Nothing lasts forever and certainly not brands. We become accustomed to them only to see them wither and die.
7 January 2026
This feeling of being established is a critical element of branding. It’s one of the chief ways in which a brand can build trust with their target market and use it to secure their position in the marketplace.
Sure, new brands can trade on being different, bold, challenging, even controversial. But this doesn’t work in the long-term. Ultimately, they must occupy a secure position to become established in the minds of their audiences.
However, the demise of well-known brands challenges any idea that longevity will be enough on its own to see you through. Appealing to your audience’s sentimentality won’t save you. Even the most iconic brands of their time can disappear.
This begs certain questions:
How tangible a presence does a modern brand need to have?
If a brand pares everything back, what essentials must it retain?
How important is brand awareness really?
How does a brand remain relevant and trusted but still adapt to change?
The age of the disembodied B2B brand
There are people out there who go all misty-eyed at the thought of doing a five-day, nine-to-five commute. Going to work at a physical destination other than your home was a given.
A mere decade ago, many startups would typically look for office space to occupy, however modest their beginnings. Having a place you could call your own was viewed as normal and desirable. It sent out signals that your business was grounded, real and tangible.
Economic realities, the legacy of the pandemic and the rise of co-working spaces have severely dented this approach and challenged commuting’s status as the acceptable norm.
So, what does this current age of transience and disembodied, digital identity say about modern B2B brands?
Because, when it comes down to it, where do these brands now actually exist, apart from on web pages, LinkedIn profiles or in the minds of their founders?
Even at the best of times, a distinctive B2B brand awareness is hard to achieve — not many management consultancies, accountancy firms or marketing agencies have names that trip off the tongue — and it’s harder still when simply being a business feels so intangible.
No wonder, then, that brands and branding are seen as optional, if not luxuries, by smaller businesses striving to compete in a largely digital marketplace. They’d rather be out selling their wares than raising awareness about what they stand for.
And when they can look at the physical realm and see once-mighty brands vanishing in front of their eyes, this reinforces their distrust of branding as a business strategy. What could possibly convince them to think differently?
There’s this hoary old business fable about the boss of Coca Cola, supposedly saying that if he gave away all the brand’s physical assets to someone else but retained the name and identity, ultimately, he’d be the one who was better off.
You’ve got your website, your sales team, your company LinkedIn page. But what ties them together and gives you consistency? What makes you different from any number of other SMEs competing in the same marketplace?
Your brand is how you plant your flag and how you build value in your business, shifting the emphasis from the personalities of the founder and leadership team to the personality of the brand itself.
This is potentially a very powerful shift. It enables you to build trust in your brand independently. It signifies and magnifies the intrinsic value of the business.
Now, a no-nonsense, plain-spoken type could call bullshit on this. “Where’s the ROI in branding?” they might demand. And yes, from a blunt perspective, some trendy brand consultant’s words of wisdom would indeed seem questionable against the harsh realities of turnover and profit.
But building a brand is strategic. It’s a long-term investment. It’s neither a quick fix nor, generally, an immediately profitable one. It’s foundational. This doesn’t tally with the received view of branding being about flashy logos and skin-deep attractiveness — mere window-dressing.
However, it’s this foundational aspect of branding that builds the most resilient brands. They’re constructed on clear values. They understand why they’re here and what they want to achieve.
It’s about the power of the idea, and while you can’t easily put a price on that, its potential long-term business value is enormous.
Why does brand awareness really matter?
In a starkly competitive environment where budgets are increasingly tight, how important is it to maintain or raise awareness of your brand?
It’s worth asking this, because, as a measurable goal, raising brand awareness can appear a little wishy washy compared to more substantial marketing and sales targets.
It might even seem like a luxury that fewer companies can currently afford.
But intangible assets can be every bit as powerful as their tangible counterparts. They can even exceed them in value (as per the Coca Cola story).
They cover:
Brand recognition
Customer loyalty
Reputation
Patents and copyrights
Proprietary knowledge.