A brief history of brands: Understand the major brand theories in one article and understand the essence and laws of brands

This article explores the development and deepening of brand thinking from a historical perspective, explains the evolution of brands from the four stages of design, communication, management, and users, and analyzes the essence of brands and their development laws. It is recommended for students who are interested in brand marketing.

I have two things to say about brand building.

The first sentence is that a brand is a little girl who can be dressed up by anyone .

Different people have different understandings of brands. Some people think that brand is a symbol, some think that brand is a slogan, some think that brand is an image, and some think that brand is a corporate asset, a packaging of the product, a representative of the category, the consumer's cognition and feelings, the experience, the relationship, the personalization, the added value, the premium, the IQ tax, the scam, and the list goes on.

Why is there such a big difference? One very important reason is what I want to say in the second sentence: a brand is not built in a day .

When a company starts to build a brand, the brand probably only has a name and a trademark at the beginning. In the process of continuous development, the brand's sales volume increases, consumers' understanding of it increases, and the brand's connotation becomes richer and richer.

For consumers, a brand has a certain image and personality, and establishes a close relationship with people; for companies, a brand creates intangible value and becomes the most important asset of the company; within the industry, a brand has also become synonymous with a certain product and category.

A brand can be a symbol, an image, an asset, and everything mentioned above, but a company does not possess all of these at once. Instead, it goes through a process of continuous evolution and superposition.

These two sentences, one responds to the question "What is a brand?" and the other answers the question "How to brand?" , that is, how to build a brand.

The same is true for the development of brand thinking. In fact, the entire history of brand thinking is constantly exploring the answers to these two questions. And our answers are also constantly deepening with the development of business, media, and social culture. From a historical perspective, the evolution of brands has gone through four major stages.

1. The Age of Design

In 1946, Jiang Dayi, director of the Art Department of the Shanghai Museum, and historian Yang Kuan were visiting an antique shop and accidentally found a copper plate for printing advertisements, so they bought it immediately. This is the famous Liujia Kung Fu Needle advertisement in the history of Chinese advertising, and it is also the earliest brand advertisement known in China and even in the world.

In the middle of this copper plate is a white rabbit pounding medicine with an iron pestle, and above the white rabbit is written "Jinan Liujia Kung Fu Needle Shop". On the left and right sides are two lines of text "Recognize the white rabbit in front of the door as a mark", and below is the text "Buy high-quality steel bars to make fine Kung Fu needles, which can be used at home, and resell them for a good price, which is called a mark".

This advertisement has a brand name, a trademark logo, and appeals, which can be said to have all the elements that make up a brand.

The emergence of a brand is first and foremost an economic phenomenon. It is the product of society reaching a certain stage of development and a natural extension of business logic. Therefore, the connotation and essence of a brand must be adapted to the social and economic conditions at the time.

In the long agricultural era, small-scale peasant economy and handicrafts dominated, commerce was underdeveloped, commodities were not abundant, and there was no real market economy and commercial competition. The initial brand often started with word-of-mouth quality, relying on word-of-mouth to slowly accumulate. It was the result of spontaneous evolution rather than a deliberate design.

Even brand names may be passed down by word of mouth. At first, the products made by a certain region or a certain family were famous for their good quality and craftsmanship, so people put the place of origin and the surname of the producer before the product name, thus evolving into the earliest brands.

For example, there are various craftsman brands such as Zhang the Clay Figurine, Wei the Kite, Li the Brush, and Liu the Brick Carver.

The other category is the place of origin brands , such as Hu brushes, Hui ink, Xuan paper, Duan inkstones, Su embroidery, Shu brocade, etc., such as West Lake Longjing, Lu'an Guapian, Wuyi Dahongpao, Anxi Tieguanyin, etc.

The "Zunyi Prefecture Chronicle" during the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty recorded: "Maotai Village to the west of Renhuai City is the best in Guizhou Province in terms of wine production, with no less than twenty Maotai distilleries."

It can be seen that today's well-known liquor brands such as Fenjiu, Moutai, Jiannanchun, etc., historically refer to the liquor produced in the entire area of ​​Fenyang in Shanxi, Maotai Village in Renhuai, Guizhou, and Mianyang in Sichuan (which belonged to Jiannan Road in the Tang Dynasty), rather than a specific wine shop.

As brands are formed, imitators begin to appear. Therefore, brand owners begin to design certain symbols and patterns for themselves to distinguish themselves. For example, the Liu Family Kung Fu Needle Shop mentioned above, the medicine-pounding white rabbit, thus became the earliest physical trademark in China. It played a role in forming identification, distinguishing property rights, and proving quality . This logo pattern may be the only consciously designed element in the brand.

