A brief history of the brand

From brand identity in the 19th century, to brand image and positioning in the 20th century, to brand equity and co-creation in the early 21st century, this paper reveals the evolution and core concepts of brand building. Through rich historical cases and profound theoretical analysis, this paper not only reviews the development of brand theory, but also explores the transformation of the relationship between brands and consumers, and how brands are redefined and understood in different eras.

A very disturbing fact is that the understanding of brands or branding has hardly made any progress in the past 100 years. Many brand theories from decades ago are still in use today, such as the creation of LOGO or VI (visual identification system) when a company is first established, the refinement of USP (unique selling proposition) when a product enters the market, positioning is still the most mainstream marketing theory in China today, advertising companies always mention IMC (integrated marketing communication), customer experience first, brand community, etc. Not only that, but what is even more hilarious is that although there are different opinions on how to build a brand, there has been no definite answer to the fundamental question of "what is a brand" for more than 100 years.

Everyone who works in branding or marketing is trying to come up with the ultimate definition of a brand. There have been so many branding masters in history, but none of them has given a convincing conclusion, and some even have conflicting opinions.

The European brand school advocates that a brand is "product + added value beyond the product", while the American brand school believes that "brand is the added value beyond the product."

This is a bit like philosophy. Philosophy is not science. Over the past two thousand years, many great philosophers have emerged, but no one has ever figured out what philosophy is. Mathematicians and physicists never get entangled in questions like "what is mathematics" and "what is physics". Philosophy has never had an accurate definition. There are as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophers, and they have never reached a minimum consensus.

The British philosopher Hobbes said that philosophy is the battle of all against all. Paradoxically, this may be the closest definition to the essence of philosophy.

Did you notice that the same is true for brands? There are as many definitions of brands and opinions on how to build brands as there are brand gurus and marketing gurus, and they like to say that the other party is wrong.

In 2015, the 94-year-old famous marketing scholar Levy gave a speech at Northwestern University in the United States, saying that he believed that "branding is the central concept of marketing." At this time, his good friend, Kotler, the father of modern marketing, stood up and refuted that he disagreed. He believed that marketing itself was the central concept and brand was only a part of it.

Advertising master Hopkins wrote a book called "Scientific Advertising". Another advertising master Bernbach said that we should never believe that advertising is scientific.

This is also a famous scene in the brand's history.

According to statistics from Business Weekly, 30% of the top 100 brands in the world were founded before 1900. At that time, there was no brand theory, and the bosses had to do it by themselves. But they succeeded. Today, many brands were also defeated by the old masters when they were first established. So don't be superstitious about brand theory. It is better to straighten out the business logic than any brand theory.

01. Brand Identity Era Mid to Late 19th Century

"We are different."

The word brand comes from the Old Norse word "brandr", which means a burn mark. In order to identify the sheep raised by the family, a brand is put on the sheep. This is the original motivation of the brand, to distinguish its own products from other products in the market.

The commercial application of brands also starts with identification. It is generally believed in the West that it began in the 19th century, when Procter & Gamble began to put simple logos on product cartons.

But if we consider the time-honored Chinese brands, they are even older. The Song Dynasty "Jinan Liujia Kungfu Needle" printed advertising copperplate is the earliest existing advertising object in the world. It is eight or nine hundred years old. It has the brand name "Jinan Liujia Kungfu Needle", the brand logo "White Rabbit Pounding Medicine", the core selling point "Buy high-quality steel bars to make fine Kungfu needles, which can be used at home", and the promotional copy "Resale is popular, and there is a special bonus."

Jinan Liujia Kungfu Needle Advertisement, source: Internet

In 1851, P&G produced candles in Cincinnati. When shipping candles to sellers in cities along the Mississippi River, dock workers would mark a star on the product cartons. The sellers actually regarded this as a symbol of quality. If there was no star, they would not buy it. So P&G had to put an official star label on all candle product packaging. This label made P&G have early die-hard fans.

In the late 1870s, Quaker Oats introduced the image of the “Quaker man”, which was widely used in packaging, advertising, and branding. This was the first innovation in brand anthropomorphism.

Image of Quaker people, source: Internet

In 1882, Procter & Gamble launched Ivory soap, which was the first brand to launch a national advertisement. This model of opening up the national market through brand advertising has attracted many brands to follow suit.

Early advertisement of Ivory Soap, source: Internet

In 1898, the president of Uneeda biscuits in the United States created a naughty boy symbol for the brand, which was the first brand to be launched nationwide with a brand identity.

