By Senior Editor – Kris Smith (@croncast)

You can call it an archive or library but in the biz it has become your long tail.

At some point it was branded under a name, probably your own name, and it continues to be.

But what happens to the long tail when you decide you’re ready to move on?

Well, that all depends on you and the level at which you are severing ties with the content. It also depends heavily on how you view and speak about that previous library of work.

If you were a satanist and now recant your beliefs, the long tail is obviously going to suffer the same fate as your satanic brand. That was the best sentence I have ever written.

Brand makeovers can do more harm than good if you’re not prepared for them. Ask any musician that has tried to cross genres. Even the ones that succeed take quite a bit of heat from their fans and lose many along the way. But they also pick up many new ones.

By being prepared for the tough questions that might come your way, you can answer them honestly. Your audience, customers or patrons with understand if you are open. They might not like it but they will understand.

Brand makeovers are about growth, learning and opportunity.

Anyone that follows me on Skype has seen that in the last few weeks I’ve been cranking quite a bit of Fugazi’s 13 songs. And as Ian MacKaye sings, “You can’t be what you were, So you better start being just what you are”.

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