So now, we come full circle. We, as a culture, have begun to awaken and realize that without a reason for being, we will end up in a lost, pointless existence. Now, everything has shifted. We want more—more than just “stuff” for the sake of having it. We want more than the emotional high of associating our personal worth with the brands we choose. We want less jargon and more for our money. We want to save the trees, save the planet, save the children, and educate the poor, and we want a product that does what it claims it will do. Or we’re out.

This is an exciting time for those who prefer telling the truth. It’s encouraging that we are all demanding more from the products and offerings we spend our money on. It restores a little faith in human nature. But it will also increase the demands on the business owners to pay attention to their customers.

As a culture we used to evaluate a product based largely on the brand. We would overlook functionality and satisfaction. What could fill that huge gap in logic?

Emotion.

Our affluent culture offered us, as consumers, far too many decisions to make in a typical day. We were grateful for anything that could speed up any of those decisions, especially one that is emotionally changed.

It’s impossible to know all the reasons why our culture, at least for a time, fell prey to the egotistical message of the Brand. But I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that we evolved to a place where we had the affluence and leisure time to move higher up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, without the discipline to do so.

Here’s what I mean by that statement: We, as a culture, had been working really hard—toiled through the infancy of the industrial revolution and a couple of world wars—and then the fabulous time-saving, pre-packaged goods rolled into our homes and made our lives a breeze.

That’s the point at which we became lost in the pleasure of our reprieve and quickly forgot why we had worked so hard. We wanted a well-deserved break, a little time to bathe in our newly won luxury. We lost touch with the bigger goals and meaning of life. Without a more noble pursuit that humans naturally long for, we were left with stuff, experiences, and purchases that we then used to make us feel alive and important. In that context, an exciting brand illusion appeared to be just the thing we needed. Good branding could offer us the timesaving, pre-packaged replacement to a meaningful life. Thankfully, this shallow solution was not going to last forever.

A perfect example of this would be Coke. In blind taste tests there is no obvious favoritism, according to results published in the October 14th issue of the journal Neuron, but in taste tests where the brand is visible, Coke is preferred by 75%. Coke is a powerful icon worldwide.

The idea of brand became so powerful for a while. There was a short stretch in our history when making a product that was needed, performed well and satisfied its user was no longer the priority. In fact, belief in the strength of branding made us consider whether a quality product was even necessary. Even those of us who made a living by marketing and branding started to drink our own Kool-Aid. We no longer felt the need to actually tell the truth about the products or offerings, because the brand was the thing that people would buy. There was no need to obsess over the product; that was the old way of doing things. Now all we had to do was tell the potential buyer what to think through great branding. With enough really smart creativity, we would motivate the purchase.

The hard thing for me to admit is that it actually worked for a period of time. Most of the buyers jumped on the branding bandwagon and were genuinely influenced by the grand illusions presented by marketers.

It’s generally understood that brand, as the term is now used, began in the twentieth century. Linguistically it has a long history, but as it applies to the stakeholder’s image of a business, it has a fairly short one. All its diverse origins and evolutions could be investigated, but it’s not necessary to go that deep into history to gain an effective understanding. Simple definitions are the most useful.

An academic would be disappointed without years of research and pages of references, but smart business demands only the essential elements be evaluated and applied. That’s the difference between people who like to talk about business and those who like doing business—theory vs. hands-on implementation. Often, it is also the difference between a useful consultant who has the track record to evolve your company and one that has an impressive sounding theory about “how one might grow one’s business.” Use caution.

The short story about brand goes like this: As the mass-produced products from the industrial revolution came to market, it created an identity problem in the local store. The question arose: How does one differentiate a new, modern product (like a healing salve, for instance) from the local product everyone has trusted for years? The problem of communicating the unique value of any given product was born. Eventually this created an entirely new industry category that became part art and part soft science, which is now referred to as branding.

Brand equity, brand personality, brand valuation, brand experience, etc. are all useful terms and they help us discuss many crucial aspects of the sophisticated marketing approaches we have developed over more than a century. Brand does have a strong upside and has fueled economic engines around the globe for years.

It also has a downside. As the idea of brand evolved, it grew in strength as a separate entity from the business itself. This caused a dual vision for those who were in charge and misperceptions grew. The ideas of business and brand became more and more disconnected. Separate departments formed with separate directors. Silos began to emerge within the corporate culture with conflicting agendas and goals. Branding’s power grew to a point where the old ways of running a unified business were left in the dust.

Unfortunately, branding lost its head and became ego driven. It seemed to be able to generate its own power with little accountability to the rest of the company. For a time, the old way of doing business appeared to be dead.

We may have all been better off without the invention of the “Brand”. It’s truly unfortunate that the term “Brand” became so fashionable. It’s caused a bit of confusion. The thing we call brand is understood in its simplest form as the outward expression of a business—the image its consumers, partners, and competitors come to identify with any given business. But in the last sixty years, it has become so much more. It’s become an entity that exists somewhat on it’s own and has subsequently become separated from the business itself.

An indicator of this phenomenon is that we’ve come to the place where there are typically different strategies developed, one for a business and another for its brand. And they may not overlap all that much. “Brand” has even become a unique economic asset in the valuation of a total business. It continues to entice the already emotional stock market to behave even more emotionally, and we’ve all seen how branding has unscrupulously influenced the uninformed consumer.