Brands are very fragile and logos are too easy to be imitated. In order to protect brands, registered trademarks have emerged. The red triangle logo applied by the British Bass Brewery in 1876 was the first registered trademark approved by the British government.

Once a brand has influence and is profitable, it is inevitable that there will be counterfeiters. Even after entering the 21st century, there are still rampant copycat brands such as Kangshoufu and Zhouzhupai in China.

The company that has taken brand recognition to the extreme is Coca-Cola. In 1915, Coca-Cola adopted a "one-step skirt bottle" designed with female body proportions and curves, achieving the perfection of "arousing jealousy among women". People could recognize that it was Coca-Cola just by looking at the fragments of the bottle.

The brand has applied for a patent for the bottle shape.

Coca-Cola bottle design, source network

It was not until 1958 that American Gordon Lippincott proposed the term "corporate identity". Subsequently, a wave of corporate identity systems (CIS) was set off in Japan and Taiwan, China, including BI (behavioral identity), MI (concept identity), and VI (visual identity). Among them, VI is still a magic weapon for many consulting companies and advertising companies.

02. Brand Image Era 1950s

"Branding is advertising."

In the 20th century, many brand practitioners emerged and expressed different views on brands.

Advertising godfather Ogilvy said that a brand is the intangible sum of various attributes of a product, including its name, packaging, price, history, reputation, and its advertising performance.

Leo Burnett said that brand symbols are a kind of psychological image created by brand identity.

Reese, one of the founders of positioning theory, said that a brand is a unique idea or concept implanted in the minds of potential customers.

Ogilvy also said that advertising is to sell products, otherwise there is no advertising. Ogilvy also said that every advertisement is a long-term investment in the brand personality.

Hopkins said the sole purpose of advertising is to sell products.

Rosser Reiss proposed the USP theory, which requires giving consumers a "Unique Selling Proposition".

During this period, marketing means sales promotion, branding means promotion, and branding means advertising.

Founded in 1864, JWT is the first global advertising company. It is good at writing advertising slogans and has served Unilever for more than 100 years. The earliest "soap used by beautiful stars" was written by it for Unilever's Lux soap. Later, Toys "R" Us' "I don't wanna grow up" and De Beers' "A diamond is forever" are all well-known advertising slogans.

That was an era when advertising mad men emerged in large numbers.

Britain and the United States are the first countries to awaken to advertising awareness, which is related to their developed market economies. Advertising is a powerful weapon to seize the market. Therefore, each country has a "father of modern advertising". In Britain, it is Barrett, while in the United States, Lasker is more famous.

Lasker started out as a copywriter. The company he led, Rhodes Advertising, was the largest advertising company in the world at the time. He loved news since he was a child and believed that advertising was news. Later, he had an epiphany and believed that "advertising is paper salesman". He pioneered professional training for copywriters, emphasizing that salesmanship is the criterion for every copywriter.

Lasker was also the first to insert advertisements in TV series. In the early days, many of the advertisements were from soap brands, which is the origin of "soap opera". To this day, the main business of advertising companies is still shooting TVCs, but the distribution channels have become elevators or video platforms. So the life of an advertiser is given by a piece of soap.

Another famous copywriter, Hopkins, once worked under Lasker. He wrote "Scientific Advertising", which helped advertising move from blind experience to science. However, the debate over whether advertising is science or art has been going on for decades without a definitive conclusion.

Hopkins considered himself conservative and cautious, and believed that advertising should be based on fixed criteria and follow basic principles.

Another group of advertising madmen do not see it this way. They believe that the core of advertising is creativity and creating whimsical advertisements.

In the 1950s, an advertising genius invented a team that combined copywriting and art, breaking the tradition of copywriting as the leader established by Hopkins and others. His advertising company became the world's leading advertising creative company. In 1959, the series of advertisements he created for the Beatles, "Think Small", became a classic of the era.

His name is Bernbach.

The three leaders of the creative revolution: Bernbach, Leo Burnett, and Ogilvy (from left to right), source: Internet

To this day, no matter whether it is traditional 4A, creative hot shops, or cutting-edge companies focusing on a certain platform for communication, no matter how advanced their models are claimed to be, when you look at the personnel structure, they all use Bernbach's "copywriting + art" model from the 1950s, and there may be an Akang.

During this period, Bernbach, Ogilvy, and Leo Burnett promoted a massive and far-reaching advertising creative revolution, which triggered a frenzy of creativity among countless advertisers. In first-tier cities where housing prices have increased tenfold, the salaries of advertisers are no different from 20 years ago, and the only attraction for young people is creativity.

