[HN Gopher] The Brand Age
___________________________________________________________________
The Brand Age
Author : bigwheels
Score : 163 points
Date : 2026-03-05 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| tzury wrote:
| [flagged]
| busterarm wrote:
| I can't respond to tzury's comment because it's already flagged
| and dead but I honestly don't think that's quite fair on this
| board.
|
| The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't
| bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks
| like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have
| committed some ideological-wrong.
|
| It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other side
| of the divide.
|
| I don't find anything wrong or downvotable about people voicing
| perfectly valid criticisms about pg, his opinions, who he
| associates with and signal-boosts...unless these standards you
| all want to apply wrt cancellation are "for thee and not for me".
| fragmede wrote:
| You've got enough karma to click [vouch] on the comment if you
| think it shouldn't be dead. It's a bit of a rant, and while
| there are good points, they're lost in an emotional diatribe
| and, I mean, I feel for them, but I can also see why it was
| marked dead.
| busterarm wrote:
| I did click vouch, but I also still stick by what I said
| because I see all sorts of personal, emotional crusades
| against various tech figures reposted, signal-boosted,
| amplified, etc. on this board. I'm not saying that you're
| wrong, I'm just asking people to pause and think about what
| the comments would look like if this were in response to some
| other characters...
| tomhow wrote:
| > The very same people who would be flagging that comment
| wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support
| anything by folks like DHH
|
| You have no way of knowing that. The guidelines against off-
| topic controversy and generic tangents apply, no matter who the
| author.
| mikestew wrote:
| _The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn
| 't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by
| folks like..._
|
| First off, you might be right for some small number of cases,
| but I'd flag any and all rants such as this, regardless of the
| target. Off-topic, and doesn't contribute to the conversation.
|
| Second, for those as you describe, when they go off on an off-
| topic rant about DHH, someone _else_ will conveniently flag it.
| busterarm wrote:
| There is not a single discussion on this board about DHH that
| doesn't get overrun with posts about what people think about
| the guy, regardless of the posts' topic.
| renewiltord wrote:
| People like being repetitive on this board. Read Google in
| title and say "I never use Google because killing Reader". It's
| not like LLM. It is worse. Like hashmap. Deterministic same
| answer. That's fine for them. But I have no interest in
| starting everything with a litany, land acknowledgement, and
| whatever other modern preface required.
|
| We acknowledge this message board is the rightful unceded home
| of the startup enthusiast people. We affirm their right to it
| and recognize their sovereignty.
|
| See, you enjoy me bringing pet subject into discussion with
| nebulous relation? You want always to see it? Good. I will do
| so. No downvote it unfair.
| 7777777phil wrote:
| Nike is a useful test case (1) here. Brand was the whole
| competitive moat for them and once athletic gear commoditized,
| then management spent five years cutting the things that sustain
| it: athlete relationships, premium positioning, product
| development. Each cut looked (somewhat) rational on its own but
| none of them were, taken together.
|
| (1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-
| economi...
|
| EDIT: Nevermind comments are apparently just a pg meta
| discussion..
| fragmede wrote:
| The question is, in this new software world order, how much do
| brands matter vs what they've done vs network effects. I could
| have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter clone, or an
| Uber clone, and have none of the baggage of Cambridge
| Analytica, being owned by Elon Musk, or Travis kalanick of
| Greyball and S. Fowler legacy. An Uber driver-turned-dev could
| easily stand up a competitor and give way more money to the
| drivers simply by not having the overhead that Uber has with
| lawyers and executive salaries in this age of ChatGPT. Drivers
| will go to where there's riders and money, and riders will go
| to where there's drivers and cheaper rides. (and no drivers.)
| If someone needs an app idea to work on, it's the incumbents,
| without the suck. Facebook without "People just submitted it. I
| don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
|
| Because looking at Truth Social and Gab, people do adopt brands
| as part of their identity; and Uber but for drivers, or
| Facebook, without the spying, are trivial to make the software
| side of things on now. The fact that we haven't seen a dozen
| Uber competitors spring up is a testament to the fact that
| branding is a helluva moat. It's impossible to put a dollar
| value on it, but ChatGPT has no moat, except that it's Chat-
| fucking-GPT. The original chatbot and no matter how good Claude
| gets, it'll never be the original.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| (I look over to the Coca-Cola Classic on my table that I
| picked because my taste buds prefer the classic brand)
| stackghost wrote:
| Your taste buds prefer the flavor, not the brand. If they
| changed their name to "Caramel Diet Fanta" but kept the
| recipe identical, you'd still enjoy the taste.
|
| The New Coke brand failed because people didn't like the
| taste, not the other way around.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Every time I drink a Coke (or any other soft drink), the
| brand's baggage (good and bad) is present. Unless you're
| doing a blind taste test, it's impossible to avoid that.
| nicole_express wrote:
| New Coke is a very interesting counterpoint to the brand
| focus, but on the other hand, they did at the time make a
| very big push of it being "New" Coke. Hard to tell what
| would've happened if they had just swapped out the
| formula.
|
| I drink Diet Coke, which is basically the same formula
| that became New Coke with chemical sludge instead of
| sugar, and it tastes pretty good to my tongue to the
| point where I drink it over Coke Zero, the one closer to
| "the real thing".
| lionkor wrote:
| Also those vibe coded competitors will not make it. Feel free
| to try though
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _those vibe coded competitors will not make it_
|
| Some of them will. And I suspect the set of markets in
| which they do will only increase--traditional SWE is
| probably dying, hard as that is to accept. But the
| fundamentals of engineering and business are nowhere close
| to going away. And those are the actually-hard parts of
| business.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I could have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter
| clone, or an Uber clone_
|
| No, you couldn't. At best you'd turn out a video game
| simulating Uber. The idea that all of the business is in its
| software seems to be one Silicon Valley perennially unlearns.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I've found the newer generation of founders understand
| that. The issue is they don't use HN anymore.
