Brand Myths......

From Bubblegen, comes the news from Adweek that Yahoo is dropping its Brand Universe, where we were supposed to worship Brands

Dubbed "Brand Universes," the sites were intended to tap into the allure of hot brands—notably those in technology and entertainment—by creating one-stop shops featuring user-created videos, bookmarks, photos and reviews.

As we noted earlier, Yahoo will have to kill some scared cows - and this seems to be a good start.

There is this complete mythos around our relationships with Brands that the online Ad fraternity is desperately clinging to - that we actually value them, that we are actually prepared to be "Fan-Sumers" en masse. Its what Facebook is banking on to get that $15bn valuation, but they are medium term wrong....as Bubblegen puts it so succinctly:

there's a simple existence proof that this proposition must be false: if consumers loved brands, brands wouldn't have to advertise.

The internet works differently to old media though - it routes around any friction, including Ads. As Doc Searls noted in his concepts of the Intention Economy:

The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos. In The Intention Economy, customers don't have to fly from silo to silo, like a bees from flower to flower, collecting deal info (and unavoidable hype) like so much pollen. In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer's purchase. Simple as that.

Whether or not you believe that the endgame is quite as Ad free as Doc describes it, I think he is on the right track - there is just too much media channel bandwidth out there for brands to attempt to create gatekeeper roles for themselves, or create friction via annoying Ads - and setting up hubs for us to worship brands at is going the wrong way..... as Yahoo has now admitted.

I wonder if Facebook's Pages will go the same way?