The entire notion of brand loyalty is starting to look very 20th century. Or maybe we're just realizing that a lot of what seemed like brand loyalty was simply habitual repeat purchasing or lack of choice. And as it turns out, even consumers who consider themselves loyal are proving to be more fickle than they think. According to a study by the retail industry monitor NPD Group, almost half of consumers who claimed they were highly loyal to a brand were no longer loyal a year later.

Now that consumers have more choice -- and now that the pace of technological innovation means that one company rarely has the newest, best, cheapest product for long -- there's less reason for them to keep their purchasing habits. Even more importantly, consumers have more choice not just among products, but among the channels for information and dialogue about those products, opinion forming and, ultimately, feedback.

"Maybe the most powerful of all is the feedback mechanism," my colleague, a partner at Porter Novelli, Michael Ramah says. "Lifecycles of products can go from launch to crash in a matter of days now, whereas before, the trial, report and opinion-forming stages took time and offered the traditional 'brand' marketers time to counter any potential negatives you might feel by convincing you (via mass media), that you must be wrong, because everybody loves this product.

"What does this mean? PR is a blessing and a curse -- and harnessing the message can either be a day at Belmont or a roller coaster through hell."

It also means that it is past time to re-evaluate the longstanding brand-centric thinking.