Bruce Temkin says Brands are Dying
Although there are no videos or podcasts available yet from Adaptive Path’s MX 2009 Managing Experience Conference in San Francisco from 1 – 3 July, 2009, there was an interesting statement made by Bruce Temkin. He’s a VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research who made an interesting statement that brands are dying. Helen Walters caught up with Bruce after his presentation to ask what he meant by saying brands are dying, because on face value it could sound a little extreme.
He goes on to say one of the principles of experience based differentiation is that users take away a little from the brand every time they touch it. Self-testing by companies has shown a decrease in the amount we’re taking away from a brand each time we touch it, and he attributes a lot of that to the watering down of brands by the movement towards a left brain focus in branding. The good news, he says creating a right brain strongly focused brand during this decline offers a greater opportunity to differentiate a company’s brand from the competition. Interesting stuff, and to a point I agree in layman’s terms.
The decline of the effect of touch-branding, for want of a better phrase, has a lot to do with the crowded marketplace and overall noise. Couple with that the business obsession with trends – the want for sameness. Web 2.0, for example, was the new cool until it was everywhere and any new businesses hoping to pull off successful Web 2.0 branding are going to be hiding in the Silicon Valley dustbins by Christmas. In marketing, we want differentiation NOT sameness.
It’s an interesting dilemma for marketers.
