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The Brand Age

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Brand Age

#381

Post by socalgal2 »

Atheros wrote: post #300
decimalenough wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the friendly article: > One obvious lesson is to stay away from brand. Indeed it's probably a good idea not just to avoid buying brand, but to avoid selling it too.

You misunderstood the article. Paul Graham isn't saying "Don't buy things based on brand", he's saying "Don't buy brand." It's perfectly healthy to use brand as a heuristic to help yourself more easily buy products that work well.

And yet tons of people do buy brand. Specifically to show it off. "Look at me! I'm rich! See, I'm wearing LV pants, Jimmy Choo shoes, I've got tUMI luggage, a Rolex watch, and a Prada bag.

Seems related to me.

You can buy this Prada keychain, only $525!

https://www.prada.com/us/en/p/saffiano-leather-keychain/2PP0...

Or you can buy some other that will be just as functional

https://www.etsy.com/search?q=keychain+leather+black+triangl...

But not advertise your $$$$.

Maybe a better example: Is this $2950 Prada bag

https://www.prada.com/us/en/p/re-nylon-and-saffiano-leather-...

Any better than 1000s of > It's perfectly healthy to use brand as a heuristic to help yourself more easily buy products that work well.

Sure, though I know lots of people that assume expensive = quality and confuse that with expensive brand = quality. It doesn't. The chintziest items I've owned have been expensive "high end" brands. That's not to say all expensive brands are bad. Only that expensive well known brand only means they're good at marketing. It does not mean their product are quality. They might be, they might not.

Re: The Brand Age

#382

Post by Herring »

pnexk wrote: post #207
Herring wrote: post #144

He's omitting the most important bit. Data from the OECD shows highly unequal societies tend to be more status-obsessed, leading to higher spending on "positional goods" (items bought to signal status). These economies often have higher advertising expenditures (as a percentage of GDP) to fuel that competition. Inequality is quite corrosive in many ways, including leading to fascism.

true. This is a good essay but there’s, as to be expected, not too much of an acknowledgement of the economic and political backdrop of the arena this played out in. A lot of discussions of this essay therefore get diluted into musings about aspects of human nature and its tendency to obsess over status and while missing the broader point about the role these sorts of corpo strategies play in modern societal wellbein…

One of my favorite books about inequality is The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett). It asks how this country can be so incredibly rich, unprecedented in human history, but still create so much suffering (physical/mental/emotional).

https://ibb.co/jZs6NhLt

Re: The Brand Age

#383

Post by Karrot_Kream »

socalgal2 wrote: post #381
Atheros wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstood the article. Paul Graham isn't saying "Don't buy things based on brand", he's saying "Don't buy brand." It's perfectly healthy to use brand as a heuristic to help yourself more easily buy products that work well.

And yet tons of people do buy brand. Specifically to show it off. "Look at me! I'm rich! See, I'm wearing LV pants, Jimmy Choo shoes, I've got tUMI luggage, a Rolex watch, and a Prada bag. Seems related to me. You can buy this Prada keychain, only $525! https://www.prada.com/us/en/p/saffiano-leather-keychain/2PP0... Or you can buy some other that will be just as functional https://www.etsy.com/search?q=keychain+leath…

The article doesn't have anything to do with brands as individual concepts or its idea as a quality or status marker. The article is a reflection on how different working in an industry that competes primarily on brand differs from industries with firms that build their brand based on a multitude of factors extrinsic to brand image itself.

Re: The Brand Age

#384

Post by boisterousness »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #252
sailfast wrote: post #246

Are we in "A Brand Age" or does The Brand Age occur only in different spaces after a technology becomes ubiquitous and like a utility, so the only way to command a premium is branding? What things are not quite there but will have their Brand Age next? AI? Spaceships? I'm also a bit confused as to whether there's judgment in the article though. He's applauding branding as a survival technique, but also saying it's si…

My crackpot theory: USB chargers and cables. Right now, a quality USB charger is cheap, but it's indistinguishable from a shitty USB charger, and there's a practical difference. And it's frequently on your desk. And it's got a lot of space for branding. A luxury USB cable would be identifiable and also (hopefully) also work well for whatever you might plug it into, until they invent the next new USB standard. Of cour…

Great minds think alike!

