Observing people from Silicon Valley discover the concepts of "brand" and "taste" is quite amusing.
It's like watching a hyper-rational alien species trying to understand humans.
> "Wait...So you purchased this at 5X the price of another product because of how it makes you feel about yourself, and not for its utility? Fascinating!"
We've been in the brand age for 200 years. This is nothing new. Technology products have just been so uniquely useful due to fast innovation that silicon valley has largely been able to ignore the centuries old techniques of Madison Avenue.
Every single market as it matures ultimately turns into a marketing competition, not a product competition. It has always been this way. Silicon Valley is the new Detroit.
It's like watching a hyper-rational alien species trying to understand humans.
> "Wait...So you purchased this at 5X the price of another product because of how it makes you feel about yourself, and not for its utility? Fascinating!"
We've been in the brand age for 200 years. This is nothing new. Technology products have just been so uniquely useful due to fast innovation that silicon valley has largely been able to ignore the centuries old techniques of Madison Avenue.
Every single market as it matures ultimately turns into a marketing competition, not a product competition. It has always been this way. Silicon Valley is the new Detroit.