Brands are our frenemies

At the height of the brand craze, the perception was that the practice of branding had become more important than the design of a unique and compelling value offering. Since 1980, when business thinkers drove the branding agenda, this rampant value distortion has wreaked havoc with supply chains and the environment. This is effectively when brands decided to make image in the West and products in the East.

The result is that the economy has become too loaded with intangible assets, leading to vacuous consumerism and a blur of offerings that offer hardly any sustainable value. Or as Milton Friedman and his cronies would put it: modern economic prosperity.

Make mine a brand

Our ability to make and store mental associations equipped us with a potent decision-making mechanism in a pre-industrial world. A hyper-branded world has preyed on this instinct as humans make millions of easy-yet-deadly decisions (ironically, in a quest for a better life). We instinctively buy All Gold, Omo and Black Cat when faced with a wall of tomato sauce, washing powder or peanut butter.

This simplifies our shopping trips but what is the cumulative effect of these effortless decisions we make so instinctually every day? Managed properly, a more connected world promises to clip the economy's fake plastic wings as the web reveals true value and facilitates a more textured economic narrative.

Branding and the dumbing down of society

A branded world says that he who delivers the most perceived value wins. It's in this world where George W Bush won a second term via an ad-friendly message that leveraged the vulnerable memescape of Middle Americans. Any practice that affects how we think and act on a massive scale shouldn't be based on reductionism. By reductionism I mean the ‘he with the best meme wins' mentality which forms the basis for brand awareness and positioning.

The worst ramification of this is the disposable relationship with knowledge we seem to have these days. Raunchy 30” ads for burger brands, newscasts featuring the climate crisis and Britney blowouts become the white noise of our modern social consciousness. Sure there are intellectuals who have a more realistic perspective but when the WWF-watching masses don't care the thinking of the few isn't heard.

In the definitive anti-brand book of our time, Naomi Klein challenged the very notion of brand practice. However, a lot of us didn't see it as this and settled for a more simplisitic takeout: brands must get out of our sacred spaces and Nike & co. must rethink their labour practice. And, hey, maybe I will even make my next skinny latte Fair Trade.

What if the outcome was not only to demand better brand practice but to replace this socio-economic currency entirely? This way, we could well have seen the seismic and sustainable shift in consumer culture which in the face of climate change seems much more necessary

Came back at Klein

In a 2001 Economist article, Pro Logo, Wally Olins came back at Klein with a strong point about the value of brands. Brands ensure that each offering is as good as the previous one, holding companies more accountable to consumers. This argument holds water when our judgement calls are accurate and based on our brand use experiences.

Instead, brands have used broadcast advertising to effectively mess with this process. They've thrived on the disposable TV-dominant media culture which generally feeds us shallow and disposable narratives and worldviews. Think back to 1950's soap operas in which easy-to-watch disposable stories, were brought to you by your favourite brand of detergent. Your content is as easy as your choice of washing powder.

Claire Beale (2007) noted in a recent article in The Independent that brand values that have been built over decades and have cost billions in advertising to construct are being chipped away in debates over air miles or excess packaging. So if brand values are going to be exposed, why not just build a great value delivery system and name it. Save millions of greenwashing and stock images. The BP rebrand and subsequent gaffes are incredibly powerful warning that, in a connected world, image must be relentlessly met by tangible business reality.

The brand loyalty lie

As soon as a brand has won our loyalty, our propensity to make accurate value judgments on future offerings (new products and services) from that brand decreases.

This anomaly is played out every time we pay a premium (a buzzword in the branding world) for a specific brand. From Pilsener Urquell to BMW, leading brands perpetuate this blurred notion of value by engaging our emotions. The biggest emotional hook that they employ is the satisfaction that comes from the associated social cachet or the fear of being rejected. This gives brands a lot of permission to fail through the supply chain and stalls us from challenging them. As No Logo pointed out, we've let brands run roughshod over us and our environment.

Hours spent developing brand blueprints, mantras, and doctrines will be a thing of the past and real value delivery systems will again come to the fore. One just has to look at the top spots in brand ranking lists to see how shallow intellectual property companies (Kellogs, Mcdonalds and Marlboro) are being displaced by deep intellectual property companies (Google, Microsoft and Dell).

The new breed's assets are also intangible, but with way more real value than their predecessors. The new brands are memes with value behind them, not memes that just promise value. The leading tech companies ignore the marketing formula of brand marketers, yet they have forged deep emotional connections with billions of consumers the world over. They constantly make cool stuff for their customers and the media are all over them because of it. Google search, iPod, The Intel chip and Youtube have all enjoyed more free space in media than traditional marketing companies could ever dream of.

The way forward

The message to brands stuck in a broadcast media world. You can't behave like that any more. If your whole story doesn't tie up, don't give us the highlights package. Give your value delivery system a name, by all means. But we are going to judge you on the performance of your value delivery system, not the hoopla of brand values. We'll judge your values from your value, not your manipulation of the memescape.

Google is a very good case in point. It's engaged in very little branding but are the envy of almost every brand on the planet. It's also done it by restoring a clearer notion value to its customers, not distorting it through hype. The other brands should save their envy as Google isn't a strong brand.

Huh?

You heard it here first.

Google is merely the name of a phenomenal search engine. Yes, it is a name known the world over; yes, we trust its search results above all others; yes, it is a verb; yes, it has a great organisational culture behind it - but in a world where true value can be seen and spread it would be quickly forgotten if someone beat their core product. In a connected world we are loyal to a value delivery system, not a brand.

For more:

• Patrick Carmody: Google killer, brand killer
  
• Walter Pike: Google IS a great brand
  
• Patrick Carmody: Brands are our frenemies