On branding, cattle, and broken marketing

Meetings of the London Business Book Club, organised by the irrepressible Catherine Crawley, continue to offer fascinating speakers and stimulating discussions in a warm and cosy atmosphere. Last week we had the great pleasure of hearing from Jonathan Salem Baskin, whose provocatively titled Branding Only Works on Cattle has ruffled a few feathers in the marketing world.
I was very impressed by Jonathan, not just because he told me that user documentation created by technical writers is an undervalued part of corporate identity, or because he promised to promote my latest user documentation survey, but because he presents his ideas in such a pleasant and convincing way. Rather than lecturing his audience, he asked deceptively simple questions which led to some intriguing discussions. What would the world look like without branding, and without all the advertising spend that goes along with it? What criteria would consumers use to decide between products from different manufacturers? Do “brand values” actually influence consumer spending habits?
People who work in marketing and advertising often claim that brands do make a difference to consumer habits, and often claim that otherwise unexplained revenues are the result of branding. Baskin himself used to be a senior marketing executive for some household name companies, and probably made some of those claims. But he now has his doubts about the whole “brand value” argument, suggesting in his book and in his blog that consumer decisions are based on functional values, not just on the emotional values that brand marketers want to associate with their goods. Particularly now, in a time of economic recession, says Baskin, consumers are choosing the most suitable product at the most suitable price, and ignoring more expensive goods despite their “exciting” brands.
For many people in the marketing world, this is crazy talk. If it were true, it would mean that the whole model of brand marketing was broken, and they would need to think of completely new strategies. Like making stuff that people would want to buy because it was actually good. Now that would never do!