The same is true in the West. There are three different opinions on the origin of the English word "Brand" that we are talking about today:

1. It comes from the Old Norse word "brandr", which means "to brand or burn with a hot iron". When trading livestock, herders would brand their animals with irons with different patterns to mark their property ownership.

2. Originated from the original Germanic root "brandaz", which means "flame, burning". The letters and documents used by European nobles would melt the wax with fire and stamp the family emblem representing the nobility to distinguish and highlight their identity.

3. Originated from the Old French word “brandy”, which is used to distinguish the estates and regions where brandy is produced.

This is almost the original purpose of the brand, which identifies the producer, marks the ownership, and gradually becomes associated with quality. This pattern on the cow's butt has become the source of today's brand logo.

In modern times, Procter & Gamble accidentally discovered the value of trademarks in the mid-19th century.

In 1851, when Procter & Gamble's candles produced in Cincinnati were shipped to cities along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for sale, barge workers painted stars, moons and other marks on the boxes to distinguish their own product boxes from other companies' goods.

Procter & Gamble founder William Procter soon noticed that buyers viewed the star and crescent as a symbol of quality and actively purchased the products. If the mark was not found on the cartons, the seller would refuse to accept the goods.

This discovery inspired P&G, and P&G began to design a more formal star and crescent logo based on the mark, and printed it on the packaging of all candle products. This became P&G's earliest brand trademark and won P&G early loyal customers.

This trademark was used for nearly a hundred years with continuous revisions until it was replaced with the "P&G" pure font trademark in 1944 and is still in use today (there is a complicated story behind P&G being forced to abandon the star and crescent logo, and it was reactivated in 1989. If you are interested, please search it yourself).

This story is a good example of how brand identity has evolved from nothing to something as human commerce has developed. In the 1870s, trademarks began to receive widespread attention.

In 1873, "Levi's" jeans applied for trademark protection, setting a precedent for legal protection of brands. On January 1, 1876, the British government approved the first registered trademark Bass Pale Ale (beer brand), which was the world's first legal trademark.

In 1881, the US government enacted a law to register and protect trademarks. Registering trademarks for one’s own products immediately became the most important thing in the business world [1]. Many American brands that are still famous around the world today were established during this period, such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Quaker, and Kodak.

The booming development of Coca-Cola attracted competitors to follow suit. They slightly modified the name and logo of Coca-Cola and put them on the bottles. Soon, the market was flooded with copycat products such as Koka-Kola, Koca-Nola, Celery‑Cola, and Koke.

So Coca-Cola worked with its bottler, Root Glass Company, and decided to design a unique new bottle shape, requiring that the brand could be identified by touch even in the dark, and even by the fragments after it was broken. This is the classic curved bottle in the history of Coca-Cola, which was patented on November 16, 1915 and approved as a registered trademark by the U.S. Patent Office in 1960.

At the 2015 London Design Week, the famous American brand design company Lippincott held a theme exhibition entitled "Like Me: Our Connection with Brands".

In the exhibition, Lippincott presented a timeline of the brand's evolution and selected 20 milestones in the brand's history.

These include cave paintings, livestock branding tools, the Jesus fish, the British flag, Napoleon’s hat (wearing the hat at an angle was Napoleon’s signature feature), Bass Ale, NBC’s xylophone logo (the first broadcasting company’s trademark), the Apple Macintosh computer, Nike’s Just Do It, Facebook’s like symbol, “GOOGLE” entering the dictionary as a verb, the withdrawal of the GAP logo, Airbnb, etc. [2]

(A code used by Christians to identify each other in order to avoid persecution by the Roman Empire)

(1950, the first audio service logo)

(January 24, 1984, Apple Macintosh was born)

It can be seen that most of these are trademarks and visual patterns, as well as symbolic brand features. During this period, the brand was mainly reflected in basic identification elements such as name, trademark, product packaging design, especially logos with strong visual style.

To learn about brand identity design, please read Lecture 2 of 30 on Branding , “Brand Identity: Design of Brand LOGO, VI and Symbols” .

At this time, the connotation of the brand is still very simple and the value is extremely superficial. Symbols are the earliest brand elements and are also the most important brand elements at this time.

We can even say that the essence of a brand is an abstract and simplified symbol, which is printed on products to differentiate and endorse product quality and the reputation of the business. Consumers’ understanding of a brand starts with symbols, which are the handles for consumers to identify and remember, and the carriers of consumers’ cognition and feelings.

"Brand Identity" became the original brand idea.

To this day, we can still see this kind of brand promotion, such as the slogan of J&J Pizza, "When eating pizza, look for this big yellow elephant" and the slogan of Bama Tea, "Look for this horse, choose Bama for good tea." This can be said to be in the same vein as the slogan of Liujia Kungfu Needle Shop a thousand years ago, "Look for the white rabbit in front of the door as a sign."

