The Brand Age
paulgraham.com
The Brand Age
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Re: The Brand Age
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Re: The Brand Age
#4I can't respond to tzury's comment because it's already flagged and dead but I honestly don't think that's quite fair on this board.
The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong.
It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other side of the divide.
I don't find anything wrong or downvotable about people voicing perfectly valid criticisms about pg, his opinions, who he associates with and signal-boosts...unless these standards you all want to apply wrt cancellation are "for thee and not for me".
Re: The Brand Age
#5Nike is a useful test case (1) here. Brand was the whole competitive moat for them and once athletic gear commoditized, then management spent five years cutting the things that sustain it: athlete relationships, premium positioning, product development. Each cut looked (somewhat) rational on its own but none of them were, taken together.
(1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-economi...
EDIT: Nevermind comments are apparently just a pg meta discussion..
Re: The Brand Age
#6I can't respond to tzury's comment because it's already flagged and dead but I honestly don't think that's quite fair on this board. The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong. It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other si…
You've got enough karma to click [vouch] on the comment if you think it shouldn't be dead. It's a bit of a rant, and while there are good points, they're lost in an emotional diatribe and, I mean, I feel for them, but I can also see why it was marked dead.
Re: The Brand Age
#7His point of Omega doubling-down on the things that would progressively harder to establish a moat on made me think about what we have been seeing with higher ed. It seems the "smart ones" definitely read the book that making the "education better," in a world where it is mostly free, was a fool's errand, and now the margins that they all compete it stray far, far away from the quality of the schooling. I work in K-12, and see the same things happening here too.
P.S.: It is odd to me to have such a length pg essay been up for such a long time with just a handful of comments. Did something happen? I would've expected a wealth of discussion on a post like this by now.
Re: The Brand Age
#8I can't respond to tzury's comment because it's already flagged and dead but I honestly don't think that's quite fair on this board. The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong. It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other si…
> The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH
You have no way of knowing that. The guidelines against off-topic controversy and generic tangents apply, no matter who the author.
Re: The Brand Age
#9Is it just me or are an increasing number of (high profile) people in the tech industry into luxury watches these days?
Re: The Brand Age
#10> So the only thing distinguishing one top brand from another was the name printed on the dial
Respectfully disagree.
Since the 60's (and one could argue, even long before that), watches are 1) fashion, and 2) male wealth-signaling fashion. That's it. Nothing more. And for males who subscribe to this wealth-signaling cult, they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist.
Okay, today's brands signal maybe a little differently than just wealth. Casio G-Shock watches aren't substantially different than their non-G-Shock counterparts in any significant way, but they cost way more. The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-ness? Maybe it is closer to a pure fashion brand here.
I think we've been in "The Brand Age" since the advent of advertising. There are plenty of products that have virtually no differentiation besides brand, and there (almost) always has been.