|
| I've noticed a significant tone and demographic shift on
| the site over the past 2-3 years with more Western
| Europeans and Midwesterners and fewer Bay Area+NYC users,
| and fewer decisionmakers or decisionmaking adjacent people
| using the site.
|
| And the deeply technical types who used HN largely shifted
| to lobste.rs.
|
| Karrot_Kream (another longtime HN user) identified this
| shift as well [0]
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Karrot_Kream
| fragmede wrote:
| I agree. Where did they go? Blind? Private
| Slack/discords?
| alephnerd wrote:
| The younger generation of founders meets in-person and
| uses iMessage and Instagram. The older generation meets
| in-person and uses iMessage, Signal, or WhatsApp.
|
| The reality is, most people are in-person now and
| conversations that were happening on HN because of the
| pandemic are now being done offline.
|
| Blind is toxic, but at least the users are cynically
| realistic.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The Bay Area/NYC and founder adjacent folks I know are
| mostly on group chats and messaging apps. Fundamentally
| the signal on this site is too low to be of use in those
| conversations. It's difficult to discuss decisionmaking
| in a forum full of random Fortune 100 employee deep in a
| torrid company hierarchy complaining about what their
| management hierarchy wants them to do.
|
| There's also a tension between the increasing "community
| building" happening on HN and the Bay Area/NYC crowd. A
| lot of them have an extant community largely based on in-
| person relationships. The more HN builds its own
| community, the more you alienate this set of people. In
| other words, Slashdotification is happening more and more
| to HN where a set of very online tech people who don't
| really make decisions generate most of the chatter on
| this site.
| fragmede wrote:
| As long as we agree that code generation is capable of
| creating a video game simulating Uber, we're on the same
| page. The fact that there's more to a business than a
| flashy bit of software is exactly my point! The idea that
| Silicon Valley is one dude who doesn't get it is as old as
| the valley itself.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| His point of Omega doubling-down on the things that would
| progressively harder to establish a moat on made me think about
| what we have been seeing with higher ed. It seems the "smart
| ones" definitely read the book that making the "education
| better," in a world where it is mostly free, was a fool's errand,
| and now the margins that they all compete it stray far, far away
| from the quality of the schooling. I work in K-12, and see the
| same things happening here too.
|
| P.S.: It is odd to me to have such a length pg essay been up for
| such a long time with just a handful of comments. Did something
| happen? I would've expected a wealth of discussion on a post like
| this by now.
| fragmede wrote:
| The something that happened was ChatGPT. Enough commenters
| didn't like the idea that everything they write publicly online
| is fed in as training data for AI that there's been a shift in
| this site's community. That, and everyone got laid off, either
| for section 174 or AI reasons, but Twitter employees are no
| longer collecting that fast paycheck and posting here. I'm sure
| a data scientist could make a good analysis of if what I'm
| saying is backed by actual data, but that's my feel based on
| spending more time on here than is healthy.
| randallsquared wrote:
| I think there are a number of reasons for this, but a couple
| come to mind. First, pg seems distant from YC now (to those not
| at office hours, I guess), and rarely publishes new essays, so
| he's rarely discussed or present in the minds of commenters
| here. Also, pg has the fortune or misfortune to write in a way
| that feels like some LLM writing, when he's writing well. I
| haven't gone back to earlier essays to check this notion, but I
| think he's going out of his way to break up thoughts into less
| likely sentence fragments, now, which give his recent writing a
| choppier, less well-written feel, with standalone sentences
| like
|
| > _But you could recognize one from across the room._
|
| and
|
| > _Or maybe not so lucky._
|
| and starting a paragraph with
|
| > _For men, at least._
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Omega's entire brand was accurate tool watches. The megaquartz
| was peak luxury for someone that wanted accuracy and style
| https://chronomaddox.com/omega_megaquartz_2400.html
|
| yeah they were force merged with ETA, longines, Hamilton and
| eterna, which basically dominated the swiss watch industry .
|
| Patek Phillipe was all about just being expensive with other
| people's movements. They were the balenciaga of watches
| (subjective view point there.)
| bogardon wrote:
| Is it just me or are an increasing number of (high profile)
| people in the tech industry into luxury watches these days?
| observationist wrote:
| Status games are evergreen, and a lot of conspicuous
| consumption has fallen out of fashion. They've gotta flaunt
| their wealth and position somehow, and lambos are just too
| crypto-bro and gauche.
|
| It's also a sales tactic - a watch can be a schelling point if
| you're looking to network with someone who's into it.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Watches were understated in the 70s and turned more to gold
| in the 80s and a super proliferation of diversity in the 90s.
| 90s also had machismo Schwarzenegger sized cases for steroid
| men.
|
| 2000s brought Hiphop bling culture to them which embraced
| maximalism with size further increasing and 85 diamonds and
| rubies being something worthy of showing.
|
| 2010s austerity led to a retreat all the way to 1940s style
| trench and dress watches, cases back to 38mm.
|
| Post Covid, boldness is having a comeback. See the newest
| Planet Ocean. We are seeing bling and ostentatious gold again
| on celebrities this year.
| mrexcess wrote:
| Anecdotally, in the trenches, I'm seeing a proliferation of
| Casio F-91w and AE-1200s. Maybe a counter response, lol.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Gotta do something with those RSUs.
|
| I asked Claude to psychoanalyze why I got obsessed with them
| and it said I'm likely striving for something tangible that
| appeals to my engineer mindset that isn't now obsolete in the
| age of AI. It's my career's existentialism.
