Introspection(terrifying?)time for every brand custodian:- what if the thing you’re most proud of—your decades of brand recognition—is precisely what’s going to kill you?
Let me come back to this. First, a story that reveals everything wrong with how we think about brand value.
The 168 year old giant that nobody noticed was dying
Indian Railways moves 23 million people daily. That’s the population of Australia. Daily.
For nearly two centuries, it WAS travel in India. Not “the best” option—the ONLY option for most of the country.
Brand familiarity? Through the stratosphere. Brand value? About to learn a brutal lesson.
Then something curious happened around 2015…
People stopped saying “I’ll take the train to the airport.”
They started saying “I’ll take an Ola.“
No fanfare. No dramatic announcement. The switch happened so quietly, most people didn’t consciously realize they’d made it.
What changed?
Not the trains. Not the brand. Not the recognition.
The system changed.
And here’s the part that should keep you up at night: The Indian Railways brand is still familiar to 1.4 billion people. It just stopped being necessary for the last mile.
This pattern—this quiet assassination of familiar brands—is happening in every category. And most brands won’t see it coming until it’s too late.
But, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me show you how deep this goes.
The Blackberry Believers (Or: How Keyboards Became Gravestones)
Steve Jobs demos the iPhone. Blackberry’s CEO watches and literally laughs.
“No physical keyboard? Good luck typing emails on that toy.”
He had every reason to be confident. Blackberry users were evangelical. “Crackberry addiction” was a medical term. Enterprise adoption was at 100%.
Every metric screamed safety:
- Brand recognition
- Customer loyalty
- Market dominance
Familiarity was their moat. Or so they thought.
Fast forward 36 months.
Blackberry’s market share: cliff-diving.
Why? Not because iPhone built a better keyboard (it didn’t).
Because Apple built a better system:
- An App Store that turned phones into infinite tools
- Cloud integration that actually worked
- A developer ecosystem that made every other platform look like a walled prison
Current Blackberry market share: 0.01%
That’s not a typo. That’s what happens when you defend familiarity instead of building necessity.
You’re probably thinking: “But we’re not Blackberry. We’re different.”
Are you though? Let me show you something closer to home.
The Purple Signs That Stopped Working (Café Coffee Days Silent Exit)
Remember when CCD was THE coffee brand in India?
“A lot can happen over coffee” wasn’t just a tagline—it was embedded in urban India’s DNA.
Recognition scores? Off the charts. Locations? Everywhere. Mind share? Owned it.
Then what happened?
Nothing dramatic. No scandal. No overnight collapse.
People just… stopped going.
Not all at once. Not angrily. They just quietly found better systems:
Starbucks offered WiFi that actually worked (revolutionary!) and baristas who remembered your name
Third Wave & Blue Tokai gave them Instagram-worthy spaces (because your latte is now social currency)
Chaayos built loyalty programs that didn’t feel like relics from 1987
The death by inaction part?
Most ex-CCD customers don’t even remember switching. They just realized one day they hadn’t been in months.
That’s how familiarity dies. Not with a bang. With a shrug.
And here’s where it gets uncomfortable, because this isn’t ancient history. This is/could be happening RIGHT NOW in your category.
The Pattern You Can’t Unsee
Let me connect the dots you’ve probably suspected but haven’t voiced:
Kodak invented digital photography. Filed patents. Had the technology. Still died because they protected film sales instead of building new systems.
Nokia owned 40% of mobile phones globally. Still lost because they defended hardware while Apple built an ecosystem.
Blockbuster was Friday night incarnate. More familiar than your front door. Still disappeared because Netflix built a better delivery system.
Yahoo was THE internet homepage. Your parents’ first email. Still became irrelevant because Google built a system that got smarter with every search.
See the pattern?
Every single one of these brands had: Massive recognition | Decades of presence | Customer familiarity | Category dominance
What they didn’t have?
Systems that became MORE valuable as more people used them.
This is where most brand strategies fall apart. And why the next section might be the most important thing you read this month.
Why Network Effects are the New Brand Moat
Here’s a framework that changes everything:
OLD MOAT:Brand familiarity – Customer loyalty – Market share
NEW MOAT: Better system – Network effects – Competitive immunity
Let me show you what this looks like in practice:
WhatsApp wasn’t the first messenger. SMS was the most familiar communication tool on Earth.
But WhatsApp built something different: a system where YOUR value came from EVERYONE ELSE using it.
Your mom, your boss, your vegetable vendor, your school group, your society committee—all in one place.
By the time you thought about switching to another app, leaving WhatsApp meant leaving your entire social graph.
That’s not brand loyalty. That’s structural lock-in.
Same playbook, different category:
Swiggy/Zomato weren’t first in food delivery. Your local restaurant’s phone number was WAY more familiar.
But they built a network where:
- More restaurants – More choice for users
- More users – More orders for restaurants
- More orders – Better logistics – Faster delivery
- Faster delivery – More users
The flywheel spun until ordering any other way felt prehistoric.
PhonePe/Google Pay weren’t first in digital payments. CASH was the most familiar payment method in human history.
But UPI’s interoperability created network effects so powerful that even your street-side vendor now has a QR code.
The brands winning today aren’t the most familiar. They’re the ones that become more necessary with every new user.
Now here’s where brand custodians usually make a fatal mistake…
The User Experience Trap (Or: Why Good Enough Became Good Riddance)
Brands die when the gap between their UX and a competitor’s reaches escape velocity.
