The great reversal

For a large part of the past 100 years, the biggest brands in the world were all pervasive, out to be seen everywhere – mass produced cars, flagship fast food joints and sugar in a can. They were things we could touch, hold, understand and experience at a level where we knew the inputs and outputs. While imperfect, they iterated what they made and built trust over time through responding to consumer demands. The market created a collective understanding of what was acceptable behaviour.

Over the last two decades, a new cadre of dominant brands emerged. Digital denizens, these brand heroes became the world’s most valuable corporations. What they offered had such incredible utility, very few of us stopped to