For $99.95, you can own an exquisite 0.75m USB-C 2.0 "High-Definition Audio Cable" [1], featuring "high-purity 0.5% Silver conductors and a Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation for the most efficient dissipation of radio-frequency noise."

It has "Direction-Controlled Conductors: All drawn metal strands or conductors have a non-symmetrical, and therefore directional, grain structure. AudioQuest controls the resulting RF impedance variation so that noise is drained away from where it will cause distortion. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. When applicable, arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality." Power Delivery: No. Country of origin: China.

My web search didn't reveal any $1000 USB cables - doubtless those are offered only privately to the most discerning connoisseurs.

[1] https://www.audioquest.com/products/forest-usb-c-c-digital-a...

Re: The Brand Age

#385

Post by rswail »

zimpenfish wrote: post #327
rswail wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries have avoided the complete brand/chain-ification of the US market. Cafes and coffee places are still great, Starbucks did for them what McDonalds did for food. They're a known standard of quality. It might be low, but it's known. Starbucks didn't invent the 3rd place, or re-invent it. As jobs moved from manufacturing to services, more people were able to work in a way that the "3rd place" offers. The ul…

> The actual planes are much better today than in the "golden age ... of Concorde and 747" Although if what I learnt from QI is to be believed[0], the internal air quality is now much worse than when smoking was allowed because they don't recycle the air through filters as much (if at all) these days. [0] I believe they're about 90% reliable with their "wacky" facts.

Depends which airline and which plane.

Airbus 350 and Boeing 777 have much better air, higher pressure than older planes.

Re: The Brand Age

#386

Post by dworks »

rswail wrote: post #340
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…

What I noticed was that when I was at dinner tonight with my young twenties down to 14 nieces and nephews, every one of them knew what the Macbook Neo was, including the colors. There was a big argument about iPad w/Pencil vs laptop, but they all said it was a good laptop for highschool/uni. None of them have seen or used one.

That's branding.

Re: The Brand Age

#387

Post by lionkor »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #35
lionkor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also those vibe coded competitors will not make it. Feel free to try though

> those vibe coded competitors will not make it Some of them will. And I suspect the set of markets in which they do will only increase—traditional SWE is probably dying, hard as that is to accept. But the fundamentals of engineering and business are nowhere close to going away. And those are the actually-hard parts of business.

This assumes that the tools continue getting better. People are still expecting new models to come out, and I don't think there's much more unused training material left...? Tooling improvements have been the biggest changes since mid 2023, and speed.

Results are still, on average, very faulty.

Re: The Brand Age

#388

Post by ninalanyon »

manbitesdog wrote: post #288
benrutter wrote: post #274

I liked reading this essay, but, I get the same vibe as a lot of PG essays. Which is, great writing and really intelligent thinking on an interesting subject, but without really being aware of ther stuff people have previously said/thought on the topic. For instance: > Brand is what's left when the substantive differences between products disappear. I think, for better and worse, brands are a lot more than that. Bran…

There is a fantastic book on this topic called "By Design : Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV" that cover the inception of modern brands. It's a very similar story to what happened to watches. The industrial revolution made quality clothing accesible for everyone, so the cloth appearance no longer was a clear indicative of status, so brands started placing their emblems on the outsid…

> At the time it was seen as gross, obvious and bad taste.

It's still gross, obvious, and in bad taste.

Re: The Brand Age

#389

Post by ninalanyon »

thot_experiment wrote: post #55
kridsdale1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with $(80,00-250,000) (which is a lot of you) can buy a Nautilus today[1]. This status-through-martyrdom ritual to get it from retail at MSRP is utterly bizarre. [1] https://www.chrono24.com/patekphilippe/nautilus--mod106.htm

Holy shit that's an ugly watch too, looks like something outta chinatown lmao.

These things are shibboleths. It doesn't really matter what they look like or whether they are actually any good for their ostensible purpose so long as they signal that you are a member of the correct group.

Re: The Brand Age

#390

Post by ninalanyon »

andai wrote: post #367

The argument assumes that there is one platonic ideal wristwatch, and that it is maximally thin and maximally precise. But I know a lot of people who wear watches for different reasons. Some people's idea of "brand" is the frugality of the F-91W. Some people wear obnoxiously large watches. Some people go for something more classy and subtle. And then there's a great deal of difference in taste. Some watches are works…

I know hardly anyone who wears a watch now.
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