| Herring wrote:
| That sounds overly edgy. Tangibility has value, like buttons
| making a comeback in cars.
| creeble wrote:
| > So the only thing distinguishing one top brand from another was
| the name printed on the dial
|
| Respectfully disagree.
|
| Since the 60's (and one could argue, even long before that),
| watches are 1) fashion, and 2) male wealth-signaling fashion.
| That's it. Nothing more. And for males who subscribe to this
| wealth-signaling cult, they know from a long way away what watch
| brand is on that guy's wrist.
|
| Okay, today's brands signal maybe a little differently than just
| wealth. Casio G-Shock watches aren't substantially different than
| their non-G-Shock counterparts in any significant way, but they
| cost way more. The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-
| ness? Maybe it is closer to a pure fashion brand here.
|
| I think we've been in "The Brand Age" since the advent of
| advertising. There are plenty of products that have virtually no
| differentiation besides brand, and there (almost) always has
| been.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that
| guy 's wrist_
|
| No, they didn't. The makers of movements and makers of cases
| were separate. From far away you only know the case on the
| wrist. Not the movement. (I think Rolex was the first mass-
| market Swiss watch brand to vertically integrate. Patek may
| have been the first boutique.)
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| They were. The Acquired podcast on Rolex really opened my
| eyes to this whole world. They defined the playbook in the
| 1930s that Apple repeated in the 80s and especially 2000s.
| creeble wrote:
| The movement isn't part of the brand. It's not part of the
| signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand. And if
| you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at
| signaling, the entire point of wearing them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _movement isn 't part of the brand. It's not part of the
| signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand_
|
| The movement was the expensive part. Audemars, Vacheron and
| Patek only made movements. The retailer would then put it
| in a case. That's the entire point of PG's essay.
|
| > _if you couldn 't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any
| good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them_
|
| Which might lead you to revise your hypothesis around why
| these watches were bought and made in the "golden age of
| watches." Then as now there is such a thing as quiet
| luxury.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Patek only made movements
|
| I don't think thats really true, Audemars & Patek deffo
| made entire watches in the 50s.
|
| Don't get me wrong they also designed movements, but by
| the time of the quartz crisis, Patek bought in movements
| from outside.
|
| It doesn't really help that omega and tissolt were merged
| with Certina, ETA, hamilton when then turned into swatch,
| which basically dominates the entire swiss watch industry
| along with rolex and richemont(who own Vacheron)
| bee_rider wrote:
| It's sort of hard to unravel what's part of the brand, it's
| all imagination anyway.
|
| The watch manufacturer, as part of their reputation, buys
| "premium" internal components. And then the hardcore watch-
| heads get to know that this model has that premium
| movement. Everybody in the club gets to signal to each
| other by knowing internal details that outsiders don't
| notice (or even details that can't be noticed, I mean, I
| assume by nowadays non-premium-brand movements are
| functionally identical to the premium ones).
| randallsquared wrote:
| The whole point of pg's essay is that signaling
| transitioned into being the entire point of wearing them
| primarily in the 1980s.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I entered this cult last year. It's been super fun to spot and
| infer from a distance, as you say, these hidden signals that
| men have chosen to spend $20,000 to $120,000 on.
|
| G-Shock says "I do things that are so dangerous and so off the
| grid your Rolex or Apple Ultra would shatter and die". And it's
| true, out of my whole collection, that's the one that will
| still be within a ms of true time 25 years after the power goes
| out after the nukes go off.
| stackghost wrote:
| >The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-ness? Maybe it
| is closer to a pure fashion brand here.
|
| I own (among other, nicer time pieces) a G-Shock. I bought it
| when I was in the military and frankly it's a great watch that
| has withstood some serious abuse. Maybe a cheaper watch would
| have also survived? I'd happily buy another but mine's still
| literally and figuratively ticking.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| " _Because at Patek he 'd encounter the most extreme brand age
| phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus.
| You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your
| way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years
| on a waiting list._"
|
| Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.
|
| I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there
| are lines outside "luxury" brands like Louis Vuitton. Why bother?
|
| PS I'll stick to my Casios: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/06/the-
| discreet-charm-of-infrastru...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Why bother?
|
| ego, of course
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _ego, of course_
|
| This is so silly. Do you really not have any hobbies where
| you spend inordinate time or money on things you could
| objectively accomplish quicker and cheaper, but having less
| fun, in other ways? Like, I ski. It's a silly way to get up
| and down a hill in the 21st century.
|
| I'm not a watch guy. But mechanical watches are beautiful.
| There are idiots who buy them. But that doesn't mean everyone
| who does is an idiot.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| We can say all the same things about cars, but nobody
| thinks it's odd that there's a status culture about cars
| worth more than $75,000.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _nobody thinks it's odd that there's a status culture
| about cars worth more than $75,000_
|
| Sure. To each their own. I drive a Subaru. I don't think
| it's weird that others like a nice car. (I also think
| there are douchebags who drive both.)
| bombcar wrote:
| Because that's only 2-5x the price of a new cheap car.
|
| A watch at $80,000 is what, 10,000x what a new cheap one
| is?
|
| But good for them! It's really hard to be angry at them
| for buying said watch without it being some form of
| jealousy.
| boelboel wrote:
| Collecting watches isn't a hobby, it's pure consumerism.
| Sure many hobbies have (recently?) gotten way more people
| spending top dollars for no reason but with watch
| collecting there's nothing else. You're not tweaking the
| dials, you don't know how to make the watch, you just watch
| it and wear it while a technologically superior version is
| 500 times cheaper. There's also no natural shortage of
| them, they can make a trillion of these watches.