As commercial competition gradually opened up, companies began to adopt design strategies to build their brands. In 1958, Gordon Lippincott began to elevate design to a theoretical level and proposed the concept of “corporate identity” [3].

The Lippincott Company he founded became one of the founding companies of the "CI" theory. Lippincott excels at using visual design to sort out brand strategies for companies. Its clients include Starbucks, Dell, Walmart, Nissan, Samsung, Sprint, etc. It is the originator of the brand consulting industry.

CI theory has gradually developed into a complete system, including three major components: MI (Mind Identity), BI (Behavior Identity), and VI (Visual Identity). Therefore, CI is also called CIS (Corporate Identity System).

MI refers to the business philosophy and values ​​of an enterprise, BI regulates the behavior of people inside the enterprise, especially employees, and VI is the design and confirmation of visual elements such as brand logo, standard colors, standard fonts, auxiliary graphics, etc., and ensures their consistent and standardized application in various occasions such as product packaging, advertising, work clothes, office supplies, factory and office guides, and transportation to showcase the enterprise.

In the 1970s, CIS was all the rage in Japan. In the 1980s and 1990s, this trend spread to China. At that time, brand building was just beginning to take off in China, and the first step in building a brand was to ask a company to design a CIS system. CI became a business card for a company, and only when a company used CIS could it be considered to be a serious brand.

CIS was widely sought after and became a magic weapon for market competition. Therefore, the design fee of CIS was not cheap. At that time, the price of a CIS solution ranged from 2 million to 3 million, and even reached tens of millions. This was the era of design.

However, to be fair, MI and BI in many companies often become empty words and slogans that lack practical effectiveness, while VI is the most basic visual composition of a brand and must be applied to product packaging, stores, and advertisements. Therefore, CIS has declined today, but VI has been retained and is still an indispensable basic skill in brand building.

VI is very important. Like the brand name, it is the foundation of brand building, just like breathing is simple and necessary. However, after all, corporate sales and customer acquisition cannot rely on VI, and brand building is not all good with a bright and eye-catching logo and a set of VI.

Nike's hook, McDonald's golden M, and Coca-Cola's red wavy font can be said to be classics among classics in VI design, but so what? There is still a lot of work to be done in brand building and growth.

Although many scholars have tried to inject new connotations and identification elements into "brand identity", brand identity can no longer exist as an independent theory.

Moreover, in the actual design process, the core of VI is LOGO, standard color and font design. The remaining work is various permutations and combinations, and then extended to various material systems. It is nothing more than applying templates and assembly line operations, and does not contain much technical content.

In advertising companies, the common practice of VI design is that the art director makes the logo and fonts, and then leaves the extended application to novice designers or even design interns. So when I entered the industry (2006), the VI design fee had shrunk significantly, with the price falling to the range of 200,000 or 300,000 yuan, and many companies even directly found individual designers to cooperate with for a few thousand yuan. Nowadays, except for specialized design companies, most advertising companies no longer accept VI design work.

The era of design-led brands has passed, and the next key force that influences brands is advertising communication.

2. The Era of Communication

Benjamin Franklin founded the Pennsylvania Daily News in 1729 and for the first time placed advertisements ahead of the editorial on the front page of the inaugural issue, in an extremely eye-catching position.

The first issue of the newspaper was a soap advertisement created by Franklin himself. The ad had a huge headline and a lot of white space around it, which was very eye-catching and set a precedent for the use of artistic techniques in newspaper advertisements. As a result, the circulation and advertising volume of the Pennsylvania Daily also ranked first in the North American newspaper industry at the time.[4]

Franklin was therefore known as the "Father of American Advertising". Later, a biographer commented: "We must admit that it was Franklin who created the modern advertising system. It is certain that since he started, we have been able to use the powerful propaganda machine like today to carry out advertising work."

One hundred years later, in 1830, there were already 1,200 newspapers in the United States, including 65 daily newspapers. At the time, each newspaper cost only one penny, which was very cheap, so newspaper sales increased rapidly (the period from 1830 to 1850 was therefore called the penny newspaper era)[5]. The reason for the low price was that it was supported by advertising. At that time, most or all of the first page of many newspapers was filled with advertisements.

In 1841, Volney Palmer opened an advertising company in Philadelphia, USA, which is widely regarded as the world's first advertising company. Its business was to sell space in various newspapers to business owners (of course, strictly speaking it was a media agency).

However, although the media was developed at that time, due to the limitations of logistics conditions, most commodities were local and could not be distributed nationwide. Therefore, there was no large-scale advertising and no brand.

