The concept of branding has always held a special allure for marketers in all industries, and high tech has by no means proved immune to its siren call. Throughout the 1990s, numerous articles, seminars, books, gurus, and Web sites all proclaimed the “magic of brands.” An unending supply of PowerPoint presentations placed before the High Priests of Investment Wealth, the venture capitalists (VCs), fervently declared their fealty to the brand in different ways, some promising to “establish brands,” others to “drive brands to the market,” and yet others to create “universal brands.” The Internet frenzy led to the brand’s ultimate apotheosis in the late ’90s as millions of innocent dollars were burnt on the altars of sock puppets, consumed in the name of just-in-time snacks for slackers too busy to shop for themselves, and sacrificed in uncounted numbers at America’s supreme religious rite of marketing, the Super Bowl.
The benefits of brand worship are said to be many. Brands are supposed to be able to
- Make sure everyone knows who’s selling the stuff they’re buying (brand identity).
- Allow you to charge and sell more of your stuff (brand premium).
- Help you sell new stuff (brand extension).
But alas for the Brand Acolytes, as in many cases the Gods of Branding seemed to not hear the piteous cries for profits emanating from their frenzied followers. Millions of their dollars vanished down the maws of the Gods with no measurable return on investment (ROI). The Pets.com Sock Puppet ended up being recycled as footwear for the homeless. The slackers and their attendant love handles were forced back to the bricks-and-mortar stores, where they resumed laboring joylessly at the task of buying and bagging their own sustenance. Hundreds of thousands of eager-eyed dot-com twenty-somethings were detoured off the fast path of success to employment opportunities in food courts and retail service. The Gods of Branding had failed them all.
Much agony and disillusionment could have been avoided if the people had understood more about the nature of the deities they worshipped. For although brands can be powerful and mighty, they suffer from many weaknesses and limitations, and they often turn on those who fail to understand their fickle nature. The Gods often turn out to have feet of clay.