The creative revolution put forward the concept of "Big idea", which is still often mentioned by advertisers today.

Ogilvy said that advertising is a long-term investment for building a brand. Note that Ogilvy has improved. In his early days, he said that advertising is for sales. When talking about the question "Why is advertising essential?", Ogilvy told a little story:

Codfish lay thousands of eggs.
A hen lays only one egg.
Codfish never cluck,
Tell you what it did -
So we look down on cod,
But praise the hen.
This story just wants to tell you,
Advertising is worth doing.

In 1955, American scholars Gardner and Levy published an article titled “Products and Brands”. They analyzed the differences between products and brands in the minds of consumers. The key point was to put forward the special meaning of brand images and symbols to consumers, and distinguish products and brands from theoretical concepts.

Ogilvy was greatly impressed by this article. He delivered a speech entitled "Image and Brand" at the annual meeting of the American Advertising Association, calling for the application of brand image in actual advertising.

His work "Man with an Eyepatch" for Hathaway shirts and his work for Rolls-Royce "At sixty miles per hour, the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from its electronic clock" were both famous.

Hathaway man, picture source network‍

Another legendary master, Leo Burnett, created a brand image advertisement for Marlboro, a classic western cowboy image, which completely changed the fate of the brand, from the original women's cigarette to a brand full of rugged masculinity.

Marlboro cowboy image, source network

Leo Burnett said that every product has "inherent drama" and our most important task is to discover it.

After an advertisement is created, it needs to be disseminated. Today, the mainstream view in the advertising industry is that the amount of advertising is the key to its influence.

Starting in the 1920s, American companies began to use mass media on a large scale to advertise their brands, with Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola being the benchmark companies.

P&G's Ivory soap was the first to run a national ad, and P&G has always been the advertiser with the highest advertising spend in the world. P&G initially invested $11,000 in print ads, which were a great success. In 1897, the advertising budget increased to $300,000, winning a 20% share of the US market. P&G has maintained an annual spending of $8 billion in the past three years (2021-2023).

P&G's four-part TVC advertisement is also a classic template, raising a problem (the clothes are dirty)/presenting a solution (I have XX laundry detergent)/promoting RTB (powerful stain removal factor)/obtaining results (the clothes are as good as new).

Around 1930-1960, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble invested heavily in television advertising, creating brand awareness and sales on a large market.

During this period, all brand activities were from a corporate perspective and were the stage for entrepreneurs and advertisers, with customers being just spectators.

China's modern business started relatively late. Around 1980-2000, various companies rushed to place advertisements on CCTV and compete for bids. This is also a concrete manifestation of the "brand equals advertising" mindset in China.

03. Brand Equity Era 1970s-1990s

"Can a brand exist without its products?"

Although the concept of brand already existed before 1985, neither consumers nor business operators were able to experience the true influence of brands, nor did they realize that brands are vital, let alone that brands have attributes independent of products.

A major event happened in 1985. Coca-Cola's CEO, Roberto Goizueta, conceived a great plan - to change the formula of Coca-Cola, launch new flavors of Coca-Cola, and completely replace "Classic Coke" with New Coke to cope with the competition from Pepsi.

However, consumers were not happy and thought that New Coke was not their cola. Thousands of calls were made to Coca-Cola Company, letters flew in from all directions like snowflakes, and the media was flooded with angry reports. Consumers said that changing the taste of Coca-Cola was like God turning grass purple!

New Coke is on the market, image source: Internet‍

Boss Goizueta was also very stubborn, thinking that the consumer outcry would pass and New Coke had to be promoted. However, the consumer anger intensified and eventually everyone marched to Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters. The company finally compromised and announced the termination of the New Coke plan.

Before this incident, it seemed that who the brand belonged to had never been a problem. But the New Coke incident taught us that brands belong to both companies and consumers.

A brand is not the same as a product. Coca-Cola is not just a bottle of drink. During World War II, American soldiers wrote to the Coca-Cola Company saying that Coca-Cola is everyone's old friend, a part of our daily life, a talisman of Americans, and an idol of the public.

In 1986, Professor Parker of the United States proposed the three-dimensional structure of the brand: functional, symbolic and experiential.

Products are one-dimensional, while brands are three-dimensional. In addition to product functions, brands have attributes and values ​​that are different from products in terms of symbolic meaning and experience.

Liberating brands from product frameworks is a major step forward in modern brand theory.

