I don't think the Brand Age is as bleak as this essay suggests.

Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate, but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.

As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and labeling that work as "button-pushing" is… dismissive, to say the least.

What I got from the essay: "brand is the only way to beat competition when you can't significantly beat them on quality". It's basically the market suffering from success. You can buy a cheap quality watch today.

For some product types there is no better alternative, like ISPs. But I'd argue this is because of monopoly, which is different from brand. Most monopolies (like ISPs) usually have negative brands, and there's no alternative not because one can't create a better brand (that's easy), but because the upfront cost to become profitable is too high.