was that platform that brought youths across the world together from Lagos, Nairobi, Hong Kong, Accra, Singapore, to Munich, Paris, London, Yaoundé, Sydney, and Buenos Aires in their shared love for music. MTV gave the world Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, Thriller, Madonna’s near maniac performances, Nirvana, The Buggles, Britney Spares, Whitney Houston’s sultry performances, Boyz II Men’s romantic R&B renditions, and many of the iconic stars and songs millions across the world loved and still love. MTV was not just a music platform, it defined pop culture. It was a fashion arbiter, a bastion of artistic freedom which birthed a new avant-garde crowd worldwide. It was on MTV that fashion, culture, artistry, style, beauty, and inner expressions converged.

MTV became so popular that it established five spinoffs: MTV Live, MTV Music, Club MTV, MTV 80s, and MTV 90s. Unfortunately, three weeks from now, on 31 December 2025, this globally loved brand will shut down the five music video TV channels across the world, forever. Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and other similar platforms led to the death of MTV. Consumer taste shifted to online digital platforms for music video consumption and MTV failed to adapt hence its collapse.

This is ironic considering that when MTV launched in 1981, the first music video it played was a song titled “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles. The playing of The Buggles video was deliberate. Before MTV, people mostly consume music on radio. It was MTV’s subtle dig at how its platform will push the radio into irrelevance by changing consumers’ taste to music video. Now, YouTube and other digital platforms have ‘killed’ the radio ‘killer.’

Key lessons from MTV, and others

Adaptability

The key lessons from MTV’s closure and similar closures are apparent. Big is not a hedge against failure neither is innovation. Nokia was big, innovative and forward thinking yet it crashed. So was BlackBerry. The best hedge is nimbleness and adaptability. Today, markets change faster than a leopard can chase down a prey. Consumer tastes swing rapidly as new trends emerge. With advancements in generative artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other digital tools, new trends seem to emerge overnight. Smart businesses must be nimble enough to adjust their product offerings and reposition their marketing efforts in line with the breakneck industry trends. And, in the modern corporate environment, competition can come from both local and global trends and businesses.

Digitalisation

Technology and digitalisation are disruptors and must be taken seriously for business sustainability and survival. MTV, Blockbuster, and other struggling or collapsed businesses underestimated the impact of technology and digitisation in their industries and other related industries. The benefits of embracing digital operations for any brand is huge: cost reduction, speed to market, access to a global market, accessibility and affordability, and so much more. Failure to embrace technology, however, is akin to cuddling a mamba; it is suicidal.

Customer centricity

Businesses must be customer centric to build sustainability. It is no longer enough to produce quality. Quality must be in synch with consumer taste otherwise the product or brand will fall face down. Nokia, MTV, BlackBerry all had quality products that were not in tandem with the changing tastes of the consumers. The new digital world is speed driven. Consumers want speed of service delivery, rapid product improvements, swift customer support and accessibility. Consumers don’t want to wait for a brand to adjust to new trends. A nimble customer-centric business can meet these expectations and build loyalty.

When businesses adapt for relevance

For instance, over the past few years, fintechs, with their digital capability, have managed to build strong momentum in the country’s financial services industry due to the convenience, speed, and user-friendliness they provide the banking public, particularly the youth and small and medium scale businesses. Traditional banks have had to adapt fast to hold their market. Today, many traditional banks have strong digital operations providing fintech-style digital services. That is a typical example of adaptation and customer-centricity.

The bottomline is today GenAI is disrupting businesses across industries so rapidly that brands are becoming breathless trying to catch up. This and evolving social values, economic instability, unexpected regulatory changes, particularly in Nigeria, and geopolitical incidents like the Russia-Ukraine war, US-China trade standoffs, continue to change consumer behaviour and taste. It behooves smart brands to remain adaptive to avoid falling into the MTV, Nokia, or BlackBerry hole.

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