The “Brand Trumps It All” Fallacy

Marketing isn’t a wand. It’s a megaphone that makes your business louder, for better or worse.

There’s a special kind of corporate drama that unfolds when things aren’t going well. Revenue’s flat, customers aren’t exactly thrilled, and the sales team is googling job openings. That’s when someone—usually wearing a black turtleneck and wielding a half-baked TED Talk quote—chimes in with:

“We are a premium brand, like Apple. We should be charging premium pricing”.

Ah yes, Apple. The corporate north star. The favorite excuse of every C-suite that wants to charge more without delivering more. Let me give you some friendly advice:

Never - Use - Apple - As - Your - Benchmark.

Apple is a unicorn riding another unicorn, powered by a software platform moat so deep, medieval kings would’ve traded their kingdoms (and probably a few thousand peasants) for it. They are the exception to every rule. Emulating them is like picking up a tennis racket for the first time and deciding to serve like Federer. Trust me—I’ve tried. It ends with pulled muscles and broken dreams. And it will for your brand too.

Apple didn’t decide to have a premium brand. They earned it over decades through iconic products, unmatched user experience, and billions in R&D. Their “brand” wasn’t the spark—it was the smoke from a raging fire of product and platform excellence. Let’s break it down.

Brand. Product. Platform.

Three pillars. Only one of them is the result, not the input. You don’t start with brand. That’s not how it works. Apple’s brand equity wasn’t willed into existence by a clever campaign or some visionary on LinkedIn. It took 34 years, a near-death experience in 1997, and the launch of a product that fundamentally changed how humans interact with technology.

Remember BlackBerry? Yeah, they launched a smartphone five years before the iPhone. But their UX was so painful in comparison that all of a sudden it felt like texting with oven mitts. Apple didn’t just build a better phone—they built a better experience. And then they built a world around it. Your phone syncs with your laptop, your watch, your TV, your car, and—if you’re truly cursed—your gym equipment. That’s platform power. And that’s what makes customers stick around even when the new iPhone looks exactly like the old iPhone, only with “slightly rounder corners.”And yet, more often than not, companies think they’re just one “brand refresh” away from world domination.

Using a real example—let’s call them ACME, mostly to protect the guilty. What’s ACME’s plan? Raise prices. Chase complex projects their competitors turned down. Deliver half-baked services and then blame marketing when customers start ghosting them. You can’t skip the hard part. You can’t brand your way out of a weak product. Marketing isn’t a wand—it’s a megaphone. If what you’re selling is broken or boring, all marketing does is help people figure that out faster.

If your fundamentals suck, your brand will suck. If your customer experience is subpar, no amount of slick design or poetic web copy will save you. If your product can’t meet expectations, your premium pricing is just a tax on disappointment.

You Don’t Get the Marketing Flywheel Until You Earn It.

That magical place where your brand, product, and experience compound into a self-reinforcing growth machine? It’s real. But it’s on the other side of years of product-market fit, customer obsession, and operational discipline. Until then, your biggest problem isn’t awareness. You’re not under-marketed, you’re under-built.

Set Realistic Brand Goals

Not being at the flywheel stage doesn’t mean brand doesn’t matter—it means your expectations (and budget) should come with a dose of reality. At this stage, the goal isn’t to be iconic and premium; it’s to be recognizable and relevant. A strong early milestone? That your target customers know your name and have a clear sense of what makes you different. And that every touchpoint—your website, your digital ads, your sales team, your executives, and yes, every order you actually deliver, stress on every order—consistently reinforces that message. That’s how real brands are built: not through slogans or ad spend alone, but through repetition, clarity, and delivery. Do that well, and then and only then, you’ve started your journey towards the brand flywheel, where pricing and success is no longer bounded by the laws of reality.