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The Brand Age

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Brand Age

#231

Post by internet2000 »

dworks wrote: post #53

I watched the Macbook Neo launch video yesterday and while the product is not very exciting, the video has great production value and it showed this: People want to pay for marketing. Not that Apple's only appeal is marketing, Mac laptops certainly have pros over the bottom and mid tier Windows laptops. But having seen that video, and knowing that other have seen it, are aware of Apple and its positioning, makes peop…

I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to bring Apple up. I'm clearly behind.

The MacBook Neo is the opposite of pg's "Brand Age". It's very subtly branded, the Apple is no longer shiny and "MacBook" isn't written anywhere in it. There are no identifiably-Apple design quirks, no notch. It's just the platonic ideal of a laptop. Screen, keyboard, trackpad. Nothing extra.

The cutesy intro video will be the main driver of ~0 sales for it.

Re: The Brand Age

#232

Post by doctorpangloss »

pg blind spot about brands: they cohere with a very specific but common lifestyle.

1. TV (TikTok)

2. Cars (and parking)

3. Buying shit is fun

I don't own a TV or use TikTok, and I don't use a car, and I don't shop. My experience with brands is very limited but also not that unusual. It's very San Francisco, a town whose nice parts (and problems) are very much, the future of your community, not its past.

In contrast, there's Reno. It has 10 lane roads criss crossing a business district that is as big as the whole of San Francisco, and it's all brand stores with ample parking. There's no like, La Taqueria. There's Qdoba and Chipotle and Target. Are you getting it? You drive everywhere and you watch TikTok while you drive, and Costco and other brands pay TikTok to tip the scales to make videos mentioning them go viral (that's their ads business, to people who don't know how it really works or get hopelessly fixated on requiring a citation for every fact they learn online), and it's a brand culture. It's videos of cute girls - they weren't paid to do this! - but they're in Costco buying shit, and there are a lot of cute girls on TikTok, but curiously it's the videos of theirs interacting with brands that go viral. And most of all, parking. There's so much parking to buy your brand shit. Driving around in your really cozy car, spending your whole day never elevating your heart rate.

And it works! Your life is really great with brands and cars and TV, because likes and wirecutter recommendations are a very secular, very nonjudgmental form of truth, it looks like objectivity and requires little brain power to digest.

So brands and cars and TikTok all synergize together like a cheeseburger's interior. It doesn't really have much at all to do with trade or innovation nowadays.

Re: The Brand Age

#233

Post by maguay »

chadash wrote: post #86
dworks wrote: post #53

I watched the Macbook Neo launch video yesterday and while the product is not very exciting, the video has great production value and it showed this: People want to pay for marketing. Not that Apple's only appeal is marketing, Mac laptops certainly have pros over the bottom and mid tier Windows laptops. But having seen that video, and knowing that other have seen it, are aware of Apple and its positioning, makes peop…

Apple clearly positions themselves as a premium product. There is some luxury element to it to (e.g., my friends will look down on me if I have an android), but it's not really the same as a true luxury product where brand is the main thing you are paying for. If you offered to sell me a macbook for 25% cheapr on condition that I remove the branding, I'd be happy to do so. I'm not a watch person, but I suspect that m…

Tudor says they'll pay around a third to a half for something pretty close made by the same parent company but with a different movement and branding.

Re: The Brand Age

#234

Post by aaron695 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #215

I actually dislike most "branding", by which I mean, I dislike when the name/logo of the brand is on the product itself. I get that puts me in the minority. For me, partly because I don't want to be seen as showing off and partly because I feel like if you want me to advertise your brand then you should be paying me, not the me paying you. And, once noticed, it's on so many products I wish it wasn't. The sink in my b…

[dead]

Re: The Brand Age

#235

Post by fsckboy »

Nursie wrote: post #214
d_burfoot wrote: post #50

Interesting historical anecdote: the Swiss became the world's best watchmakers because, in Protestant Geneva under the leadership of John Calvin, jewelry was banned as ostentation. But you were allowed to wear a watch - it was important to get to church and work on time - so people starting wearing expensive watches instead of jewelry.

Interesting. It's my understanding that in a similar vein, one of the reasons Belgium got so good at making tasty, stronger beers because wine and spirits were banned in the past. It's not quite 'necessity' being the mother of invention, but perhaps desire.

combining the previous two comments, I once heard that there are chips/french fries all over the ground in Belgium because if you ask a Belge the time, they look at their wristwatch, immediately inverting the container of fries they are undoubtedly carrying.

Not sure about Belgian potato or watch branding.

