When Strong Brands Stop Being Chosen
What do Netflix, Hermès, UHNW brands, and a Las Vegas restaurateur have in common? It’s a pattern that helps explain why strong brands stop being chosen.
Last week, Hub Entertainment Research published an analysis of Netflix by Brandon Katz. Subscriber growth is strong, total viewing is up, and streaming continues to take share. But time spent per user is declining. More people are watching, but each one’s watching less, which changes the economics in a way that’s not obvious if you’re only looking at growth.
In January, The Wall Street Journal noted: “The Wait List for a Birkin or Rolex Is Getting Shorter.” The products are still iconic, still expensive, still widely desired. But resale premiums are coming down and waitlists are shrinking. Those are early signals of softening demand, even if the brands themselves remain strong.
Antonia J A Hock’s AHA Group just published five UHNW case studies. Exceptional brands, high-touch service, everything executed at the highest level. And yet loyalty is softening. Customers aren’t complaining, but they’re not returning with the same consistency.
Different categories, different customers, different price points. But the pattern is the same: The product is strong, the brand is strong, the business is performing. What’s changing is how reliably those strengths convert into engagement, desire, and repeat behavior.
If your business isn’t struggling to attract customers but is finding it harder to get them to come back, this is the problem.
That shows up when availability expands faster than attention and expectations reset. There are more options, more visibility into what’s good, and more access to things that once felt scarce. The result is that the signals these businesses were built on still matter, but they no longer carry the same weight on their own.
And then I heard an interview with Las Vegas-based restaurateur Joe Mikulich.
In a recent Vegas Voices podcast, he explained why his restaurants (Anima by EDO, Braseria by EDO, Seattle’s La Loba) work in a way that contrasts with what’s happening in these other examples. “People try a place because the food is good,” he said, “but they come back because of how we made them feel. Effort is the universal currency for respect.“
That line effectively reframes the problem. Most brands are working harder than ever, with more content, more touchpoints, and more personalization. But effort only creates value if it’s recognized as effort on someone’s behalf. If it’s performed but not felt, it doesn’t build preference. It’s how you end up with strong performance on paper and a weakening instinct to come back or tell someone else.
For CMOs, that shifts the question from visibility and distinctiveness to something more fundamental: How are we felt? Effort that doesn’t register as care isn’t neutral. It actually adds to the noise that weakens the instinct to return. What matters now is knowing where effort actually changes the decision, and focusing your organization there.
Photo by Armand Khoury on Unsplash