|
| At least with cars or audio equipment there's some marginal
| benefits once you get to crazy numbers, not the case with
| watches.
| measurablefunc wrote:
| Vanity. Ego is something else.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Anyone with $(80,00-250,000) (which is a lot of you) can buy a
| Nautilus today[1].
|
| This status-through-martyrdom ritual to get it from retail at
| MSRP is utterly bizarre.
|
| [1] https://www.chrono24.com/patekphilippe/nautilus--mod106.htm
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Holy shit that's an ugly watch too, looks like something
| outta chinatown lmao.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Ads for Patek Philippe on the back of _The Economist_ get
| more and more annoying over time. (e.g. the president
| writes "How Happy I am to be a Nepo Baby")
| LevGoldstein wrote:
| My least favorite of that eras Gerald Genta designs. The
| original Royal Oak is comparatively far more attractive.
| Both are outdone by the 222 (different designer though),
| but it's all subjective.
| garethsprice wrote:
| It being an "acquired taste" is part of the appeal. A lot
| of high-end stuff is ass-ugly on purpose. If everyone liked
| it because it simply looked nice, you couldn't tell who's
| "in the club" of other rich people. Brands will attach
| elaborate stories and histories to objects to make people
| feel cultured that they have invested time in acquiring the
| knowledge, but really it comes down to in-group object
| recognition.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| More and more I realize I am completely obvlious to all of
| the class signaling happening here. I couldn't imagine
| spending that much on anything, let alone a watch. And I
| certainly wouldn't think someone wearing that did, either.
|
| I feel bad for the folks who pick up on stuff like this, that
| must be a heavy weight to bear constantly comparing yourself
| to other people.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Ironically a desire for such social signalling requires
| being poor enough that you believe the item is worth a vast
| and near unobtainable amount of money making it seem like a
| very impressive signal to you. That's what makes these
| items desirable. As in these signals can be a sign of just
| how poor you are as opposed to how wealthy.
|
| A classic case is when you observe teenager targeted status
| signalling trends. This can be as low value as an expensive
| shirt, ie shirts branded 'supreme' costing $300 which isn't
| worth signalling to anyone who pays rent or a mortgage. But
| to a teenager? Wow man $300! such status!!! On the flip
| side if we see someone above teenager age wearing such
| teenager targeted status symbols we reasonably
| subconsciously assume they live with their parents and have
| very little income.
|
| This continues up the wealth chain forever. Status symbols
| are invariably a way to see just how little people actually
| have because the person wearing the status symbol clearly
| believes the value of what they are flaunting is
| impressive.
|
| Status symbols aren't a signal of how much money you have
| so much as signal of what you believe to be an incredible
| amount of wealth to flaunt.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I feel bad for the folks who pick up on stuff like this,
| that must be a heavy weight to bear constantly comparing
| yourself to other people._
|
| You can have that heavy weight while living on the suburbs
| or even the ghetto too. The objects are prices mostly
| change with the wealth level, not the game.
| fragmede wrote:
| I dunno, I'd probably spend that much on a house.
| julianpye wrote:
| Actually in many cases it is for social KPI storytelling. I
| know some wealthy people and at gatherings they love to tell
| 5-10min long stories of exclusive processes that they followed
| to gain something exclusive while dropping names and numbers.
| The processes are easy to understand for the entire social
| circle (i.e. not technical or business achievements which they
| can't easily disclose).
| jvanderbot wrote:
| So, hobbies. You're talking about hobbies.
| coldtea wrote:
| No, he talks about status signalling.
|
| They might pass the time doing those things, but not as a
| mere passtime or hobby, like if they were sewing or playing
| CoD. Unlike those, doing them and telling about doing them
| serves a specific social purpose.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'm not arguing with you - you have a valid point.
|
| But I don't view hobbies as that separate from status
| signals _within the hobbying group_. Oh you play games?
| What games? Did you beat it? etc etc.
|
| Esoteric knowledge/practices here are status signls (Oh
| you reached shattered planet without xyz??).
|
| That starts to sound a lot like "Oh you aquired a lambo
| XYZ without usual steps abc" and that's a really fun
| convo in the in-group, and a total miss with the out-
| group.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _But I don 't view hobbies as that separate from status
| signals within the hobbying group._
|
| The difference though is that this is not meant to serve
| "within the hobbying group".
|
| They serves the status signal purpose when showing them
| to "laymen" and other rich people in general, not
| necessarily to other expensive car buyers or luxury watch
| buyers.
|
| In other words, the, typically quiet, flaunting, is done
| to people otherwise uninterested about the specific ting,
| that nonetheless recognize the exclusivity and the
| knowledge that it's a subtle signal of "elevated taste"
| and that they belong to the tasteful-rich club.
| scubbo wrote:
| I have several hobbies, and none of them revolve around
| artifical scarcity or gatekeeping.
|
| (Well, the way that _some_ people play Magic: The Gathering
| does - but I wouldn't want to play with anyone who raised a
| stink about proxies)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Look, I dont want to be argumentative, but my (perhaps
| cynical) view on people who say they don't do status
| signaling when they "avoid status signaling" is it's just
| like the fish who goes "what's water"? It's worth
| thinking about whether you're doing it by accident.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| "Let's see Paul Allen's card"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlYH-hmxOqc
| Terr_ wrote:
| I wonder if it's intentional that they all say
| "Aquisitions", with no "c".
|
| As for fonts etc: https://hobancards.com/blogs/thoughts-
| and-curiosities/americ...
| georgemcbay wrote:
| They all have the same phone number too.
|
| This could be explained away by them working for the same
| place and assuming to contact them you call the same
| switchboard and ask for the person, but even back in the
| 90s it would have been strange for wall street "Vice
| Presidents" (even if it was somewhat of a ceremonial
| title) to not have their own unique business number.
