Is The Brand Dead?

In 2023, Scott Galloway stood on stage at Cannes Lions — the world's biggest celebration of advertising and brand creativity — and declared that brand is dead.

A room full of agency leaders, brand directors, and CMOs. And one of marketing's most respected voices telling them their entire discipline is over.

He had a point.

He pointed to Apple — the most iconic brand on the planet — running campaigns focused entirely on product features. No storytelling. No emotional narrative. No "here's who you'll become." Just cameras, durability, privacy, AI.

If even Apple has stopped selling the feeling, what hope does branding have?

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But here's what Galloway was actually saying.

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Branding as wrapping paper is dead. The era of using emotional stories to disguise an average product is over. Consumers see through it. AI makes it even easier to produce beautiful packaging around mediocre substance. So the wrapping means less than ever.

On that, he's completely right.

But there's a leap that many people made after hearing this — that positioning doesn't matter anymore, that differentiation is irrelevant, that how the market sees you is a thing of the past.
That leap is wrong. Especially if you're an independent expert.

Here's why the argument doesn't translate.

When Galloway talks about brand dying, he's talking about the consumer world. Billion-dollar companies that used emotion to justify commodity products. Nike selling identity through shoes. Apple selling belonging through electronics. That game — brand as feeling that masks a functional product — is genuinely losing its power.

But independent experts never had that problem.

The problem for independent experts was never too much branding. It was too little. No positioning. No articulation of what makes your thinking different from the 50 other consultants who say roughly the same thing on LinkedIn.

Apple can afford to sell on features because everyone already knows what Apple stands for. Three decades of brand building gave them that luxury. They're not abandoning brand — they're spending the equity they already built.

You can't do that. The market doesn't know what you stand for yet. Not because you're not good. Because you haven't built it.

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What's actually dying — and what's not.

What's dying: brand as decoration. Emotional storytelling wrapped around something generic. Beautiful websites with nothing underneath. Personal branding that's all personality and no positioning.

What's not dying: differentiation. A clear market position built on something real. Architecture that makes the market see your thinking before they ever speak to you.

If anything, brand matters more now than it did five years ago — because there's more noise, more competition, more AI-generated sameness, and fewer ways to stand out on substance alone.

Those who win from here won't be the ones with the best wrapping. They'll be the ones whose brand is built on the one thing that can't be replicated — their original thinking.

Galloway was right that the old game is over. He just didn't finish the sentence.

The new game isn't no brand. It's real brand. Built on something only you can claim.

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