Sooner or later it’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s suddenly. More often than not it’s a gradual, creeping, fade away. Things that once seemed to mark something out as really important or at least relevant, useful, and front (or middle at least) of mind, become greyer, somehow less.

Often - in fact, usually - it’s not the actual thing that’s changed. What changed was (is?) the context it found itself in. 

The world appeared to have moved on, lost interest, found a new distraction. Actually, well, more than a distraction. That suggests something momentary, fleeting, annoying even. 

Consciously ‘switching’ something out or shaded it is a deliberate act. You’ve decided not today attention any more in favour of the new thing. The shiny thing. And what proved valuable (whether financially, socially, spiritually) slips into the blind spot.

So what to do in these situations? 

Brands call in the planners and designers, zhuzh up the packaging, and presto-chango, you’re suddenly more LinkedIn-postable than Midjourney. Yep, looking at you Pepsi. Which, let me say there’s a lot of love for. My problem is it now looks category-complete to stand next to the dishwasher tablets in aisle 28. Sorry Pepsi.

But for people? Well, that’s not so easy. Turning up for work in a natty new titfer will likely just amplify your new-found (or increasing) overlookedness. From figure to figure-of-fun. 

Mostly what happens is, to coin a phrase you don’t hear so much now, is ‘the asset that walks out the door every evening’ stops checking-in in the morning.

You can’t tell brand owners they don’t know how to look after their assets. They know all about that.

But plenty of businesses forget people are asset-shaped as well.

Until they’ve disappeared that is.