Some champions of marketing in the new media age like to say that the Internet means the death of the brand. Take, for example Jonathan Baskin:

The . . . 20th-century interlude that was characterized by top-down, authoritative mass media, and its trusty henchman branding, is over.

This backlash against “branding” is understandable. Brand has become much too large a fad over the past 15 years. It’s good that there is a reassessment.

But people who think brand-based marketing is going to disappear anytime soon probably never really understood brand in the first place. Much of what we now refer to as brand work is simply smart application of classic marketing theory. In the last decade, a lot of basic good marketing came under the banner of “brand” because that’s the way to sell it to clients. And a lot of folks jumped on the brand bandwagon without ever really understanding the concept much less executing a genuine brand project.

People who think we can move beyond brand-based marketing forget that brand theory was a response to the diminishing effectiveness of marketing based on feature differentiation. Brand stepped in to differentiate between Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic, because their product lines could not. Likewise the case with Audi, Mercedes, and BMW – or Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore for that matter. It is hard to imagine the consumer world shrinking so much that we go back to the era of promoting products exclusively by means of feature differentiation.

One essential aspect of brands is that they are fun. We enjoy them. The old nineteenth century world of fixed ideals or the new emerging world of tribal affiliations is not nearly as much fun for the vast majority of folks who live within them. Yes, if you live in America, are highly educated, and enjoy a great deal social freedom, you are free to believe that you are above brands and able to enjoy the integrity of traditional communities (so long as the cuisines are good). But most folks, here and abroad, derive more pleasure from the brand world than they ever derived from values or tribal identities. Given the way brand concepts incorporate the pleasure-principle, can we really expect the global tide of brands, fueled my multi-national corporations, to cease anytime soon?

The new on-line world does mean that brand practice is going to have to change. Mostly this is a good thing. An essential requirement of an authentic brand is that it is connected and integrated with an organization. Those who confused brand with graphic identity systems or awareness advertising campaigns were always wrong and if on-line advertising pushes them out of the brand world, that will be great. But brand practice isn’t going away anytime soon. In future posts, I want to discuss the evolution of brand practice in the world of on-line networks, particularly as it applies to marketing educational institutions.