Born in the years after the U.S. Civil War, the modern brand owes its genesis to the near-simultaneous emergence of three mass phenomena--mass production, mass transportation and, most importantly, mass media. The brand developed and grew over a century and a half and has, I think, reached its zenith due to the emergence of more diversified production, just-in-time delivery and, most importantly, the ubiquity of addressable (read: individualized) media.
Brands and branding will never die; nothing useful ever does. However, the brand will recede in its importance, giving ground to ever-more personalized and individually-relevant forms of marketing. Marketers who continue to ply the trade will have to adapt for the post-brand era.
Over the next few posts (I'm planning three, but you know how I like to prattle on), I'll outline the specifics:
- The brand and how it got that way
- What the post-brand era means
- How marketers should work in the post-brand era
However, let me summarize as briefly as I can.
