Aneta Bogdan, guest on the Katai Podcast — a colloquial and… less orthodox conversation about what is happening today in marketing and branding
Bucharest, February 2021 — Aneta Bogdan is Robert Katai's guest on the Katai Podcast, for a friendly conversation about what is happening these days in marketing and branding.
I met Robert Katai three years ago, in Cluj, on the occasion of a TEDx speech. He told me that he is passionate about marketing, that he had read my book and that it helped him, that he has a podcast, and that he would like to have me as a guest. I declined, for lack of time, but he was persistent and kept coming back with the invitation — so three weeks ago, over a weekend, we had a friendly talk about what is happening these days in marketing and branding.
It was an informal discussion, with the guard down — rather a small-talk over coffee than an interview — so certain ideas that I prompted should be taken cum grano salis, as long as they were not explained and argued.
One of the great dissatisfactions we live with at Brandient is that we have accumulated an immense baggage of knowledge and experience, and that we do not manage — we simply do not manage — to find the time and resources to share them with the professional community to which we belong.
Below, a few highlights from this conversation with Robert.
On Marketing
Marketing is one thing — it generates commercial activity, if you wish, it exacerbates it; branding is another — it exacerbates the relationship, and it is a safety net for good marketing. You can stay loyal to a brand even when you are in an economic crisis.
On Positioning — old-school theories vs. today's realities
If you have a correct positioning, it means you have the indicators of association, awareness, favourability and loyalty, which help you perpetuate the business while growing it: you sell at a better price, to more people, you can extend your product range under one brand, and so on.
In old-school marketing theory […] there was plenty of room (in any market) and everybody said: "if you are first — good! if you are the leader — good!" (well!). Now, with "first" and with "leader" — it is more complicated: you are first for the first 3 days, after that the others arrive; and you are the leader under certain conditions, in certain categories, in a certain context.
Old-school positioning was essentially about (tactics of) marketing and mass communication — advertising. Now we have been saddled with Social Media as well — and, mind you, Social Media does not do positioning! (By the way, beware of hashtags, which destroy positionings! — they position trends and movements, not brands.)
…after the marketing of fast-moving consumer goods came the services economy, and for two-three decades now we have been in the knowledge economy, the economy of innovation, where technology boomed, and so on. And what are we facing in the midst of the knowledge economy? — the post-truth era!
In product marketing it was easier to "speak differentiation" (through positioning). But when you are in services marketing, in what a human group can deliver, then… you have to think "alignment" — not differentiation! Alignment: between the company's resources, the company's human competencies, its competitive advantages, its products or services — and its development strategies.
…Alignment is achieved through identification: think, for example, of banking services, of retail, of the experience inside digital brands — (most brands of this kind) are, if I may say so, the most interesting (pseudo) contestation of positioning…
Brand Idea is a very interesting management instrument, with which you can align organisational behaviours, marketing strategies, communication strategies.
On digital brands
I keep discussing with Kit about anti-positioning in digital brands… There are a few brands that occupy themselves, quite especially, with destroying positionings — when we all crowd in to be sold "by the kilogram" — let us not expect that being applauded today by 582 people would mean any positioning.
Apropos of building brands through the digital medium — we tell our clients to also step out into the offline medium when they build the brand. That is where the truth is, that is where the essence is, that is where our senses work. In Social Media, what works in us is an induced behaviour…
It is a period in which we could question not only positioning, but also other concepts by which marketing has functioned over the past decades.
Știi de fapt ce nu mai funcționează? Nu mai funcționează rețetele. Și de aceea e nevoie de oameni cu mintea frumoasă. E nevoie de oameni care pot să gândească contextual.
Do you know what actually no longer works? Recipes no longer work. And that is why there is a need for people with beautiful minds. There is a need for people who can think contextually.
—Aneta Bogdan, Managing Partner, Brandient
For those who wish, the entire discussion can be listened to in the dedicated episode of the Katai Podcast.
In the 19 years since its founding, Brandient has become one of the most important independent branding firms in the emerging markets, with offices in Bucharest and Singapore, relying on a multidisciplinary team of brand consultants and designers. Brandient has earned its reputation both through the success of its large-scale projects and through international recognition — more than 50 top international awards, including the prestigious Red Dot Design Award and Platinum Graphis Award, as well as the induction in the Rebrand Hall of Fame, alongside the most reputed branding companies in the world.
About Brandient
Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.