Brands ageing faster....a human connection

Brands ageing faster: A human connection

Brands are like human beings in a lot of ways. In many customer researches, a common question is “If this brand were a person, who would it be?” Customers are always able to personify the brand with such detail that you could clearly visualize him/her. This is because our choice of brands is a reflection of ourselves. If we like a brand, it’s because it has positive personality traits that we either possess or aspire to have. Levi’s is cool, ipods are trendy and Chevrolet is attractive and stylish.

Apart from having a personality link, brands behave like human beings even when it comes to their lifecycles. Much like people, brands are born, they grow, and they mature, go through a decline phase and eventually die.

Today, we are witnessing an interesting trend with brands ageing faster much like what we are observing with people around us. Kathleen McDonnell in her book “The Hurried Child” looks at how children are being pushed on to the fast track to adult success by societal pressures and anxious parents. Physical and behavioral changes that would have been typical of teenagers decades ago are now common among "tweens" — kids ages 8 to 12. The lines that used to distinguish between adulthood and childhood are growing blurred and the evidence is all around us with 6-year old girls dressing-up in navel bearing outfits and 8-year old boys playing adult computer games.

Technology and consumerism are having a similar impact on the lifecycle of brands. Globalization, rapid communication and technological advancements have accelerated the ageing of brands. The internet has been a significant inflection point here as it enables the rapid dissemination of ideas and development of products around the globe. In effect, it acts to shorten the lifecycle in many categories.

Products emerge, surge, diffuse and are purged. With changing consumer tastes and preferences, some products becomes popular relatively quickly, but are also losing popularity dramatically and are being replaced by the next bright promise. Why are we witnessing this trend? Novelty attracts our nervous systems; our faith is progress and our passion is hope. Something new might be the next great thing (the last one sure wasn't); no matter how bizarre it seems at first.

All this has led to the product life-cycle curve becoming steeper today than ever before, indicating that an increasingly large proportion of sales occur soon after the introduction of the product. A narrow window of opportunity exists to earn profits on a new product before competition catches up and margins begin to shrink. It is not only imperative for companies to be first-to-market with their product, but also to be able to ramp-to-volume quickly to meet early product demand. With shortened life cycles, companies cannot afford to miss out on the initial bang, and stock-out becomes an expensive proposition. But with technological advances, the quality of products is improving greatly resulting in an interesting paradox for marketers – while the products are lasting longer, the time in which they are outmoded is growing shorter.

Thus, in effect, the S-curve is changing shape in the case of a number of product categories with the curve getting steeper at the growth stage and a longer lasting flattened curve at the maturity stage.

That is why, from planning to implementation to the final act of selling, marketers have had to fast forward their act. This impacts everything: from designing products to logistics to distribution, to marketing communication. Marketers have to invest heavily in a short span of time for the maximum returns. The gains are great, so too are the risks.