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The Brand Age

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Brand Age

#61

Post by bee_rider »

creeble wrote: post #28
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist No, they didn’t. The makers of movements and makers of cases were separate. From far away you only know the case on the wrist. Not the movement. (I think Rolex was the first mass-market Swiss watch brand to vertically integrate. Patek may have been the first boutique.)

The movement isn't part of the brand. It's not part of the signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand. And if you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them.

It’s sort of hard to unravel what’s part of the brand, it’s all imagination anyway.

The watch manufacturer, as part of their reputation, buys “premium” internal components. And then the hardcore watch-heads get to know that this model has that premium movement. Everybody in the club gets to signal to each other by knowing internal details that outsiders don’t notice (or even details that can’t be noticed, I mean, I assume by nowadays non-premium-brand movements are functionally identical to the premium ones).

Re: The Brand Age

#62

Post by jvanderbot »

julianpye wrote: post #44
jgrahamc wrote: post #14

" Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list. " Strange game, the only winning move is not to play. I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury"…

Actually in many cases it is for social KPI storytelling. I know some wealthy people and at gatherings they love to tell 5-10min long stories of exclusive processes that they followed to gain something exclusive while dropping names and numbers. The processes are easy to understand for the entire social circle (i.e. not technical or business achievements which they can't easily disclose).

So, hobbies. You're talking about hobbies.

Re: The Brand Age

#64

Post by davidw »

jgrahamc wrote: post #14

" Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list. " Strange game, the only winning move is not to play. I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury"…

Economists have a term for these kinds of things where the demand rises as prices rise: Veblen goods

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Re: The Brand Age

#65

Post by armchairhacker »

benleejamin wrote: post #42

I don't think the Brand Age is as bleak as this essay suggests. Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate , but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s. As technologists I think we're prone to dismissi…

What I got from the essay: "brand is the only way to beat competition when you can't significantly beat them on quality". It's basically the market suffering from success. You can buy a cheap quality watch today.

For some product types there is no better alternative, like ISPs. But I'd argue this is because of monopoly, which is different from brand. Most monopolies (like ISPs) usually have negative brands, and there's no alternative not because one can't create a better brand (that's easy), but because the upfront cost to become profitable is too high.

Re: The Brand Age

#66

Post by badc0ffee »

NinjaTrance wrote: post #58

" When our time traveler peered into the windows of these shops, the first thing he'd notice was how large all the watches were ." My only question about this entire essay is... where did this time traveler came from??? "Our" time traveler was never mentioned until this line.

Not true:

> The best way to answer that might be to imagine what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine. [...] The first thing he'd notice, if he walked through a fancy shopping district, is that all the prominent watchmakers of the golden age seem to be doing better than ever.

Re: The Brand Age

#67

Post by randallsquared »

NinjaTrance wrote: post #58

" When our time traveler peered into the windows of these shops, the first thing he'd notice was how large all the watches were ." My only question about this entire essay is... where did this time traveler came from??? "Our" time traveler was never mentioned until this line.

It was several paragraphs before that, where pg said "[...] what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine."

Re: The Brand Age

#68

Post by randallsquared »

creeble wrote: post #28
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist No, they didn’t. The makers of movements and makers of cases were separate. From far away you only know the case on the wrist. Not the movement. (I think Rolex was the first mass-market Swiss watch brand to vertically integrate. Patek may have been the first boutique.)

The movement isn't part of the brand. It's not part of the signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand. And if you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them.

The whole point of pg's essay is that signaling transitioned into being the entire point of wearing them primarily in the 1980s.

Re: The Brand Age

#69

Post by [deleted] »

NinjaTrance wrote: post #58

" When our time traveler peered into the windows of these shops, the first thing he'd notice was how large all the watches were ." My only question about this entire essay is... where did this time traveler came from??? "Our" time traveler was never mentioned until this line.

[deleted]

Re: The Brand Age

#70

Post by nicole_express »

stackghost wrote: post #22
kridsdale1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I look over to the Coca-Cola Classic on my table that I picked because my taste buds prefer the classic brand)

Your taste buds prefer the flavor, not the brand. If they changed their name to "Caramel Diet Fanta" but kept the recipe identical, you'd still enjoy the taste. The New Coke brand failed because people didn't like the taste, not the other way around.

New Coke is a very interesting counterpoint to the brand focus, but on the other hand, they did at the time make a very big push of it being "New" Coke. Hard to tell what would've happened if they had just swapped out the formula.

I drink Diet Coke, which is basically the same formula that became New Coke with chemical sludge instead of sugar, and it tastes pretty good to my tongue to the point where I drink it over Coke Zero, the one closer to "the real thing".

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