Marketing brands: they can't help themselves

Just when you thought you were safe from French Connection UK (known for some years now as fcuk), there is a trend identified by the New York Times of using swearwords in brand names - Eggslut restaurant, Holy Crap cereal, Fat Bastard wine, you know the kind of thing.

It seems to me that this may be the beginning of the end of the great branding phenomenon, which so excited the marketing world in the 1990s.  We were told we would all love our brands, when the truth is we usually find them infuriating.

This is what I think is happening, as I explained on the Guardian's Comment is Free site today.