In fact, as early as the early 1970s, American advertisers Ries and Trout published the new idea of ​​"positioning". Thirty years later, the positioning theory was rated by the American Marketing Association (AMA) as "the most influential concept in American marketing in history."

Today, although the "positioning" theory has been questioned by many in the Chinese marketing community because it cannot explain the diversification success of many companies, it is still the most widely used theory and the most accepted by business owners. No doubt about it. The clients I have met in the advertising company, from large Internet companies like Alibaba to 18th-tier township enterprises, all talk about words like "positioning" and "mind" because they are the easiest to understand.

The "positioning" theory is not about positioning on the product, but about targeting the minds of potential customers. Only by occupying the first place in the category mind can success be achieved.

In 1992, Professor Schultz of Northwestern University published a paper titled Integrated Marketing Communications, which was later expanded into a book. This groundbreaking paper on IMC did not cause much of a stir in the academic world, but it has caused a huge uproar in the field of marketing practice, and has not faded to this day, especially in the advertising industry, which has long used it as an important weapon to win business and use it to construct communication processes and develop internal organizations and strategic tools. For example, Ogilvy promotes "Ogilvy Marketing Ensemble" and "360 Brand Communication", while JWT bills itself as a "giant advertising company". IMC pushes advertising companies to enter a full-service marketing service model.

In the 1980s, a wave of large-scale mergers and acquisitions swept the world, with huge premiums from time to time. Some merger bids could reach more than 25 times the company's book assets. In 1988, Nestlé spent more than $1 billion to buy the British company Rowntree, a price that was six times its total financial book value.

This is the brand added value, and "brand is the most important intangible asset of a company" has become a new trend.

The Marketing Institute (MSI) proposed "brand assets" as the core of brand academic research. Professor Aaker of the University of California, Berkeley was the first scholar to interpret "brand assets".

In 1991, Aaker published Managing Brand Equity, in which he said:

Brand equity refers to the assets (or liabilities) associated with a brand (name and logo) that add (or subtract) the value of a product or service to a company or its customers.

Professor Aaker also proposed the "Five-Star Model of Brand Equity": brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and other proprietary assets (such as patents and channel relationships).

In 1993, Keller, a top American scholar, published a paper titled "Customer-Based Brand Equity: Conceptual Model, Measurement and Management", the so-called CBBE (Customer Based Brand Equity), which is the "customer-based brand equity theory". Based on this, he published "Strategic Brand Management" in 1998, which is known as the "Brand Bible".

Customer-based brand equity is the differentiated response to brand marketing activities caused by customer brand knowledge.

This is a little difficult to understand, but this definition is completely different from the general definition of brand assets in the past. There are three key points.

1) Differentiated response. Customers’ responses to each brand’s marketing activities are different. If they are the same, your brand will be indistinguishable from ordinary brands, and you can only compete on price.

2) Brand knowledge. How does this difference come from? It comes from the brand knowledge of customers, what they know, feel, see and hear about the brand in their long-term life or in the process of dealing with the brand. No matter how many marketing activities your brand has done, the ultimate brand equity still depends on how much customers absorb and how much they know about the brand.

3) Customer response: Customers’ perceptions, preferences and behaviors towards a brand will be reflected in the brand’s various marketing activities.

It should be noted that "brand association" is the most important breakthrough in Keller's brand theory. Starting from the "associative network memory model" in psychology, he interprets the brand as a collection of associations in the customer's psychology.

"Brand association" is not Keller's original idea. It has already appeared in Aaker's brand equity model. Leo Burnett also said that brand symbols are a kind of psychological image generated by brand identity. But Keller gave "brand association" a very key theoretical role.

I think "brand association" is the most accurate description of the state of a brand's existence.

For example, for Apple, you can draw a brand association map around the brand logo. Scattered along the bitten apple, there may be hardware products such as MacBook, iPhone, Vision Pro, as well as software systems such as APP Store, OS, iOS, and subjective feelings such as trendy, innovative, and smooth to use. Different people have different brand association maps because of their different brand knowledge.

How does brand value come from? Keller proposed the concept of "brand value chain".

There are four stages in the long chain of "marketing investment-change in customer mindset-market performance-capital market returns". The first stage is the cause and the second stage is the result. The most critical is the customer's brand knowledge, that is, the change in the customer's mindset.

Because of the marketing investment in products and communications, customers' perceptions, associations, and attitudes toward the brand will change, resulting in brand premium, increased market share, improved profitability, etc., which will ultimately be reflected in capital market returns such as stock prices.

