Branding allows us to make decisions quickly. If you’re a recruiter at a company, you have a few seconds to quickly scan each resume you get. Having big brands on the resume allows the recruiter to quickly filter the resumes into the interview or trash pile. An ivy league school and an internship at a tech company - interview. No college degree and no experience at a fortune 500 company - trash. This is often the reality that people have to deal with when applying to jobs. When we buy products we are making a decision to not buy other products. When I bought my ipad, i made a decision not to buy a windows or android product. I chose Apple because in my mind that’s what creative people use. I didn’t even consider the alternatives because the brand of Apple made the decision easy for me. Are these shortcuts we make based on brand associations accurate? Oftentimes they are not. Will the Apple product be twice as good as the windows product that is half the price? Probably not, but does it matter? As long as I am happy with the product it doesn’t matter that the brand associations may not be 100% accurate.
