Obsessive Branding Disorder

Branding is the self-help industry of corporate America. Sure, it may be difficult to admit--perhaps even a bit embarrassing--but let's face it: Both branding and self-help have experienced booming growth over the past decade, seemingly in reaction to rising levels of personal and professional insecurity. Both fields are populated with self-anointed experts. And both seem to follow the same publishing principal: The less there is to say, the more literature there must be.

Lucas Conley writes in Fast Company:

Bill Schley, author of Why Johnny Can't Brand (Portfolio, November 2005), says branding "is not what you say but what you do." But what a company does is already, well, what it does! To brand, in a corporate sense, is no more a verb than "to gorgeous." A brand is a result, not a tactic. One cannot go about branding an organization or a product or a service; the organization, product, or service is what creates the brand. In a brilliant twist, the experts have bottled an end and sold it as a means.

Amen, Brother Conley.