04. Brand co-creation era early 21st century

"Of course you can build a brand by advertising, but what if you don't advertise?"

Whether it is brand identification, brand image, brand positioning, or brand assets, the brand is viewed from the brand perspective or the customer perspective. After 2000, the relationship between the brand and the customer became the main axis of marketing, and brand experience and brand community became hot words.

In the past, when people talked about building a brand, the first thing that came to mind was advertising. Even now, many people still think of building a brand through advertising. However, some brands have proven through practice that it is possible to build a brand without advertising.

There are two books that are important footnotes to the brand myth created by Starbucks. One is "The Starbucks Experience", which talks about how Starbucks won with experience from the 1990s to the beginning of the new century; the other is "Starbucks Leading Way", which talks about the company's new strategy of brand-customer relationship after 2008. In the first part, Starbucks sells lifestyle experience, providing a third space outside of the store and the office, a space for consumers to relax and have fun; in the second part, it sells brand relationship, such as Starbucks in the United States caring for and helping the homeless, announcing that everyone can use the restroom in the store even if they don't buy anything.

Image source: brand official website

Starbucks almost never advertises, but builds its brand through experience and relationships, and sells a cup of coffee all over the world.

In 1998, American female scholar Vernia created the "Brand Relationship Quality Model", comparing brand relationships to relationships between people. She selected 600 Americans as representatives through a questionnaire survey, and used 114 personality traits to score 37 brands in different categories, analyzing different types of brand-consumer relationships, including 6 variables, namely love and passion, self-relevance, trust, dependence, intimacy, and brand partner quality, which can also be used to measure brand strength and brand assets.

In 2000, Professor Schmidt of Columbia University in the United States published the book "Experience Marketing", which had a great impact. The following year, he published a practical book "Customer Experience Management", which included a five-step process and the new concept of "experience touch point" operation.

If brand relationships focus on the one-to-one relationship between consumers and brands, then brand communities are the "many-to-many" relationship between the interactive circles of consumers and brands. "My brand" and "our brand" are two different levels.

The most successful and passionate brand community in the world is the Harley-Davidson Club, with over one million members, many of whom have the brand's logo tattooed on their bodies.

Image source: brand official website

In the movie Pulp Fiction, Butch's girlfriend asked, "Where did the motorcycle come from?" Butch said, "It's not a motorcycle, it's a Harley."

Every Harley rider takes pride in being part of a community.

In 2001, American scholar Moniz published a paper entitled "Brand Community". He believed that "brand community is a special social group that is not restricted by geographical location and is formed based on the worship of a certain brand."

In 2004, Facebook was launched and brand communities moved more online. For example, Airbnb is a brand created through online communities.

The online development of brand communities has given rise to an important marketing concept: customer immersion.

Although this word is very accurate, it is not easy to explain it clearly. It is difficult for ordinary people to understand this inexplicable word, and it has not become popular in China.

Customer Engagement, "沾" means to penetrate, "合" means to cooperate, "合" means to create together. Engagement originally means "engagement, marriage contract". Engagement is a "semi-binding" contract. Although it does not reach the level of a marriage contract, it is by no means a casual participation. It is a very close, weak contractual relationship. Therefore, translating it into customer participation, customer attachment, and involvement is not very accurate.

I think it would be better to say "brand co-creation" for easier understanding.

Xiaomi co-founder Li Wanqiang wrote a book called "Sense of Participation". The most important thing for Xiaomi's success is to invite users to participate in the beginning. The MIUI system initially had only 100 developers, and an honorary development team of 1,000 to 2,000 people was selected from users. In addition to the enthusiasts who follow the system updates every week, it is a 100,000-person R&D co-creation team.

Xiaohongshu is now used by many people as a search engine because many users share their most authentic life experiences on it. The user-created content platform is Xiaohongshu’s deepest brand moat.

To summarize:

From brand identification in the 19th century, to brand image in the 1950s, brand positioning in the 1970s, brand assets in the 1970s-1990s, to brand relationships and brand communities at the beginning of the new century, and finally to the current "brand co-creation", we find that the various brand theories "created" by various marketing masters and brand masters can be traced back to the history of brand development. They are just repackaged in a new look.

This article mainly refers to Professor Lu Taihong's "A Brief History of Brand Thought". I think this is the most in-depth and thorough book on the development of brand theory. After reading this book, you will have a feeling of "seeing all the mountains from a high perspective" about brands.