The vanity of brands in the land of indifference

Companies love their brands the way children love their costumes. To the insider, the logo gleams with destiny, the typeface carries the weight of philosophy, and the colour palette is a manifesto. Inside the boardroom, the brand is not simply a name but a flag under which tribes march.

And then - out there, in the wilds of actual life - most people don’t give a damn.

Yes, there are exceptions. The brands that are badges of selfhood. Apple, Vuitton, Mercedes: they live in the bloodstream. To carry them is to belong to a story larger than one’s wallet. These are not brands; they are passports to identity. People tattoo them on their laptops and, sometimes, their skin.

But if you are a mobile operator, a gas utility, a background service that hums in the walls of daily life - your brand is not a religion, it is plumbing. And nobody tattoos plumbing. Which is why, when asked to care, people perform caring.

Research exaggerates the difference. Point someone at two nearly identical logos, and they’ll dutifully invent contrasts - “dynamic,” “trustworthy” - not out of conviction but out of politeness. Real behaviour is duller and more telling: in low-interest markets, the brand that comes to mind first usually wins.

That doesn’t make brands meaningless. They are fragile, not futile. People will pay a little more for the name that feels official, or default to the operator a neighbour mentioned, or trust the one with the actor they recognise from TV. In categories of indifference, brands work less like religions and more like shortcuts - thin, irrational, but commercially useful.

Still, shortcuts collapse when the product disappoints. If the broadband drops every evening at seven, no logo or tagline will save you. This is the unglamorous heart of competitive advantage: being better - faster, clearer, easier - so customers never get the itch to switch.

Which is why the strut of multiple undifferentiated brands in low-interest markets is vanity. You don’t multiply affection; you dilute attention. The exception is when you deliberately split the stage: a core master brand and a stripped-down flanker with a voice so different it earns its own audience. O2 with Tesco Mobile. Orange with Sosh. That isn’t indulgence; it’s segmentation.

So what? In markets of indifference, branding cannot create love. But it can create recall, reduce risk, and sustain a sliver of pricing power. The energy wasted polishing invisible nuances would be better spent fixing the plumbing - and making sure your name is the one people reach for in the moment of need. Because the truth is merciful and brutal: the customer doesn’t love you, doesn’t hate you, doesn’t think of you at all - until the moment they must. And in that moment, survival depends on being first in mind and simply better in kind.