In
an average day, every American is exposed to between 3,000 and 5,000 ads in
their various forms. Collectively, companies directly pay for some $300
billion in branding each year. Has it gotten out of hand?
There
are M&Ms branded NASCARs, Procter & Gamble portable toilets, branded
beach sand, branded golf holes, and even branded athletic
stadiums. Hundreds of new products become available every day of the year.
Cheap merchandise from abroad has flooded the market. Companies desperate to
bolster sales have resorted to using branding as a substitute for old-fashioned
competitive responses like innovation, good quality control, and incremental
improvements in their products.
Similarly,
the complete fragmentation of the advertising market due to the Internet and
mobile communication devices has left that industry at a loss for what to do.
Branding seems to be the “panacea of the moment,” a fad that could do more harm
than good.
Another factor behind this trend is the
use of the new sciences of human behavior. According to the new book Obsessive
Branding Disorder1 by Lucas Conley, this understanding of how the brain works and how human biases
work, is encouraging marketers to manipulate consumers as never before.
Writing in FastCompany,2 Conley refers to branding as the
“self-help” industry of corporate America. He argues that branding, led by an
army of self-styled experts, has become an obsession among business executives
to the point that it has permeated every element of life and spread out to
include such far-flung outposts as the mental health field.
The
fundamental trouble with the branding craze as it has evolved is its tendency
to take our attention away from what is important to the customer and place it
squarely on what is not. In the process, it leads companies and customers
alike away from innovation and the efficient delivery of high-quality products
and services and into a vague realm of entertainment that ultimately delivers
little or nothing of value.
Consider
that during the now-infamous Super Bowl of January 30,...
