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How 'Marketing Science' Undermines Brands

Bruce Tait
Fallon Brand Consulting
Since starting Fallon Brand Consulting four years ago we have had a tremendous opportunity to see the inner workings of marketing and brand management at a wide variety of companies. In this time, we've been shocked by the general malaise in the brand arena.
There is a sense of hopelessness in many marketing departments where few dare strive for dramatic, exponential growth through brand initiatives. Overall, the value of the marketing department seems on the wane and many CEOs have focused on cost-cutting because they no longer believe dramatic top-line revenue growth is possible.
In the US, brands like Campbell's, Kodak, K-Mart, Polaroid, Oldsmobile and Levi's were once standard-bearers for the power of brands. Now all are very ill or, as is the case with Oldsmobile, dead; Levi's has experienced breathtakingly precipitous declines over the last seven years. What does it say about our ability to manage brands when such an incredibly strong one can fall so far so fast?
Differentiation crisis
In 2000, two research companies in the US teamed up to do a study of how well brands were differentiated in a diverse set of categories [1]. They looked at 46 product/service categories and found that the leading brands in 40 of these were becoming less differentiated in the minds of consumers.
In four categories the leading brands were perceived to be maintaining their level of differentiation and in only two were they perceived to be getting more differentiated. In support of this, Ernst & Young's study of new brands showed upwards of 80% failing. The primary reason cited for failure? Lack of differentiation.
Now any student of marketing can tell you that brands need to be relevant to their targets and differentiated from their competitors to be successful. But there is ample evidence that marketing has somehow lost the capacity to create and manage differentiated brands. This lack of differentiation forces brands to compete on the...