Test this yourself:
Open BookMyShow right now. Try to book a ticket.
Notice:
- The loading times (have a coffee while you wait)
- The mysterious “convenience fees” (that somehow cost more than the ticket)
- The UI that feels designed in the Paleolithic era
Now try any modern ticketing app.
Smooth. Fast. Transparent pricing. Respects your time.
BookMyShow was synonymous with movie tickets. Recognition? Total. Relevance? Eroding with every frustrated user who discovers there’s a better way.
The Indian taxi wars proved this brutally:
Meru and EasyCabs were first movers. Everyone knew them.
But their phone-booking system couldn’t compete with:
- Real-time cab tracking (game-changer for anxiety-prone audiences)
- No meter haggling, no “machine broken” excuses
- No explaining your location for 10 minutes
Better UX didn’t just win market share. It CREATED the market.
Meru became a verb nobody uses anymore.
Still thinking this doesn’t apply to you? Let me show you what’s probably happening in your own business right now.
The Uncomfortable Audit (Six Questions That Reveal Everything)
Pause here. Actually answer these:
- Are people using you because they prefer you or because they’re used to you? (If you can’t tell the difference, it’s the latter)
- If a funded competitor launched tomorrow with 10x better UX, how fast would you bleed? (Days? Weeks? Months? Be true)
- Is your brand equity built on nostalgia or necessity? (Heritage is lovely. Utility is survival)
- When was the last time you timed your critical user journeys? (Anything over 60 seconds is a ticking time bomb)
- Does your product become MORE valuable as more people use it? (If not, you have zero network effects. Zero moat)
- If you were founding a startup to kill your company, what would you build? (Someone’s asking this question. Better be you)
Here’s what these questions reveal:
If you’re uncomfortable with any answer, congratulations—you’re still saveable.
If you’re comfortable with all answers, you’re probably already dead; you just haven’t stopped moving yet.Sorry!
So what do you actually DO about this? Let me give you the playbook nobody talks about.
The Survival Playbook (Actual Actions, Not Platitudes)
Move 1: Build Systems, Not Just Products
Stop asking: “What do we sell?” Start asking: “What ecosystem are we creating?”
Example: Amazon didn’t build a better bookstore. They built Prime—a system where the membership itself became the moat. Once you’re paying for it, you default to Amazon for everything.
Your action: Map your value chain. Where can you integrate services that create lock-in through utility, not loyalty programs?
Move 2: Design Every Feature for Network Effects
Every product decision should answer: “Does this become more valuable as more people use it?”
Example: LinkedIn is sticky not because people love it (they don’t). But because your professional network lives there. Leaving means professional isolation.
Your action:
- Build features that require other users (sharing, collaboration, marketplaces)
- Make leaving costly through lost connections, not contracts
- Create viral loops where existing users bring new users
Move 3: Treat UX Like Blood Pressure
Because one day it’ll kill you if you ignore it.
Action items for that dreaded Monday morning meeting:
- Time every critical journey. Kill anything over 60 seconds
- Delete three steps from your checkout process. Today
- Implement one-click for everything possible
- Obsess over load times like they’re existential threats (they are)
Reality: Users forgive unfamiliar brands with great UX. They’ll never forgive familiar brands with terrible UX.
Move 4: War-Game Your Own Disruption
Quarterly exercise:
- Give a small team budget and permission to design your killer
- Identify your actual vulnerabilities (never what you think)
- Build those improvements before someone else builds them as weapons
Cautionary tale: Kodak invented digital photography. Then decided it would cannibalize film sales. So they shelved it.
We all know how that ended.
Move 5: Measure What Actually Matters
Stop tracking: Brand awareness, familiarity scores; Start tracking:
- Daily active vs. total users (engagement beats awareness)
- NPS with “Why?” (the answers reveal everything)
- Churn rate and actual reasons (your early warning system)
- Time to value (how fast do users get their “aha moment”?)
Truth be told: If you’re measuring “top-of-mind awareness” but not “would you defend us to a friend,” you’re measuring nostalgia, not value.
The Part That Nobody Wants to Hear
Your brand isn’t what you’ve built.
It’s what you’re building.
The moment you start trading on familiarity instead of investing in systems, UX, and network effects, you’re writing your obituary.
It might take five years. Maybe fifteen.
But it’s coming.
Think about this:
Every powerful brand you admire today disrupted a familiar brand yesterday.
- Netflix killed Blockbuster
- Spotify killed Tower Records
- Ola/Uber killed Meru
- WhatsApp killed SMS
- Amazon killed… (the list is long)
The familiar always feel invincible.
Right until they become invisible.
So, What Choice Do We Have?
You can defend your familiarity.
Or you can build systems that compound, experiences that delight, and networks that strengthen with scale.
One makes you a case study. The other makes you a category.
Which are you building?
Letting You In On A Little Secret: P.S. — The Real Reason I Wrote This
We are all tired of attending funerals for brands that saw it coming.
They had the data. They had the warnings. They had time.
What they didn’t have was the courage to admit that familiarity without utility is just expensive nostalgia.
If this post made you uncomfortable, good.
Discomfort is the first signal that you’re still in the game.
Share this with someone who needs the wake-up call.
And if you’re already building for network effects and superior systems? You’re already ahead.
Now go make familiarity earn its keep.