“God is dead.” Is Brand Dead Too?

Nietzsche used that line as a provocation, not a declaration of literal death, but a challenge to the systems of belief people once accepted without question. Today, I feel a strangely similar tension in the world of marketing, a quiet and persistent question echoing through boardrooms and pitch meetings: “Is brand dead?”
Modern marketers, comms managers, and brand custodians are wrestling with a dilemma that feels almost philosophical:
Do we still need a brand or should we just focus on USPs?
And ironically, most of those “USPs” are not truly unique, and they certainly do not remain competitive for long.
What is truly struggling, however, is patience.
Marketing today is obsessed with immediacy: instant leads, quarterly reports, short term spikes. But brands do not operate on marketing timelines. They grow the way trust grows: slowly, accumulatively, through repetition and meaning. A brand does not live in a PowerPoint deck. It lives in the minds and hearts of people. Which means you do not fully own it. You only influence it.
And so the real question becomes: Is it still worth investing in something you do not own and cannot fully control?
Whenever I sit with prospective clients, this tension appears immediately. I find myself trying to articulate why storytelling matters, why consistency matters, why investing in the intangible matters. And occasionally, I fear I sound either philosophical or simply boring. (Maybe it is my ideas that are boring.)
Because their question is always the same: “How can my message stand out from the competition?”
And although I know the answer, although every brand strategist knows the answer, it often feels like an uphill argument. The truth is not exciting and it is not quick:
The best way to stand out is to stand apart.
Not louder. Not faster. Not with a “USP.”
But with meaning, with memory, and with identity. The real substance of what brands are made of.
The situation becomes even more challenging now that AI has entered the room. Speed itself has become the new currency. Companies see an opportunity: cheaper, faster, better. But the truth is simple. You cannot have all three. Not even AI can solve this trilemma.
And in the middle of this rush for instant output, something quietly slips through the cracks.
Patience and faith.
These are the values that actually build brands that last. These are the forces that shape preference, loyalty, and meaning. Everything else is just a tool.
I understand the irony. It is very easy to sound philosophical, to borrow an intriguing quote in order to make a point, to appear clever by referencing big ideas. And yes, I used AI to write this because it is faster and cheaper, but I cannot promise it is better than anything else you might read today. What I hope does resonate is the idea that patience and faith still matter. Because this is the common issue I face in almost every presentation, every conversation, every brief. We all want to stand out, but no one wants to wait. We all want differentiation, but no one wants the uncertainty that comes with building something meaningful.
Here is the simple truth I keep coming back to: You do not need another angle. You do not need another gimmick.
You need the courage to stick with a point of view long enough for people to actually feel it.
In a world chasing cheaper, faster, better, the real luxury is this:
A brand that is allowed to take its time.

Patience and faith.

That is the work.

Everything else is just a tool.