This morning I was perusing my Facebook memories, and saw an exuberant post I wrote back in 2012. It said something to the effect of “Life is good: Just received my iPhone 5! ” I contrasted that with my purchase of my iPhone 7 on September 30, when I posted, “Free is free… I just traded for an iPhone 7. “

That’s a pretty dramatic shift in just 4 years. One was like Christmas (or Chanukah) morning in October… the other was “well… I didn’t have to pay for it, so what the heck. ” And as an aside, iOS 10 tends to work better with newer devices, but I can’t call that inspiring. More like irritating. It would be easy for Apple to say “check one off for revenue ” but the truth is, if it hadn’t been free, I wouldn’t have bought it at all. I hope they recognize this is happening among their user base.

There’s only one two-word expression for that: brand erosion. Sorry Apple fan-boys. That’s reality speaking.

Similarly, there was a time when people wore tee shirts and sweatshirts with Gap and Abercrombie and Fitch logos proudly. Now, both companies are in the middle of a re-invention. Same words, same issue. Brand erosion.

How does this happen? You could say it’s the natural order of things. The sun rises, hits its zenith in the sky around noon or so and ultimately sets. We come, hit our prime, and start the relentless march toward old age. But how does that explain brands like Ford or Subaru, or even IBM, who manage continual reinvention after more than one hundred years of life?

I think there are several points to consider here:

• 1)Our pricing survey respondents worry that continual promotions erode their brand equity. I don’t think Verizon’s “free iPhone ” promotion has eroded Apple’s brand equity. And Abercrombie and Fitch, who were determined to avoid markdowns during the Great Recession, were actually seen as tone deaf for holding their ground. By the time they “got with the program, ” the worst was over and the brand was less interesting. So perhaps it’s more accurate to say that continuous promotions out of step with the time like “Black Friday deals in April! ” can erode brand equity.
• 2)Our merchandising survey respondents worry that they just can’t innovate fast enough for fickle consumer tastes. It’s hard enough to innovate in fashion, but electronics are becoming an enormous challenge as well. Eliminating a headset jack and replacing it with a tinny stereo speaker may feel like innovation to someone on the iPhone design team, but to everyone who buys one, it’s a head scratcher. Over the past 4 years it has felt like both in iOS upgrades, Mac OS upgrades (to a lesser extent) and in phone design, Apple has been changing for change’s sake, not for innovation.

Samsung smelled this problem coming, and released what they thought was a real iPhone killer: The Galaxy Note 7. Oops. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how a phone with such an obvious battery problem made it through testing and out to market. And then the fix, which was rushed to market, was as bad as the original problem. I’m not sure Samsung can recover its phone business from that. Trust is pretty much completely broken. So while you have to innovate quickly, you also have to make sure it works, fits, whatever it is supposed to do, it does. First, do no harm. Then go crazy!

• 3)Our supply chain and cross-channel survey respondents worry about meeting consumer expectations, and fulfilling expectations for rapid delivery cheap. There’s no argument here. The only caveat is, a smart retailer has to find a way to do those things and make money too. A promise broken to a shopper or a shareholder is rarely forgotten.

Now, I understand that Apple struck lightning with the iPhone, and you can’t strike lightning over and over again. I know that logo-festooned clothes have just gone out of fashion. And I understand that in the face of Amazon’s continued retail land grab, retailers feel obligated to respond in kind. All this is true.

What’s also true is that we have to think very hard what our brand stands for, and continually ask WHO that brand matters to. If the shoppers are aging out of the market, have moved on to something new, or are otherwise impatient with customer service responsiveness, any brand equity we have can fail.

I know it’s popular to say “fail fast ” these days. That’s fine. It has become almost mantra-like. But if you want your brand to live on, it’s best not to fail too often. Think about companies that have survived and thrived for decades. What do they have in common? Emulate that.