|
| Also, Paul Allen giving his card to someone else with the
| same contact number for the purposes of being in touch to
| plan to play squash doesn't make much sense unless you
| get meta and assume Paul Allen was aware this had no
| practical value and just wanted to ego-drop the card.
| sdwr wrote:
| It's a formalized, sanitized simulacrum of striving! Like
| sports is for competition
| rfw300 wrote:
| Being wealthy solves virtually all problems of consumption,
| so the invisible hand provides new problems to serve the
| market need. Beautiful, really.
| davidw wrote:
| Economists have a term for these kinds of things where the
| demand rises as prices rise: Veblen goods
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Buying unnecessary expensive stuff is one thing. But it's
| hard to understand why anybody would want to display that
| total loyalty to a brand signal.
| fragmede wrote:
| It taps into a very primordial "I'm better than you" urge
| some people need.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| "There is only sex. Everything is sex" - Robert California
| mtrovo wrote:
| Clothes, wristwatches, cars, you name it. It's a very common
| play on luxury brands, Hermes Birkins is the most famous that
| comes to my mind and follow a very similar playbook.
|
| Apart from the KYC aspect of the process it's their way of
| solving the problem of artificial scarcity on the second-hand
| market as the article explains. They want a second hand market
| to exist to indicate that this is a luxury item, but too many
| and the price tanking with excess supply.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It also solves the real problem of labor scarcity. If you
| have X master watchmakers available to make a halo product
| you can only get so much output from them. You can increase
| X, increase production efficiencies (reduce labor input), or
| limit supply. The first two reduce exclusivity and perceived
| quality so the third makes sense if you can live without
| growth or can grow via high pricing strategies.
| coldtea wrote:
| Because the people bothering are precisely those that want to
| differentiate themselves from those who'd rather stick to their
| Casios :)
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Ah, so these products are useful to me after all!
| roughly wrote:
| Genuinely. All fashion, all accessories, whatever you put
| on your body is a signal, even if you don't intend it to
| be. Your outfit is a costume, and so is everyone else's.
| garethsprice wrote:
| Humans are status-seeking creatures, and status is expressed
| through signaling. If you're rich and so are the people around
| you, money alone ceases to be a differentiator. Ultra-luxury
| brands appeal to this by adding hoops that money alone can't
| clear: time, loyalty, relationships. The signal shifts from "I
| can afford this" to "I was invited to spend my money here."
|
| Lines outside Louis Vuitton are more down-market, aspirational
| luxury - an ultra-wealthy person wouldn't be caught dead
| queuing on a sidewalk. Patek and Ferrari operate at the level
| above, where the signal isn't wealth but access. (HBS calls
| Ferrari's version "deprivation marketing.")
|
| Is it a game worth bothering with? Enough people think so to
| sustain billion-dollar brands.
|
| (Of course, PG writing an essay about being too smart for fancy
| watches - while knowing a lot about them - is its own signaling
| game, just aimed at a different audience)
| keybored wrote:
| I know I'm being sold something when someone declares the
| science of human nature.
| observationist wrote:
| >>> ...PG writing an essay about being too smart for fancy
| watches
|
| Stealthy, like a submarine.
| titanomachy wrote:
| He's probably also too rich for fancy watches to actually be
| a useful signal of wealth amongst his peers.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I just want low maintenance cars. Everything else is a waste.
| zinkem wrote:
| > Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.
|
| What a tired aphorism. Just like PG's 50 year old insights.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Casios_
|
| I've got three Oceanus watches (Casio's boutique brand). I
| never wear them, anymore, because of Apple Watch.
|
| I brought a couple of them in Japan. There, the G-Shock brand
| is very popular. They sell G-Shock watches for ridiculously (to
| Americans, who are used to cheap G-Shocks) high prices.
| observationist wrote:
| It's exclusivity and sales schticks. Artificial scarcity,
| social status, conspicuous consumption. Same things that drive
| influencers to rent limos, pose on other people's private jets,
| pretend to buy bottles in clubs, flash fake cash, wear bling.
|
| From a birds-eye view it's less a hedonistic treadmill and more
| a feeding frenzy.
|
| It's a game you can play, but for the life of me, I cannot
| comprehend why you'd want to, there are so many other better
| things in life.
|
| >>> Why bother?
|
| Exactly - go give someone you love a hug, that's worth
| infinitely more than flexing an expensive watch.
| nadis wrote:
| > "Brand is what's left when the substantive differences between
| products disappear. But making the substantive differences
| between products disappear is what technology naturally tends to
| do. So what happened to the Swiss watch industry is not merely an
| interesting outlier. It's very much a story of our times."
|
| Really interesting parallel between decidedly traditional
| technology and today.
| noemit wrote:
| warren buffett always said brand was the only moat. only IP can
| be protected. Everything else can be replaced, rebuilt.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Brand are brittle. It takes a single CEO associated to some
| pedophile network or make a nazi salute and it's ready to
| plummet.
|
| If the business really mainly on the technical merits of the
| product/service, even blank brand is an option. Many brand as a
| facade to a single plant is a different tradeoff.
| crowcroft wrote:
| In almost every category meaningful differentiation is a myth. It
| sounds nice to tell yourself you've got it and talk about moats
| or whatever, but it misses the point.
|
| What people usually mean when they talk about differentiation is
| distinctiveness [1]. Design isn't a differentiator for these
| watches it's about being _distinctive_. At the end of the day
| when telling the time is commoditized, and expensive watches are
| just a status symbol it 's all you've got.
|
| [1] - https://marketingscience.info/news-and-
| insights/differentiat...
