The Future is Prolog: Branding

Humans on the moon. Computers that talk. Robots that do the chores. Light that can cut through metal. These science fiction fantasies were the stuff of serious and pulp novels alike and they all came to pass in the 20th Century. What about the 2-way wrist radio and the tri-corder? Can you say cell phones with GPS? What will they think of next?

Humans on Mars. Computers that think. Transporting matter through space. Virtual reality. Do you really think that Skynet from Cyberdyne Systems is impossible? Just remember that the internet was invented by the government and research universities (ARPANET), to protect our communications in case of an attack. Believe me, time-travel is just around the corner.

Science fiction has also predicted the future of marketing. The novelist, William Gibson, who is credited with inventing the term “cyberspace,” envisions a near-future that incorporates everything we currently know about the internet and digital possibilities and takes them to the next stage. He enhances and fine-tunes today’s World Wide Web experiences and extrapolates the development curve to describe new levels of action and thought incorporating the newest technologies.

Cayce Pollard, the hero of Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition,” is allergic to logos and insignia of any kind on the clothing she wears and the products she buys for herself.  Ironically, she works for an ad agency and her job is to find the latest trends so her employers can get the jump on the next big thing. It’s interesting to note that Cayce is a blank page, the better to be able to see the IT item of the moment before its 15 minutes of fame have come and gone.

More to point, though, is the paradox that Ms. Pollard is trying to identify a blockbuster concept or design in a future where the demographics are increasingly sliced into smaller pieces of the pie and where the channels available to the media are increasing in number and complexity.

Brands offer the contradictory promise that the consumer can be an individual by owning the brand that is preferred by the masses. But the big companies are offering more and more variations of the same product for each of the Boomers and Gens, using increasingly targeted messaging and media to reach the customer. Nike, which already makes shoes in every price point, for every sport, for every lifestyle, will also make limited run shoes or shoes that can be completely custom-designed for that one-of-a-kind customer. But what does that mean to the value of branding?

The brand is now more important than ever. In the past, a company’s identity was closely related to a limited number of products and the consumer was able to relate one to the other. Now the brand has to reach out over a wider, disparate range of offerings and attach itself to an otherwise small or limited appeal product in the market in order to help that product elevate itself above the competition. The nature of “the brand” has changed because it now has to extend the umbrella of its singular promise over a wider range of products in narrower and more varied media channels.

Steve Brett

58 Advertising

Copyright 2008