14 May

Brands are the way business taps into the imitative ‘team sports’ status rivalry I post about. A brand is a team, in these status battles. Like a footy team, but for all products. People are ‘brand loyal’ in the same way footy supporters are. People will stick with a brand they know even if the product is terrible and much more expensive. Many won’t use identical much cheaper generic drugs for example, because they only trust the brand they know. Or many older folk will only connect with Telstra or bank with the big 4 banks, because that’s the brands they’ve been with for years. It’s their team, the one that gives them a feeling of safety and identity. The hysteria over AI amuses me because of the assumption that humans actually think. Humans don’t think, they imitate one another, in an attempt to fit in socially and fight with other humans for status, in their teams and against other teams. Also why the attempts to give people ‘market’ information to help them choose better products, comparisons for price and features, fail. Societies never run on information. They run on status.