James Woudhuysen

Among 3G operators in the UK, five brands dominate. Among US suppliers of enterprise software, Standard & Poor's reserves its "Buy" recommendations for Microsoft, BEA, SAP and Oracle. And with the success of of iTunes and iPod, Apple has bagged a whole 26th of the alphabet for its exclusive use.

Everywhere in the IT industry, it appears, the power of branding remains undiminished.

But wait. Apple itself is to launch a new operating system, Tiger, in the autumn - yet I've only just got used to its Safari web browser. And if Apple's sub-brands confuse even Mac lovers, big brands outside the world of IT also appear in trouble.

Wal-Mart, the bête noire of Naomi (No Logo) Klein, is under attack in the US courts. And US marketing companies worry about America's brand abroad. Harvard professor John Quelch thanks Chinese brands, in advance, for providing us with what he calls "an alternative to US brand hegemony".

Meanwhile, Britain's high priest of corporate social holiness, Jonathan Porritt, has attacked Marks & Spencer's putative acquirer, Philip Green, in the letters page of the Financial Times. Green's crime? Failure to provide evidence that he "really understands that critical nexus between brands, trust and performance" - performance as regards corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

In fact, brandsmiths everywhere now uphold Porritt's inquisitorial approach. By behaving ethically, it is argued, firms can get corporate brands to win customers' trust. That way, the brand can help customers avoid suffering the strains of everyday life, and in particular the modern tyranny of branded choice.

At once, then, the brand is at risk, in crisis, and has an immanent tendency to victimhood; but it must at the same time come to the aid of human beings who suffer from viruses, information overload, smacking in childhood, obesity in adulthood and all the rest.

A rebranded Barclaycard will be issued in late 2004 to act as an "enabler" to get consumers through life. This is about as upbeat as branding gets. For the rest, expert opinion has it that brands are needed to edit, signpost, solve problems in or even run parts of people's lives.

Worse still, we're told that the best way to improve what other people say about your organisation is to get employees to embody the brand's values. Thus, in the Harvard Business Review, Dave Ulrich, who combines roles as human resources guru, Michigan professor and president of the Montreal Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, insists that "Shared Mind-set and Coherent Brand Identity" go together.

Today, HR departments engage in branded schemes of change management. Even more insidiously, HR departments want corporate brand etiquette followed when staff use mobile platforms or go teleworking. This business-to-employee dimension of brands is not just authoritarian. By encouraging groupthink, it discourages innovation.

In the world of IT, every kind of brand promises user empowerment. The logic of branding, however, leads not to more "Think Different", but to less.

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