-SUBJECT-
History of the Brand

-SIDE NOTES-
First of all I want to say I’m a French person, so I apologize for my
English writing..

-GOAL-
Have a picture of the brand evolution history since the dawn of
marketing.

-KEY QUESTION-
1) Evolution of the brand since 1900
2) Value support by the brand. (Initially I guess it was Quality, now
look at Nikes, the brand present a complete way of life)
3) Some educational information on the Brand and the science of the
Brand. (Is there a micro-science under the marketing that specificity
studies the brand?)
4) Where can I get article on the digital brand and how a physical
brand is migrating on the net. The success of digital brand.
5) Since digital consumer economy exist only since 10 years, what is
the importance of time in a Brand. (Like Pepsi, McDonalds, Budweiser,
brand built for 50 years...)

-PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION-
As K. Nordstrom and J. Ridderstrale say it in Funky Business, chapter
on the "Economies of soul";
-"In an emotional economy, it is better to piss off 90 percent of the
people." And they tag this 'Make them Sad, Mad or Glad'.

In a brand religion, think for 2 second i'm a NIKE disciple, wearing
my religious artifact.
Potential consumer for this products will have 3 reactions by seeing
me;
1) Sad; Potential consumer hope someday they might be able to get one.
2) Mad; To bad, potential consumer is a ADIDAS disciple.
3) Glad; Potential consumer is a NIKE disciple, a 'brother'. Another
exemple: I can count how many time I talk to someone I doesn't know
only because he had and Apple logo on him.

In the digital universe, except for the platform war (Microsoft VS
Unix), the brand religion is less present. My question is HOW the
social structure of the Internet affect the brand concept. If i'm a
ICQ fan, probably only other ICQ fan will know it. I will probably not
make anybody Sad, Mad or Glad about it.

If you have answer all the key question above, i am interested in your
personal opinion for this one. =)

-OUTPUT NEEDS-
I want to build a summary white paper on the subject of the brand
history and its evolution.

Hello! This is one interesting question.

When we open and lookup in dictionaries we found that the term “brand”
generally means that it is a unique name given to a particular product
so as to differentiate it from the products of its competitors. For
marketers however a “Brand” does not only connote a name but also the
most intrinsic part of a manufacturer’s product which could signal the
intimacy, image and awareness it wants to generate from its customers
or clients.

1.) Brands were a natural consequence of advertising. According to the
MSN Encarta encyclopedia website archaeologists already found evidence
of advertising among the Babylonians in 3000 BC. But it was only in
the late 1900s that brands were utilized in advertising in the United
States to provide differentiation among products.  The Microsoft
Encarta Encyclopedia pointed out that soap makers were one of the
first to utilize brand marketing. The first household brand names were
Ivory, Pears and Sapollo.

Encarta – History of Advertising
http://encarta.msn.com/find/concise.asp?mod=1&ti=761564279&page=3#s21

CD-ROM Encyclopedia Source
“Introduction: Advertising.”Microsoft© Encarta© Encyclopedia 2002
CD-ROM, © Windows. © Microsoft Corporation, 2002.

Emergence of Brand Advertising in America
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/


2.) Today brands are seen to provide tremendous value not only to the
product but to the corporate entity as well. You may be right that one
of the first qualities of branding is quality; I feel that at the
start brands also corresponds to awareness during the early 1900s.

The Value of Brands And Implications for Formulators
http://www.scf-online.com/english/issue21/brands_21_e.htm


3.) A more thought provoking and scientific discussion could be found
in the following web pages:

MASTERING BUSINESS BRAND EVOLUTION by Bob Donath
http://www.smeal.psu.edu/isbm/web/oct99brandnuggets/oct99brandnuggets.htm

Excellent Quality, Pricing and Marketing May Not Establish Your Brand
Unless..
http://www.disclosure.com/marketing/tricks_adv_brand.html

The Beyond Marketing Strategies Philosophy on Naming from Beyond
Marketing http://www.beyondmarketing.com/Naming.html

4.) On the aspect of branding in the digital world, I think it depends
on whether you ask an old school marketer or a new age one. To the old
school of thought branding on the net is the same as branding offline
while for others its totally different. Well maybe because of the
Internet shake-up, the old school idea, may have a point but for me it
is still too early to tell.

Branding on the Internet                                    
http://www.allaboutbranding.com/index.lasso?article=175

Lipstick powder and paint                          
http://www.insight.bt.com/articles/autumn2000/lipstick.html

Think Like a Customer, Act Like a Brand
http://www.digitrends.net/marketing/13638_6356.html


5.) In your question regarding the importance of time in brands I
found this article about the advertising wars of the soft drink
beverage industry. It does not give a concrete answer but it gives us
a vivid picture of what were the transformations each competing
beverage brand sought to be the top soft drink in America and in the
world.

