India, the “world’s biggest democracy,” doesn’t hesitate to flirt with Beijing. Because democracy no longer sells. It is messy. It is slow. It is hypocritical.
Autocracy is the upgrade. It is packaged as efficiency and growth. Sleek. Dangerous. Seductive.
Democracy was Coca-Cola. Sweet, global, everywhere. Now it is flat. Autocracy is Red Bull. Ugly. Addictive. Global. It promises wings, even if it wrecks you.
Look at the parade in Beijing. Missiles rolling like limited-edition sneakers. Xi, Putin, and Kim posing like brand influencers at a launch event. This wasn’t a military march. It was an ad campaign.
Naomi Klein warned us how brands hollow out meaning. That’s what autocracy is doing now. Strip out human rights. Strip out transparency. What’s left? A clean pitch: speed, growth, security. The Apple Store of geopolitics.
Meanwhile democracy runs on nostalgia. Freedom. Rights. Integrity. Beautiful words. But when the infrastructure breaks, when governments gridlock, when politicians keep stealing money, when scandals are daily, when people feel betrayed—those slogans sound like jingles from a dead brand.
The West thinks the world still buys its values. The Global South is shopping for results. Ports. Railways. 5G. Debt relief. They don’t want democracy’s story. They want autocracy’s product.
Missiles are the new billboards. Parades are product launches. Power has become a spectacle, and the audience is global.
The Coca-Cola of politics is sliding to the back shelf. The Red Bull of politics is now at eye level. And the world is reaching for the can with wings.
Every empire ends the same way. Not with a bang. With bad branding.
For a century, marketers preached the gospel of brand loyalty. People bought Coca-Cola for the dream. Marlboro for the cowboy. Mercedes for the badge.
That religion is over.
Euromonitor’s Trending Topics 2026makes it plain: despite household incomes crawling upward at just 0.4% a year since 2021, consumers don’t judge by price alone. They demand health, convenience, sustainability, digital ease. If you can’t deliver, you’re irrelevant.
71% of consumers worry about the rising cost of everyday items. But they aren’t clinging to legacy labels. They are defecting to private label. Cooking ingredients, staple foods, dairy—once the strongholds of heritage brands—are now being stripped bare by discounters and warehouse clubs.
And then come the insurgents: Temu. TikTok. SHEIN. They don’t sell myths. They sell speed, affordability, and relevance. And they are winning.
The report names the shift: brand loyalty is weakening. Loyalty isn’t earned. It’s rented, renewed only as long as the offer makes sense.
Winners already know this. InterContinental Hotels sells NOMO solo-stay packages with wellness perks. SAIC’s MG4 EV became a European bestseller by combining affordability with advanced features. They didn’t trade on heritage. They traded on delivery.
So stop polishing your history. Nobody cares. In this economy of squeezed incomes and rising costs, the only question is: Do you deliver today?
The cult of the brand is dead. The cult of delivery has begun.