Re: The Brand Age

#236

Post by dworks »

majormajor wrote: post #218
dworks wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main point can be put a little more clearly: it is not just that we are willing to pay for the brand experience and the marketing that builds it, but we actively want to pay for it. Macbook Neo customers want Apple to put out creative product marketing videos, they believe it is part of the offer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3SIKAmPXY4

Is there data to prove or disprove this? I haven't given a shit about Apple marketing since I was a teenager, and I have bought many Apple products since then. If they could turn their marketing spend into a discount on the price instead I'd happily pay less. (Of course, this would reduce their sales, so it wouldn't work that way, but I'm not in it for the videos I've never watched.) Obviously I'm aware they still ha…

The data is Apple's margins on smartphones and other devices, compared to competitors in respective vertical.

Re: The Brand Age

#237

Post by dworks »

internet2000 wrote: post #231
dworks wrote: post #53

I watched the Macbook Neo launch video yesterday and while the product is not very exciting, the video has great production value and it showed this: People want to pay for marketing. Not that Apple's only appeal is marketing, Mac laptops certainly have pros over the bottom and mid tier Windows laptops. But having seen that video, and knowing that other have seen it, are aware of Apple and its positioning, makes peop…

I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to bring Apple up. I'm clearly behind. The MacBook Neo is the opposite of pg's "Brand Age". It's very subtly branded, the Apple is no longer shiny and "MacBook" isn't written anywhere in it. There are no identifiably-Apple design quirks, no notch. It's just the platonic ideal of a laptop. Screen, keyboard, trackpad. Nothing extra. The cutesy intro video will be the main…

Branding does not mean "logo on a product body".

Re: The Brand Age

#238

Post by dpb001 »

stingrae wrote: post #228
socalgal2 wrote: post #215

I actually dislike most "branding", by which I mean, I dislike when the name/logo of the brand is on the product itself. I get that puts me in the minority. For me, partly because I don't want to be seen as showing off and partly because I feel like if you want me to advertise your brand then you should be paying me, not the me paying you. And, once noticed, it's on so many products I wish it wasn't. The sink in my b…

I felt this way until I worked at Essential, the now shut down phone maker. One of the core company design principles was to have minimal branding. The phone design had no logo. When you show it to people they are looking for the identifier and it's completely missing. When you are in a market where most of the products look largely the same, branding is very important. It's unfortunate, but absolutely necessary.

I don't doubt your experience, but out of curiosity, what led you to the conclusion that branding is "absolutely necessary"? It seems to me that the presence of a name on black rectangle wouldn't matter to the average consumer. I get that there's a percentage of the consumer market that wants to advertise that they're rocking an Apple/Samsung/whatever device, but I would think that price/performance would be the major factor. Of course, that's probably why no one has ever put me in charge of marketing strategy.

Re: The Brand Age

#239

Post by carlosjobim »

dworks wrote: post #53

I watched the Macbook Neo launch video yesterday and while the product is not very exciting, the video has great production value and it showed this: People want to pay for marketing. Not that Apple's only appeal is marketing, Mac laptops certainly have pros over the bottom and mid tier Windows laptops. But having seen that video, and knowing that other have seen it, are aware of Apple and its positioning, makes peop…

The video is four minutes of a voice over talking about all the features and use cases of the new laptop, while the video is showing only the computer software and hardware. That's exactly how ads used to be and should be, and to me there's not much about branding in it.

There's no beautiful people, no successful lifestyle or even a face in the launch video.

Re: The Brand Age

#240

Post by Swizec »

mcdeltat wrote: post #227
socalgal2 wrote: post #215

I actually dislike most "branding", by which I mean, I dislike when the name/logo of the brand is on the product itself. I get that puts me in the minority. For me, partly because I don't want to be seen as showing off and partly because I feel like if you want me to advertise your brand then you should be paying me, not the me paying you. And, once noticed, it's on so many products I wish it wasn't. The sink in my b…

Yeah I feel completely the same and largely do not understand when people are obsessed with branding. I'm assuming it's some primitive brain social hierarchy stuff where we seek to have everything be stratified by social value. Also I have a related point on consumerism. A lot of things don't really need a brand to begin with because there is little need for so many options. Like if you have to advertise your brand i…

Good branding is recognizable without the logo, especially to the target audience.

For HN, macs are a good example. You can remove all the apples and we’ll recognize the laptop.

My Triumph motorcycle has a similar property. You could remove all the logos (there’s just 2 stickers anyway) and even my girlfriend who is not into bikes will recognize it by the engine sound alone.

Kitchenaid and Smeg appliances have a similar property. BBC hides all the logos and you can still recognize the standup mixers in their baking shows.

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