Brandless…we hardly knew ye

You may have heard that the anti-brand Brandless went under a couple of months ago. Here is a eulogy that was published late last week.

Brandless was built on the premise that brands don’t matter. All that matters is the product and the price. Interestingly, all their products were priced at $3.00. They didn’t adjust the price for anything, they just adjusted the size of the product or the portion so that you were buying $3.00 worth of stuff in each unit.

There are some practical reasons why they failed. If you have a family that goes through a lot of peanut butter, there are financial savings and efficiencies to buying in bulk at places like Costco or Sam’s that the Brandless model was not built to accommodate.

Just as importantly, people have an emotional connection to brands and they story they tell. Now, Brandless was very much a brand, despite the name. But it wasn’t a very compelling brand. A brand is not just a product. It is all the meaning and symbolism and emotions and associations that are tied to that product.

It was a confusing message. As a writer in The Drum put it, “Brandless’ failure, in part, resulted from being a brand that pretended not to be a brand – and thereby not seeing the success that comes from having a strong one. It was a case of mixed business messaging. After all, it is impossible to distinguish yourself if your goal is to be indistinguishable.”