By Todd Wasserman

Fifteen years ago, marketing had its moment of doubt and pain. It was called Marlboro Friday and was spurred by a seemingly minor event: Philip Morris' 20% price cut for Marlboro cigarettes.

PM was responding to generic competitors and Wall Street interpreted the move as an admission that branding was no longer as effective as it had been and whacked PM's and other consumer-focused companies stock prices accordingly.

That was followed by what the Brits called "Nappy Tuesday," when Procter & Gamble said it would start discounting Pampers. At the annual 4As meeting that year, members expressed terror at the idea that advertising might actually offer very little protection against generic, price-focused competition.

The timing is interesting in retrospect. This was just a few years after the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR imploded. As Wall Street analysts like Les Pugh of Salomon Bros. (who declared "The party's over" for branding) were talking about a post-branding consumer world, political analysts like Francis Fukuyama were envisioning a post-nationalist world.

That idea, espoused by everyone from Karl Marx to John Lennon, never really took off, and I'd argue that branding persevered for many of the same reasons that nationalism did.

Why? Well, speaking of John Lennon, imagine there's no branding. Imagine a supermarket filled with products that all look pretty much alike and of no-name cars that compete on their merits and nothing else. It's absurd. As absurd as a world in which people didn't form groups that fought with other groups for resources.

That's because—and I'm not the first to point this out—people don't buy products for their utility and quality; they don't even really buy products at all. They buy stories. Marketing is all about creating stories. It's an extension of the entertainment industry, which is why shopping is considered an alternative to going to the movies.

The stories that marketers tell are evolving. In 2008, the story may be one of innovation and concern for the environment or rebellion against the status quo or transparency, but it's really just a more sophisticated version of the comparison ads from the 1970s that showed Pampers soaking up more blue fluid than the "other leading brand."

(The increasingly sophisticated way marketers go about getting material for such stories is the focus of a three-part series starting with this issue on what we're calling the Frontiers of Marketing. The first installment, by Kenneth Hein, looks at how one agency is taking extreme steps to empathize with the target customer, in this case diabetes sufferers.)

As essential as they may seem, such stories are really luxuries, as consumers are discovering after they spend upwards of $50 filling their gas tanks. If competing stories about price savings aren't compelling enough now, they may be in six months if a recession is raging. The six-month rule is one invoked by Mike Moriarty, an analyst at consulting firm A.T. Kearney, who is quoted in our Superbrands focus on the household market. Firms like Heinz, Procter & Gamble, General Mills and Kellogg seem willing enough to test that theory. As commodity prices have jumped in recent months, all have increased (or pledged to increase) their marketing spends, the thinking being that a recession is the time to dig in your heels and fortify your brand strength.

It's a bold position, but the alternative would be to cut and run the way Marlboro did in 1993, and we all saw how that played out. So in essence, these brands are telling one story to Wall Street about brand strength, which really amounts to stories that businesses tell consumers. It reminds me of the joke Woody Allen told in Annie Hall about the man who thought he was a chicken, but his brother didn't want to tell him he wasn't because he—the brother—needed the eggs. We will all be in a lot of trouble on the day when the consumer finds out he is not a chicken.

Note: Readers may note some disparities between this year's Superbrands list and last year's. That's because the source is now Nielsen Monitor-Plus, which, like Brandweek, is owned by The Nielsen Co. Nielsen Monitor-Plus does not provide spending for online advertising.

Note of Credit: Superbrands is an annual publication conceived and developed by the staff of Brandweek magazine.

Editor: Todd Wasserman
Executive editor: Barry Janoff
Project director: Chuck Stogel
Features editor: Robert Klara
News editor: Kenneth Hein
West Coast bureau chief: Becky Ebenkamp
Senior reporters: Mike Beirne (Chicago), Steve Miller (Lansing, Mich.)
Reporter: Eric Newman
Editorial contributors: Michael Applebaum, Betsy Cummings, T.L. Stanley, Elaine Wong
Design director: Carol R. Wells
Photo editors: Manuela Oprea, Kim Sullivan

Online editor: Elena Malykhina

Senior researcher: Jim English
Ass't researchers: Matthew Fields, Timothy Fields
Copy editor: Gerry Regan
Production mgrs: Adeline Cippoletti, Elise Echevarrieta
Ass't production mgrs: Noah Klein, Cindee Weiss
Production coordinator: Eileen Cotto

Publisher: Thomas P. Woerner