A Radical Take on Branding: Monojit Lahiri endeavours to unravel a new-age, revolutionary, path-breaking philosophy put forth by an ad guru that puts the age-old and much-revered concept of branding to sleep...  

In today’s fast-evolving digital marketplace, the traditional concept of branding is being challenged by a disruptive shift toward service-driven, experience-based marketing. As consumer behaviour evolves and customization becomes the norm, relying solely on brand identity is no longer a viable strategy for long-term growth. Forward-thinking companies must embrace innovation, agility, and customer-centric engagement to remain competitive. The future of branding lies not in static logos or legacy loyalty, but in dynamic, value-driven interactions that resonate with real-time consumer needs. With tech giants like Apple and service leaders like Walmart redefining the rules, the new marketing paradigm demands adaptability, authenticity, and a brand experience that lives beyond the product itself.  

Branding, for decades, has been hymned, celebrated, exalted, venerated, and worshipped as the gospel truth by any marketer worth his FMCG lapels! The high priests have pronounced that the ‘Brand’ is ‘God’ and the ad executives, GCROEs (God’s Chosen Representatives On Earth!). For decades, the ‘brand’ has been acknowledged as the single most important aspect of business. Its success equals the business it drives. Branding’s prime objective remains the same – to make a product look distinct and different from the competition and epitomise the vision and values it represents to gain that decisive cutting-edge lead.

The Unquestioned Power of the Brand

The textbooks, to gloat over it, pronounce its value, power, and criticality in no uncertain terms. Author Sanjay Tiwari, in his much-acclaimed book, The Uncommon Sense Of Advertising – Getting The Basics Right, offers his informed take in style: “Brands rule the world of marketing today because they rule the world of consumers today. They have not only changed the way we shop and buy, or consume, but have also had a profound effect on the way we live. Just count the number of brands you interact with since getting up in the morning till you sleep in the night.”

For some of us, he says, it might be more than the number of people we interact with in the same time. We don’t drive cars anymore; we drive our Mercedes, Hondas, Toyotas. We don’t wear shirts, jeans or sneakers, but wear our Arrows, Allen Sollys, Levis, Wranglers, Nikes, Reeboks. We don’t drink cola, eat chips, burgers and chocolates, rather we drink our Cokes and Pepsis, eat our Ruffles, Pringles, McBurgers and Kit Kats. The brands that promise us a unique offer of utilities, benefits, values, personality traits, images and associations, that will satisfy our given needs (functional or emotional) and that we can relate to (consciously or subconsciously), are the ones that we identify with and show preference for. Therefore, more often than not, the brand (and its promise) extends beyond the product core.  

Emotional Equity and Loyalty

Successful brands often transcend their physical existence, take on a life and build relationship with their consumers. The positive experiences, values and associations that consumers perceive the brand brings to them leads to fulfilment of their expectations. The feeling of fulfilment becomes the reason for the success of the brand, and the basis for the relationship.

Ultimately, building brands is about running a marathon. And, it makes huge business sense to invest in brand building. In fact, strong, reputed brands have a lasting bond with their consumers. Their brand loyalty is very difficult to break. The loyal consumer base raises the entry barriers for the competition and enables the company to enjoy benefits like premium pricing and sustained market share over longer periods of time. All these put together result in the brand being able to leverage in equity with the consumers and reap long-term profits for the company.  

Chris Jaques and the Death of Branding?

Chris Jaques, the founder of Spark Innovation Consulting, which specialises in developing innovation strategies to ignite specific business areas, however pooh-poohs this entire “gyan” and aggressively gives a clinically chronicled five-point rationale. He believes that the days of branding being the prime discipline to communicate the consistency of a given product and the reliability of its promise, are clearly over. There’s been a paradigm shift in the Market-Product-Consumer connect with the money now going into ‘services’, not products. He supports it with hard facts. “Walmart’s revenues are three times more than the entire revenue of both P&G and Unilever combined! Citibank and ING, too, are twice their size. This is the age of ‘Service’ not ‘Products’ and service marketing requires a totally different set of rules. Services are customised, not mass-produced,” Jaques tells 4Ps B&M. Jaques argues that most of today’s real killer brands are built on concepts, not products.

The Apple Case: Packaging the Concept

One example is how Apple produced the iPod with iTunes. First, they commissioned an idea and a design from IDEO. Next, they bought chips from Motorola and put them in a casing from Foxconn. Then they hired developers to create music software. At another level, agents were going tongs n’ hammer negotiating access to content, which incidentally was created by publishers and artists. Apple only ‘packaged’ it all together, managed it and sold it. It produced nothing!

But it’s not as if this ‘branding is dead’ doomsday call is new; and it’s not as if it has been accepted by a majority. Tom Barnes, CEO of Mediathink, in response to the ‘branding is dead’ question, once wrote, “Branding will never die – it’s the tools and the means by which we typically use them to achieve the goal of branding that are, in fact, obsolete.” Mark Twain went one better: “The rumours of the death of branding have been greatly exaggerated.” Yet, the rumours just never went away. Jonathan S. Baskin, the author of Branding Only Works on Cattle, writes, “There’s an ugly truth we need to admit: brands are dead, and it’s time for marketers to admit it. Nobody carries brands around in their heads. Nobody has a relationship with a brand.”

Predictability Kills: The New Market Reality

In summary, coming back to the Jaques philosophy, if a brand is predictable today, it is most likely to be dead tomorrow! Apparently, Disney develops a new product every five minutes! Sony produces around 5,000 new products a year. Zara can translate a fashion design from the Paris Catwalk to the shelves in 15 days. Even if one wants to create a predictable brand message over time, one can’t. Why? Because there are over 50 million blogs, 24x7, flashing messages about brands. These messages are based on customer experience, personal agenda or social rumour, not strategic positioning! As Jaques says, brand terrorism is a deadly fact, alive and kicking with China being a soft target. The triclosan gossip savaged their soap and toothpaste sales. Chenggang’s nationalist blog shut down Starbucks in the Forbidden City. In today’s market-scape, business is the brand and brand is the business. The brand is absorbed, imbued and encompassed in every conceivable experience that the consumer goes through – and therefore, in effect, every action a company takes.

The Legacy Analogy: Icons and Replacements

Yes, for every Justin Timberlake who is past his prime, we have a Justin Bieber to take his place. But there was only one Michael Jackson.

In conclusion, what it means is that those companies that believe their products would sell simply based on their brand, would be the first to reach their doom. As said earlier, Apple is perhaps ‘the’ greatest current technology brand – and even it doesn’t believe purely in the power of its brand; then why should you make that mistake?