The following column examines and critiques commercial design, as well as provides commentary on current issues and trends in the design industry.

Messrs. Trout and Ries, the de facto arbiters of the rules of branding, tell us that marketing is not a battle of products, but of perceptions.

There is little reason why even the most Socratic of thinkers should doubt this. In fact, the most Socratic of thinkers would be the first to agree, albeit with dismay at the gullibility of humans who are too insecure to make a purchase without the comfort of a familiar label.

By way of illustration, we can show you a place where you can buy an Armani suit for half the price you would pay at Holt’s. The only differences are that the suit has had the label clipped out of it, and the store is located between a fishmonger and a roti hut in the heart of Toronto’s Kensington market.

Feeling a little queasy? Well, the truth is, if you know the cut of an Armani, you’d be a fool to buy it anywhere else. And believe it or not, fine Italian serge feels the same on Baldwin Street as it does on Bloor Street.

But such is the power of branding that there are those who just wouldn’t be comfortable unless they saw the hefty price tag and the Mani label attached to the lining. That’s because a strong brand is a badge of reassurance, a sign of certification that you’ve bought `the real thing’. (In the higher-priced categories of consumer goods, it’s also an excuse for a lack of connoisseurship. It allows us to own the real McCoy without having to identify it in a blind taste test.)

Cigars are the rage these days, right? Well there are two kinds of cigar smokers. There is the kind that ostentatiously double-parks his Jaguar in the heart of Yorkville while he assays the branded Cubanos in the humidor at a posh tobacconist. This guy willingly forks over between $16 and $40 each for a single corona. Then there’s the guy who goes downtown, parks the Jag in a lot, and walks up a creaky set of stairs to get to a dimly lit, hopelessly cluttered room where Cuban tobacco is hand-rolled into cigars while you wait. There, the same corona is a mere eight bucks.

What happens when you get two brands with the same name, the same product and the same quality? One of us recently received a Swiss Army watch as a birthday gift.

Imagine the thrill upon opening the leatherbound case: not only is there an authentic timepiece in there, but hey, there’s a little red pocketknife to go with it! But wait, the symbol – a white cross reversed out of a red square – is slightly different than the white cross on a red shield that we’re used to seeing. Further investigation reveals that this is a ‘Wenger’ Swiss Army watch, whereas the one we remember seeing before is a ‘Victorinox’.

The Wenger claims to be the `genuine’ article: it has been the official supplier to the Swiss Army since 1908. Both brands have a good, honest, no-nonsense product. The products look the same and are priced virtually the same. And yet there is this nagging feeling that one of them must be more valid than the other. How can they both be the real thing?

Well, there is a difference. Not between the products, but between the brands. Victorinox is more memorable because it is more aggressively marketed. If you’ve seen a Swiss Army ad recently, it’s far more likely that it was for a Victorinox than for a Wenger. Despite the fact that both products are of equal quality and price (they both even offer the same little red pen knife as an incentive), and despite the fact that Wenger may actually be the holder of the true pedigree, the mantle of authenticity has shifted towards the more vigorously marketed brand.

Perhaps we could add a 23rd law to Trout and Ries’s 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: in branding, might is right.

Then there’s the brand whose name is so strong that no matter what you do to its identity, it can stand up as the real thing. You might call this the 24th ‘Law’: the elasticity of authenticity. Take Roots. In our last column, we pointed out that Roots had recently redesigned its logo. The original identity – designed by Heather Cooper in the mid-’70s – was composed of a large Canadian beaver nestled in twigs, with a small, chubby upper- and lower-case serif logotype underneath it. Very warm and fuzzy. Very William Morris. At the time, this said ‘all natural’ and ‘no nonsense’, i.e., the real thing.

Now, we have a large, austere, sans-serif, all caps logotype – designed by Bruce Mau – with the beaver rendered as a footnote beneath it.

Paradoxically, it seems to convey the same feeling with a ’90s twist: blunt, no nonsense, straight to the point. The real thing, only not as warm and fuzzy. Because the ’90s just aren’t a warm and fuzzy decade, one supposes.

The fact is that authenticity, the holy grail of branding, has nothing whatever to do with the reality of the product. It’s all in the mind’s eye of that willing slave to the graven image, the consumer.

Will Novosedlik and Bob Russell are principals of Russell Inc. in Toronto.