| benleejamin wrote:
| I don't think the Brand Age is as bleak as this essay suggests.
|
| Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to
| produce worse watches. They may be _larger_ and _less accurate_ ,
| but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand
| Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting
| & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.
|
| As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements
| that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and
| labeling that work as "button-pushing" is... dismissive, to say
| the least.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| What I got from the essay: "brand is the only way to beat
| competition when you can't significantly beat them on quality".
| It's basically the market suffering from success. You can buy a
| cheap quality watch today.
|
| For some product types there is no better alternative, like
| ISPs. But I'd argue this is because of monopoly, which is
| different from brand. Most monopolies (like ISPs) usually have
| negative brands, and there's no alternative not because one
| can't create a better brand (that's easy), but because the
| upfront cost to become profitable is too high.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Apart from the issue is omega (swatch group) has 3x the
| turnover of patek.
|
| The _other_ part of the story is swatch is also quite
| successful at the shit tier watches as well.
|
| So this article misses the point really.
| dzink wrote:
| Hoping to add to this perspective:
|
| The ability to transfer a lot of money in the physical shape of
| brand watches costing 200k per piece may have added to their
| appeal. AppleTV's show Friends and Neighbours upselling their
| value as Jon Hamm tries to steal them from neighbours may be
| product placement. But these were all tactics from the 50s and
| 60s where relatively few media sources meant you could buy your
| way into the hearts of the masses with an ads campaign.
|
| Today we have a massively accelerated pace of society burning
| through fads and information - largely due to social media. The
| artificial scarcity trick is no longer an MBA secret. A brand,
| especially an AI brand, can burn in and out of favor in days.
| Transparency in society helps maybe bring out authenticity.
| Advertising of the past was often "advertising to your
| weaknesses" and that game is over.
|
| If we can structure the transparency and apply it to politicians
| and other less transparent institutions that count on "Brand" to
| the list (especially ones with high margins and large networks)
| maybe the world will see true competition that benefits everyone
| more. Lack of transparency (and liqidity, and availability) are
| what make trust bubbles that distort markets.
| itisit wrote:
| > That turns out to be a profitable business though.
|
| He does not disappoint. Also, not buying the watch industry
| parable.
| shoman3003 wrote:
| finally, a new essay. and coincidently, its about something i
| have been thinking about all week.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| Interesting historical anecdote: the Swiss became the world's
| best watchmakers because, in Protestant Geneva under the
| leadership of John Calvin, jewelry was banned as ostentation. But
| you were allowed to wear a watch - it was important to get to
| church and work on time - so people starting wearing expensive
| watches instead of jewelry.
| multisport wrote:
| Obviously not the main point, but I've been reading watch media
| online for over a decade now, I've read or heard this "Quartz
| Crisis" story hundreds of times and never ONCE read about the
| coincidence with the Bretton Woods agreement. Makes sense though,
| its basically oral history.
| SuperHeavy256 wrote:
| Wdym 'oral history'? Who has been talking about this history
| orally?
| lkm0 wrote:
| Somebody's getting into watch collecting! Quartz watches were
| also developed in Switzerland: check out the story of the Beta:
| https://goldammer.me/blogs/articles/beta-21-history-guide
| dworks wrote:
| I watched the Macbook Neo launch video yesterday and while the
| product is not very exciting, the video has great production
| value and it showed this: People want to pay for marketing.
|
| Not that Apple's only appeal is marketing, Mac laptops certainly
| have pros over the bottom and mid tier Windows laptops. But
| having seen that video, and knowing that other have seen it, are
| aware of Apple and its positioning, makes people feel better
| while using and owning their devices.
|
| People absolutely want that feeling and they're willing to pay
| for it.
| chadash wrote:
| Apple clearly positions themselves as a _premium_ product.
| There is some luxury element to it to (e.g., my friends will
| look down on me if I have an android), but it 's not really the
| same as a true luxury product where brand is the _main_ thing
| you are paying for. If you offered to sell me a macbook for 25%
| cheapr on condition that I remove the branding, I 'd be happy
| to do so. I'm not a watch person, but I suspect that most Rolex
| buyers would not pay anything close for an identical watch
| without the crown logo.
| dworks wrote:
| My main point can be put a little more clearly: it is not
| just that we are willing to pay for the brand experience and
| the marketing that builds it, but we actively want to pay for
| it.
|
| Macbook Neo customers want Apple to put out creative product
| marketing videos, they believe it is part of the offer.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3SIKAmPXY4
| eykanal wrote:
| I'm struck by the utilitarian mindset of this essay. What Paul so
| disparagingly refers to as "brand" can also be referred to as
| "art". People _want_ art, and will indeed pay good money for it.
| Said differently, people _value_ art enough to differentiate it
| from "optimal design", and indeed a subset of people will pay top
| dollar for a suboptimal but artistic design.
|
| It is possible to view the fact that capitalist markets can turn
| a desire for art, individuality, and "something special" into a
| business as a bad thing. I'm not entirely convinced that's
| particularly interesting, though... it seems just a localized
| restatement of a generic "capitalism is bad" take.
| chanakya wrote:
| I think he makes two points:
|
| - This change of what used be a functional object into a brand
| was done to appeal to one-upmanship (my watch is more expensive
| than yours) rather than the aesthetic urge which drives
| appreciation for art. He doesn't blame the watch brands, it may
| have been the only way they could survive after the triple
| shock. _But_..
|
| - If you're an engineer and techie type and are drawn to the
| complexity and mechanistic elegance of mechanical watches, he's
| warning you that the problems being worked on in the brand age
| actually take you _away_ from good functional design which
| attracted you there in the first place.
| diego_moita wrote:
| Because he focuses in the story of luxury watches, Graham sees
| only the brand tricks that work mostly for rich people.
