Thread by @Nicolascole77

The Big Brand Lie:

Ask the masses why a startup/business succeeds, and they'll all say the same thing:

"Because they built a successful BRAND."

This is one of the biggest lies in all of advertising & marketing.

Categories make brands, not the other way around.

🧵👇

In 2011, The Atlantic published a piece on how "branding" was born.

"A brand manager would be responsible for giving a product an identity that distinguished it from nearly indistinguishable competitors.”

Note that sentence.

theatlantic.com/business/archi…

Branding became the answer to the problem, “We’re indistinguishable. What do we do?"

Instead of creating a DIFFERENT product altogether, big companies opted to change visual attributes with the hopes of convincing customers their "same" product was "better."

The Story of Ralph Lauren

Ask anyone why Ralph Lauren became one of the biggest fashion brands in history, and they'll say, "Because of the brand."

But that's not true.

Ralph Lauren put himself on the map by designing the first "wide tie" for men (new category).

And what happens when you buy a "wide tie" in the '60s?

Suddenly you need a new type of suit (another new category).

And a new type of jacket (another new category).

For decades, Ralph Lauren created new categories of clothing, which ALSO had his brand.

The Definition of "Branding"

What did this word originally mean?

It meant “livestock branding.”

So basically (because these marketers didn't think about languaging), branding is a violent, painful approach to showing a living being as belonging to you.

That sounds about right.

Enduring most branding efforts, as a customer, is painful.

The companies who have bought-in to "brand marketing" are also the ones who spend the most $$$ per year getting "impressions" that don't meaningfully impact the company's growth.

Example A:

Capital One spent $1.6 billion on advertising in 2020, and has been averaging $1.9 billion per year in ad spend for the past 5 years.

And yet, after the stock failed to move from 2015 to 2020, the company authorized a “new share buyback program of up to $7.5 billion

So basically, $1.6 billion (or more) per year advertising Capital One’s brand has done nothing—so much so the company decided to deploy $7.5 billion more in cash to prop up the stock.

If brand marketing is so powerful, how come ~$2 billion a year can't get the company to grow?

Category Design 101:

Brand marketing is something we do TO customers.

Category marketing is something we do FOR customers.

So, instead of marketing your "brand" (which no one cares about), how do you market the CATEGORY?

🏴‍☠️ Keep reading:

categorypirates.substack.com/p/the-big-bran…