We’ve never been on the bandwagon that has declared brands are dead but we do understand why the claims are being made.  There is now a lot more that goes into buying decisions by consumers and business buyers than just brand awareness.  But to claim that brands don’t matter is naïve.  I guess Yahoo agrees based on its latest search offering.

And yet the Yahoo search filter seems to suggest that, just possibly, the idea of the brand isn’t dead after all. With branded search filtering, Yahoo is acknowledging that many searchers don’t want results from just anywhere, regardless of how algorithmically relevant those results may be. Searchers want results (from trusted Web sites) — which is to say, from trusted online brands.

We’ll be talking a lot more about the need for looking at communications and marketing in an entirely new light–one where search, branding and word of mouth need to coexist for companies to really take advantage of all channels to create awareness and preference for their offerings.  I get a chuckle…and some times totally annoyed…when I see dramatic claims about PR being dead, social media being free and branding irrelevant.  Glad to see that others agree.