|
| There are brands for non-rich: Linux is a very strong brand but
| virtually free and non-exclusive at all (think Android phones).
| Patriotism and country reputation might also be thought as
| brands. E.g. would Portugal's tourist boom happen without the
| Portuguese tarts popularity?
|
| Edit: my watch is a Pebble.
| NinjaTrance wrote:
| " _When our time traveler peered into the windows of these shops,
| the first thing he 'd notice was how large all the watches
| were_."
|
| My only question about this entire essay is... where did this
| time traveler came from???
|
| "Our" time traveler was never mentioned until this line.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Not true:
|
| > The best way to answer that might be to imagine what someone
| from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a
| time machine. [...] The first thing he'd notice, if he walked
| through a fancy shopping district, is that all the prominent
| watchmakers of the golden age seem to be doing better than
| ever.
| randallsquared wrote:
| It was several paragraphs before that, where pg said "[...]
| what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him
| here in a time machine."
| figassis wrote:
| "Why is the Patek Philippe Nautilus so expensive?"
|
| If you have to explain why your product is expensive, maybe it
| shouldn't be.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Also explains why German cars look the way they do today.
| Emphasizing the brand, so everyone can see it.
| recursive4 wrote:
| EconTalk from last month on the topic:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/seiko-swatch-and-the-s...
| foolserrandboy wrote:
| https://www.econtalk.org/seiko-swatch-and-the-swiss-watch-in...
| zie wrote:
| Don't worry, Seiko learned: https://www.grand-seiko.com/us-
| en/collections/sbgd223j
| gaigalas wrote:
| Chinese models are indeed cheaper!
| philip1209 wrote:
| I petition to rename "feature" as "complication" on software
| teams.
| spencer-p wrote:
| The question in the zeitgeist is whether coding agents will be to
| software engineers as the quartz revolution was to expert
| watchmakers.
|
| Commoditized software is here. Will there be a market for high-
| end, luxury software? Becoming an artificially scarce veblen good
| is unlikely to work for digital goods the way it has for watches.
| bensyverson wrote:
| > One obvious lesson is to stay away from brand.
|
| Wow, that is... not what I would recommend. Brand is one of the
| few things that will give you pricing power in the age of AI.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Sounds like pg is trying to justify an expensive new hobby :)
| furryrain wrote:
| No, he's advising us that we software developers might be
| coming to an end of a golden age, that if so, resistance is
| futile, and how to find another.
| Traster wrote:
| >That's not why brand age watches look strange. Brand age watches
| look strange because they have no practical function. Their
| function is to express brand, and while that is certainly a
| constraint, it's not the clean kind of constraint that generates
| good things. The constraints imposed by brand ultimately depend
| on some of the worst features of human psychology. So when you
| have a world defined only by brand, it's going to be a weird, bad
| world.
|
| This is a wild thing to say. Brand age watches don't look
| strange. They look _beautiful_. Incredible thought and care and
| intention is put into their design. The people who buy them love
| them. It 's so funny to me to get this far into one of PGs blogs
| and sort of realise "Oh right, you don't actually understand
| beauty". It's very hard to read this as much more than a slightly
| autistic man not understanding that it's ok for people to like
| beautiful things. It is not worth it to me to spend PS100k on a
| watch, but I don't deny it is to other people, I'm not going to
| pretend the watch is undesirable.
|
| But it does make me wonder whether Paul things that YC is
| successful today because it has a better design than other
| startup programmes, or is it successful today because of it's
| brand?
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| They may be beautiful, but the fact remains if you could
| produce and sell Patek Philippe Nautilus for $200 no one would
| be interested in it. The same is not true for most other
| beautiful objects
| Traster wrote:
| Well firstly, they don't charge $200 for them because they
| _can 't_ produce them for $200. But the point I'm making is
| he seems to be trying to say they aren't beautiful. He says
| he's describing this "dark" world or "strange" watches. I do
| actually think he probably thinks the watches look strange. I
| don't think he thinks they're beautiful, maybe he'll find a
| brand to fall in love with one day. I doubt it because he
| seems to have too much of himself invested in this. But the
| people buying them don't think they're strange, they think
| they're beautiful. I don't go out telling everyone that they
| shouldn't buy a Ferrari because my Honda Civic can do the
| same job.
| wcfrobert wrote:
| I disagree. It's worth asking why some people find brand
| watches beautiful? Where did they get their sense of aesthetic?
| Were they born with a congenital preference for RM 16-01
| Citron?
|
| Culture shapes our taste. Companies pursue on multi-decade
| billion-dollar campaigns to shape our culture. We like certain
| things because famous actors or athletes endorse them; because
| hip hop artists rap about them; because influencers talk about
| them; because Hollywood portrays them a certain way. This
| extends to all form of modern aesthetic preferences from
| architecture to watches to cars to furniture to dating.
|
| I think the argument pg is making is that brand-obsessed
| cultures are not maximally truth/beauty-seeking and gets really
| weird. e.g. Japanese Ohaguro, Chinese foot binding, various
| cranial deformation practices from the Mayans to the Huns,
| high-heels, ugly (to outside observers) watches.
|
| I think it's a really thought-provoking essay. But it's too
| heterodox and "autistic" to share with most of my friends.
| Socially speaking, it's best to outwardly embrace the current
| zeitgeist.
| renewiltord wrote:
| To everyone else who reads this and thinks to themselves "Man,
| this guy has a refined palate that PG doesn't have. PG can't
| appreciate beauty", go take a look at the Nautilus yourself
| https://glennbradford.com/products/patek-philippe-nautilus-0...
|
| It looks like an Aliexpress Timex.
| dtn wrote:
| Where do you think the Aliexpress Timex designs came from?
