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How traditional brand methods fall short

Markets and customers are constantly changing, but if you look at traditional brand methods, they really seem frozen in time. Some of their assumptions, concepts and practices date back a hundred years or more, when societies were far less diverse and dynamic than they are today.

Brands are not forever, and brand inertia is no virtue. Brands that cling to the past soon lag behind customers–who are a brand’s real bridge to the future.

Common Weaknesses of Traditional Brand Methods
Traditional brand practices can be handcuffs from the past. There are many ways they can limit a company’s ability to innovate on brand.

This chart identifies some of these weaknesses:

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 7:23 am and is filed under Brand Innovation, Creating Customers, Fundamentals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “How traditional brand methods fall short”

  1. Jack Yan Says:
    May 13th, 2006 at 2:41 am

    An excellent summary—and it is a pity that a great deal of our colleagues still act as though it were the 1950s. I would forgive them if there were sufficient consumers who are as stupid as they thought they were, but that doesn’t even hold true any more.

  2. Brian Phipps Says:
    May 15th, 2006 at 8:11 am

    Jack — nice to have your comments.

    At some point, traditional brands became embedded in 1950-style hierarchies, and have helped preserve those herarchies ever since, while markets have gone in other directions. I think that’s why a lot of 1950s style brands still persist. What could be a dynamic force to unlock market value is still used as a giant hammer–even though the “nails” have long-since left the plank (and turned themselves into electrons).