Brand-centric thinking has kept marketers' focus on the "soft" aspects of marketing -- brand awareness, identity, perception -- as an end in itself, and often at the expense of a focus on product performance.

(It's not unlike today's celebrity culture, in which simply being famous -- having high brand awareness -- can become the all-consuming objective; real achievement is beside the point.) Consumers now have all too many ways of seeing beyond the brand in a matter of minutes.

Another effect of brand-mindedness is that it has inevitably led to the branded space becoming crowded with companies pulling all the same moves: catchy names, cute graphics, dedicated websites. And so consumers have grown all too familiar with the process of branding -- and thus more likely to filter it out. The physical and virtual worlds are just too crowded with brands demanding, "Pay attention to me!"

The whole notion of branding has become overstretched and devalued. This means would-be brand builders need to look carefully at what they're building their brand on if they want to achieve their goal: increasing the amount of attention, time and cash that people are willing to spend on their brand.

Are we looking at a future that's all product, and product news? Certainly there will be more of it -- released more frequently, and more creatively, via even more functional messaging, whether unpaid or paid.