A reply to: Brands Should Be Everlasting - Essay Example

Response to the mate’s essay: Every brand has a lifecycle after which it has to ebb away. Brands can not be expected to last forever. The mate has mentioned the name of one company i.e. Pepsi that has conventionally been successful enough to have a fairly long life cycle, yet it can not be expected to last forever. The classmate just highlighted one brand. There have been numerous brands that have diminished which were doing really good at a certain point in time, but now, they are nowhere to be seen.

The world is subjected to constant changes in the social and political scenario. Whenever a war instigates, it has potential consequences on the trade between different countries and the biggest sufferers of the same are the multinational companies. Every brand signifies a country from which it emerged and spread its business across the world. Its success and sustainability is directly related with the international relations of that country. Brands are not just companies. They are essentially the insignia of particular cultures.

There are many people in the world that do not consume Pepsi because that is a product of West. People’s religious and cultural beliefs shape their perceptions of a product which in turn determines its future in that community. India banned the sale of Pepsi and Coke in some states for some time in 2006 particularly in the educational institutions (Natural News, 2006). The extinction of a brand does not necessarily mean that its name has to be effaced from the world altogether. A brand may continue to live in one part of the world and yet become extinct in another.

In many Islamic countries like Iran and Pakistan, sale of wine is officially banned. No wine making brand can be seen on the shelves in the markets of these countries because they have not been allowed a place there. In 2004, a price war instigated in the Proctor & Gamble detergents market in India which caused the Hindustan Lever, the then market leader to follow a suit. What this signals -- yet again -- is that there is no such thing as a long-term premium brand -- a brand that can withstand price competition for all times to come.

Every brand has the potential for commoditisation. The only question is how long can a marketer delay that eventuality. (Jagannathan, 2004). The classmate has started the discussion with the name of vendors of things in his room, which kind of grabs the reader’s attention, but there existence and popularity in this point in time says little about their sustenance in the future. The increased use of creative marketing strategies by the companies in the contemporary age is a way in which they tend to sustain their business by producing innovative products (Kotler and Keller, 2009).

Last but not the least, every brand is possessed by an owner and shareholders, and its future fundamentally depends upon the financial condition of the owner/owners which never remains the same, thus jeopardizing the sustenance of brands. References: Jagannathan, R. (2004). Why brands are not forever. Rediff.com. Retrieved from http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/mar/09guest1.htm. Kotler, P., & Keller, K. (2009). Marketing management (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Natural News. (2006). Coke, Pepsi banned in India over harmful levels of aspartame, pesticides and other chemicals.

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