Beverage Industry: Celebrating 50 Years of Service
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/indsthst.html

On the philosophical side I do believe that we are an emotional
economy but I do not subscribe to the belief of K. Nordstrom and J.
Ridderstrale “In an emotional economy, it is better to piss off 90
percent of the people." And they tag this 'Make them Sad, Mad or
Glad'”.

One does not play with the emotions of potential clients. The reason
for this is that in business and marketing we only have one chance to
make a first impression on a client or customer. The principle of
“first impression” strongly comes into play whenever a potential
client experiences anything positive or negative about a particular
brand. First impression is very important that if a company fails, a
domino effect of negative events will eventually follow. Foremost of
this is word of mouth. So if you make a potential client mad, what
will stop the latter from bad mouthing your product from his
relatives, friends and associates?

Brand religion in the digital universe I think is rather
underestimated. If you are an ICQ fan for example, it is not true that
only you or other ICQ people will know it. With the prevalence of
newsgroups, discussion boards, email and SMS or text messaging in most
Asian and European countries, word of mouth today can travel like wild
fire. Maybe we should call it “stroke of keys” instead of “word of
mouth”.

Search terms used
Value of brands
Internet branding
Marketing science
Products Moving online

I hope this would be of help to you. Good luck on your summary white
paper and thanks for being a part of Google Answers.

Regards,
Easterangel-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by anashel-ga on 15 May 2002 08:51 PDT

Thank you Easterangel, great answer.

It was a hard question. I will give it 5 stars if you can give me a
little bit more information on the brand history in a chronological
approach, like 1920, 1940, 1960 and 1980. Don't get me wrong; I
greatly appreciate your work.

Thank you again!

---

Clarification of Answer by easterangel-ga on 15 May 2002 17:53 PDT

Hi again here is to clarify the answer.

In this web page though not comprehensive provides us a glimpse of the
history of brands in the US. Procter and Gamble figures prominently
here:

http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:AlBH40dT7nYC:connectingonline.com/articles/991015.html+US+branding+history&hl=en

Building Brands in a Global Marketplace
http://www.cem.itesm.mx/dacs/publicaciones/logos/anteriores/n6/build.htm

The following history of famous brands might be of interest to you so
as to be of supplement brand evolution:

A brief history of brands: Hello Kitty 

http://media.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4218120,00.html

A brief history of brands: Microsoft
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,518721,00.html

A brief history of brands: Nokia
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,518729,00.html

The Evolution of Coca-Cola
http://www.allaboutbranding.com/index.lasso?article=111

I hope this was of some help to clarify things. Thanks again.

Thank you easterangel.
You dramatically kick off my white paper! If you wish I give you
credit of your research, I will be happy to do so. Drop me and e-mail
at adoyon@universalnetwork.info.

Again, thank you a lot. Really professional!

This may be trite, but I would think that creating any kind of brand
recognition would be of paramount importance, regardless of the
target's opinion, as this "brand recognition" is one of the most
sought after qualities of any marketing campaign.

For an admittedly partisan look at the history and changing role of
the brand, you may wish to read "No Logo" by Naomi Klein.  Although
the main theme of the book is that corporations have focussed on brand
at the expense of value (and their employees) the discussion of
branding is fairly comprehensive.

This book has become something of a touchstone for the
antiglobalization movement, and should be readily available in French.

Greeting Everlast1, greeting Chromedome,


I will answer to Everlast1 first.


I’m agree with you that « brand recognition » is the ultimate goal of
a Brand, for now. The ‘Mad, Sad & Glad’ theory of Funky Business is
and extrapolation from the trends the Brand actually had at becoming
more a religion then a commercial action in the past 50 years.


Thank you for your recommendation Chromedome, I already had Naomi
Klein’s book and currently finishing reading it. It is clearly
‘reference’ book on the subject although I’m disappointed her approach
is and editorial one instead of a scientific one.


Scale it down to 50 pages instead of 500, and its now a Manifesto for
the proletarian movement. Hum, sorry, I mean anti-globalization
movement. =)


But, let’s continue on the Brand recognition and the Brand’s future
trends.
My understanding of ‘Funky Business’ theory on Emotional Market is, in
the next future, Brand will be more focus on ‘the number of fellowship
converted’ instead of the ‘Mass recognition’, simply because
‘fellowship’ are not only here to stay but to FIGHT for the Brand.


I think Apple’s fellowship is the best example, they have play
important role in the fact the company still exist after its ‘dark
year’ of red ink. (But, unlike Naomi Klein say it, they aren’t the
only reason.)


IF we extrapolate from Funky Business’s theory, does next marketing
campaign should come with a Preacher, a Temple and a Manifesto?


But, enough talk, you got the point of what information I wish to get
from this paid research. Data to study the Brand trend in the history
and its religious tendency.

- Anashel