Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Brands Mean Less as We Get Older

Brands are an impor­tant part of the busi­ness world, and they’re impor­tant to us as con­sumers.  I wouldn’t be so pre­sump­tu­ous to say that brands don’t mean any­thing to me any­more, or that I am immune to their power and influ­ence.  How­ever, I have noticed that they don’t mat­ter to me as much any­more.  I think it’s because I’ve been dis­ap­pointed enough times by crap pro­duced by brands I used to like, used to praise, and used to believe could do no wrong.

Per­haps you’ve noticed this in your own lives.  Do you remem­ber when you were a teenager how strongly you felt about this celebrity or that celebrity?  Do you remem­ber how dog­matic you could be about a par­tic­u­lar brand and knew, down to your bones, that it was the best.   You might even lit­er­ally have been unable to under­stand how any­one with intel­li­gence wouldn’t con­sider that celebrity to be the best, and the brand in ques­tion to be the best thing on the mar­ket.  If that doesn’t seem to apply to you at all, I can tell you that it cer­tainly used to be the way I thought about things.

I used to love flight sim­u­la­tors by a soft­ware house called Micro­prose.  They could do no wrong.  If it was from Micro­prose, I “knew” right away it would be good stuff.

I used to love BMWs with absolute cer­tainty about their supe­ri­or­ity over every other thing that rol­leth on the roads.  They were the ulti­mate dri­ving machine, with unques­tioned supe­ri­or­ity over any­thing in their respec­tive classes.

I used to love Palmer paint­ball guns with the smug knowl­edge that they were hand­crafted by arti­sans with mag­i­cal abil­i­ties and pixie dust.  If it was Palmer, I knew sight unseen that it would be nail-drivingly accu­rate and would have reli­a­bil­ity on par with any ham­mer from Home Depot.

Since then, Micro­prose has gone out of busi­ness because their sim­u­la­tions couldn’t keep up with the offer­ings from other soft­ware houses.  I lamented their pass­ing, but now when I think about it, they were beaten by supe­rior prod­ucts and supe­rior mar­ket­ing.  BMWs are still my favorite cars to drive, but I now acknowl­edge they aren’t the most reli­able beasts on the road and might not be as fun to own as they are to drive.  Some Palmer paint­guns are built by mag­i­cal elves of the high­est order, and oth­ers are built by gnarly gnomes from the depths of the underworld.

I used to believe in brands with fer­vor.  I know that teenagers around the world behave as I did when I was their age, so I know it isn’t just me.  In fact, celebri­ties (who are really human brands) and con­sumer brands sur­vive and thrive on this very fact.  But some­how, some­where along the way, I think most of us learn that brands aren’t as reli­able as we might have once believed.  Brands we used to think were bul­let­proof, with prod­ucts made by gods, lose their lus­tre.  We begin to see that they have seri­ous short­com­ings and weak­nesses, and we see that those who make them are busi­ness­peo­ple who some­times pro­duce great prod­ucts but can also pro­duce absolute crap.

Log­i­cally, I know that brands have power.  Mar­kets around the world are liv­ing proof of that.  I also know, how­ever, from think­ing about my per­sonal expe­ri­ence that many of us who are no longer teenagers are far, far less brand-aware and brand-loyal than mar­keters and busi­ness writ­ers may believe.

Hav­ing said that, I drink Coca Cola and would never choose Pepsi if given the choice.  The prob­lem now is that I prob­a­bly wouldn’t choose a cola at all.  Oh well, c’est la vie for mar­keters, I suppose!

What has your expe­ri­ence been like?