Style And Substance: What Luxury Fashion Can Teach Us About Branding

"Brands are dead," we've been told, and it feels like everyone's out searching for the smoking gun. Did the economy kill brands, or was it globalization? Maybe it's advertising fatigue?

We can muck around the crime scene all we want, but the simple truth is that brands are NOT dead. Nor are they "back." In fact, they never left. Not real brands, that is. What they are likely referring to on the death certificates are category placeholders: famous names that are interchangeable for other famous names. Everyone knows them, but not for anything much in particular.