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| I was not expecting it to be this ugly.
| fwip wrote:
| > The people who buy them love them.
|
| Yeah, when you spend half a million dollars on a watch, the
| sunk-cost fallacy has gotta hit hard.
| ploden wrote:
| Calvin: I wish my shirt had a logo or a product on it.
|
| Hobbes: ...
|
| Calvin: A good shirt turns the wearer into a walking corporate
| billboard!
|
| Hobbes: ...
|
| Calvin: It says to the world, "My identity is so wrapped up in
| what I buy that I paid the company to advertise its products!"
|
| Hobbes: You'd admit that?
|
| Calvin: Oh, sure. Endorsing products is the American way to
| express individuality.
| latexr wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/dY2hkOJ.gif
| atotic wrote:
| I expected this essay to end with a note about software's golden
| age.
| monster_truck wrote:
| Wild timing on this. Been seeing a huge uptick in people "trying
| to learn opsec" as they fumble around for ways to make money with
| openclaw and land on "selling fake bags/shoes/watches", seemingly
| emboldened by those who value these brands trying to use openclaw
| to secure mispriced items or snipe auctions.
|
| Funny thing is, I'm not sure anyone is actually doing either
| thing successfully. Every time I've looked into an openclaw
| success story it's ended up being complete fiction.
| sinzone wrote:
| software is becoming like the fashion industry. you go to Prada
| vs Hermess because you think one does better shoes and the other
| better bags. But is not because neither could do better shoes or
| bad it isb ecause your mind positioning is set.
|
| Software. everyone can do it now. but you still buy lets say
| Crowdstrike for security, because is in your brain for years as
| security software.
| roughly wrote:
| Naomi Klein's famous book No Logo* does a great job diving into
| the expansion of branding that happened around the 80s and into
| the 90s. As someone who's lived in the post-branding world my
| whole life, it reads like an anthropological text about my
| culture from an outsider. It's fascinating the kinds of things we
| take for granted.
|
| * https://bookshop.org/p/books/no-logo-no-space-no-choice-no-j...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Now they cost a lot because brands spend a lot on advertising
| and use tricks to limit supply, and what the buyer gets in return
| is an expensive status symbol._
|
| Sounds a hell of a lot like the diamond industry. Also, the top
| fashion houses, but both industries are taking a drubbing from
| artificial competition (artificial diamonds, and knockoffs, of
| various stripes).
|
| I'm a believer in branding. I worked for many years, for a
| company with a "top-shelf" brand, and saw what it took, to
| maintain. But it takes a _huge_ amount of discipline and "silly"
| stuff. Brand damage can come from a million different directions.
| I have found very few people are willing to do what it takes to
| maintain a top brand.
|
| For quite a while, there have been "brand-only" products, like
| Von Dutch, or Life Is Good(tm). They are the two-dollar hat, with
| the twenty-dollar logo. Like Izod Lacoste or Members Only, in the
| last century.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| How do "big brands" deal with efforts pretty clearly (but
| deniably) aimed at sabotaging their brand? Besides the ebay
| approach.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Like pissing in beer vats?[0]
|
| Sometimes, you can't fight it, but other times, trying to
| correct can only make things worse.
|
| This is where having sober, experienced PR people and CEOs
| comes into play. There's no "textbook" way to deal with this
| stuff. It is different, each time, so you need smart leaders
| (something in short supply, these days).
|
| The company that I worked for, was a camera company. One of
| their brand-protection strategies, was to have as much
| control as possible over any images made public from their
| cameras.
|
| They went waaaaaay out of their way to help photographers get
| the best results, and it was a bitch to get test images from
| prerelease kit.
|
| [0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/corona-urine-rumor-
| cou...
| iamwil wrote:
| I kept thinking that he'd eventually compare it to writing
| software by hand, and how we're at the end of one golden age. But
| he never did. So I wonder what the impetus for the essay was.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I'm still not really clear on what the point PG is driving at.
|
| However swatch group(omega was force merged in the 80s to form
| the swatch group) has 3x the turnover of Patek.
|
| More over Swatch caters to both high end and the poors + kids. So
| brand is.. good? so long as you only cater for the rich? I'm not
| getting that really.
| zem wrote:
| > Jaeger-LeCoultre's web site says that one of their current
| collections "takes its inspiration from the classic designs of
| the golden age of watchmaking." In saying this they're implicitly
| saying something that present-day watchmakers all know but rarely
| come so close to saying outright: whatever age we're in now, it's
| not the golden age.
|
| not sure what tfa is trying to say here, but this is far from
| being an indictment of the current age. the term "golden age" is
| (from what I've seen) usually used for the time when an industry
| or field was taking the leap from niche to mainstream, and in the
| process defining some of the things that would later come to be
| considered characteristic. by that token, _of course_ the golden
| age of watchmaking is not today - the field has already gone
| mainstream and indeed does retain a lot of the characteristic
| features that the golden age innovated upon and defined.
| Herring wrote:
| He's omitting the most important bit. Data from the OECD shows
| highly unequal societies tend to be more status-obsessed, leading
| to higher spending on "positional goods" (items bought to signal
| status). These economies often have higher advertising
| expenditures (as a percentage of GDP) to fuel that competition.
| Inequality is quite corrosive in many ways, including leading to
| fascism.
| canpan wrote:
| Maybe the phone market is still in its golden age? It's a wonder
| you can get the best phone in the world for only a little over
| $1000. And everyone can buy it. Online without a line.
|
| Comparing with luxury watches which cost a magnitude or two more
| and are beaten in precision by a $10 casio.
|
| I guess the thing to watch out is technical stagnation and "good
| enough"?
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