the new yorker on the diminishing value of a brand.

In this article the New Yorker makes a weak case that the value/importance of a company's brand has weakened in the modern day. It's not true. A brand is just as powerful, if not more powerful than it has ever been - there's just more parts of a brand that can be evaluated.

Old school thinking still evaluates a brand's worth based on it's mass/above the line communications.  A brand is, and always has been, the sum of all parts of a company - its products, philosophy, employees, identity etc. A brand is always on and always communicating. Companies that (and have always) embrace that see the 'proliferation of data' as a positive, not a threat to the brand.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2014/02/17/140217ta_talk_surowiecki