[0]

A forthright article about brands, their proliferation and declining value and power. Many a brand strategist and marketing person will try shout over its message that is clear:

Marketers may consider the explosion of new brands to be evidence of branding’s importance, but in fact the opposite is true. It would be a waste of money to launch a clever logo into a world of durable brands and loyal customers. But because consumers are more promiscuous and fickle than ever, established brands are vulnerable, and new ones have a real chance of succeeding - for at least a little while. The obsession with brands, paradoxically, demonstrates their weakness.

One of the explanations is the power of the customer. In a bi-polar world of marketing strewn with military metaphors such as ‘target market’, ‘market penetration’, ‘market invasion’ and ‘price wars’, the relationship between the company and a customer is an inherently zero-sum proposition as well as the relationship of the company and the industry within which it operates. A brand is supposed to provide a haven from competition. Not anymore, if ever that was the case…

When companies can’t count on their reputations to carry them through, they’re forced to innovate to stay alive. The erosion of brand value, then, means heightened competition - and everything we know about economics tells us that the more competition, the better off consumers will be.

...

Over time, certain brands came to connote quality. They did provide a measure of insurance - which in turn made firms less innovative and less rigorous. (Think of the abominable cars General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler made in the late 1960s through the 1970s - remember the Pinto? - in part because they assumed that they had customers for life.) That sense of protection is eroding in industry after industry, and instead of a consumer economy in which success is determined in large part by name, it’s now being determined by performance. The aristocracy of brand is dead. Long live the meritocracy of product.

Amen to that.