Of all the things that good advertising can do, perhaps first and foremost advertising can combat anarchy.
Anarchy, or brand entropy, is a brand's natural state. If you have 1,000 stores selling Starbuck's coffee, it would only be natural that everyone develop their own language, their own signage, their own sets of behaviors to sell that coffee. Much the same way small groups of people develop their own myths, methods and manners.
What brand advertising does is create order. It tells a company who they are, what they sell and how they should behave.
Today I read in "The New York Times" that Dell Computer (a brand name but not a brand) knowingly shipped almost 12 million of computers with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing malfunctions.
I contend that if Dell had stood for anything other than "LOW" prices, someone along the line would have said, "No, we can't do this. It isn't right."
But Dell had no such brand order. Nothing to keep them honest outside of relentless price cutting and price competition. The "Dell Way" was simply to wring costs out of the supply chain.
But this is not to pick on Dell.
This is to serve as a warning. Companies that don't establish and commit to their values are not brands. They might have branding and a nifty logo like BP. But they are basically behavioral anarchists. They can do whatever they want and act however they wish. Expedience and anarchy rule.
I prefer the order of brands.