“Think of yourself as a brand,” Vermajee, my friend, mentor, philosopher, and marketing consultant, said, almost casually.

I looked at him. “That used to be good advice?”

Vermajee put down his glass. “Why this sudden rebellion? You know what a good brand stands for. Relevance. Recognition. Consistency. Trust. A promise that people can rely on. What is wrong with wanting to be known that way?”

“Nothing, if that is still what brands stand for.”

He gave me the look of a marketing consultant whose favourite subject had just been insulted.

“Brands have always been about perception,” he said.

“Yes, but perception built on reality. Or at least that was the idea. You bought something because it worked, trusted the name because it had earned that trust, and came back because the experience matched the promise.”

“That ‘mostly’ is doing a lot of work.”

“Look at brands today. They tell us something is natural when it needs a chemistry lesson to explain what is actually inside. They call something healthy while carefully avoiding what it might do if consumed regularly. Risks become side effects. ‘Addictive’ becomes habit-forming. Manipulation becomes engagement. And when profits become more important than........

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