Even the retail industry was like this at the time, with most of the retail industry consisting of general stores selling local products or specialty stores selling imported luxury goods (only high-priced goods could afford the extremely expensive inland transportation costs). It was not until the second half of the 19th century that national chain stores gradually became the dominant model.[6]

By the 1880s, the clock of time was ticking. During this period, railroads and telegraphs began to spread rapidly in the United States. By 1880, telegraphs had connected the Pacific coast of the United States, with telegraph lines reaching 290,000 miles in length. In 1890, the total length of U.S. railroads reached 150,000 miles, and a major railroad artery spanning the North American continent from east to west was completed.[7]

The popularity of telegraphs and railways greatly accelerated the speed and reliability of commodity circulation and reduced business risks. In addition, newspapers also expanded their circulation along with the railways and soon became national media.

In addition, major breakthroughs in mechanical manufacturing and processing technology in the 1880s made it possible to mass-produce standardized small-package products, such as cigarettes, watches, flour, breakfast cereals, film, and canned foods, which were packaged and printed with product labels and manufacturer brand names when they left the factory[8].

At this time, manufacturers began to name their products and advertise them, and brands began to emerge in large numbers (as mentioned in the previous chapter, the United States enacted the Trademark Law in 1881). This was the beginning of brand marketing and communication in the modern sense, and business entered the era of mass brands. Mass production, mass circulation, and mass exposure have become the mainstream business model in the past 100 years.

Large-scale production means establishing a large-scale production system, providing standardized products, and implementing a popular pricing strategy to meet the needs of the widest spectrum of people and gain efficiency and profits through economies of scale and cost advantages.

Large-scale circulation is the use of railways and chain retail terminals to distribute goods in large quantities and reach every corner of the national market. Later, it gave rise to the theory of deep distribution in China.

Big exposure is to use national mainstream media and powerful media to carry out large-scale advertising and communication to create a high-profile brand, thereby influencing consumers' cognition and purchasing behavior.

I once said that the four basic elements of business are products, consumers, media, and channels. If a product wants to influence consumers to buy, it needs media to convey product information and shape the brand, and it needs channels to distribute and sell products and reach users.

The emergence of railways, telegraphs, newspapers and the advancement of mechanical manufacturing technology have promoted the upgrading of the three elements of products, media and channels. At the same time, they have also shaped the last element - consumers.

When consumers in different parts of the country, with different living habits and even speaking different languages, buy the same product and develop emotional and loyal behavior towards the same brand, it is no longer just a commercial phenomenon, but rather promotes the emergence of a consumer community. The brand connects Americans who have never met each other and even helps millions of immigrants to assimilate and Americanize more easily[9].

In 1882, Procter & Gamble began a large-scale advertising campaign for its product Ivory soap, becoming the first brand in the United States to launch national advertising. "Purity is as high as 99.44% and can float on the water" became one of the most famous advertising copy.

The following year, having tasted the sweetness of success, P&G invested another $11,000 in newspaper advertising across the United States, which was a huge success. By 1897, Ivory Soap’s advertising budget had soared to $300,000, and it had won 20% of the market share in the United States[10].

P&G pioneered a business model of using advertising to expand the national market, which attracted many to follow suit. Since then, using mass media to promote brands has become a common practice in corporate marketing.

With the use of mass media, various new advertising information means have emerged one after another and blossomed everywhere. For example, Michelin Tire began to use mascots in 1900, which was the earliest brand anthropomorphic element. Slogans, mascots, jingles, etc., after brand names and logos, have become new brand elements that help brands stand out.

(The Michelin Tire Man’s real name is “Bibendum”, and was named “the best logo of the century” in 2000)

The prosperity of advertising also promoted the development of advertising agencies. In 1890, the Ayer & Sons advertising company in Philadelphia, USA, designed a public advertising quotation, telling customers the minimum price for purchasing the page and the commission they would charge - 15% of the page price (some say 17.65%).

This system was officially confirmed in 1917 and became an international practice that has been followed for nearly a hundred years. The American Association of Advertising Agencies was established at that time to encourage different advertising companies to agree on a common media agency commission fee standard to avoid malicious competition. This association is what we know today as the 4A (American Association of Advertising Agencies).

On the other hand, in 1902, Unilever began to hire the famous advertising company JWT as its own advertising agency to provide brand agency services for its brands such as LUX soap. This marked the beginning of the advertising agency’s brand agency business. JWT created the classic slogan for LUX: “The soap used by beautiful stars”[11].

(Lux's star strategy has helped it achieve great success)

In the early 20th century, brands were mainly built through mass media advertising, so the model of hiring advertising agencies to operate brands became the mainstream in the business world, and advertising agency + media agency became the two standard businesses in the modern advertising industry.

Especially after the 1920s, as radio and television came onto the stage, companies suddenly discovered that they could make their brands popular across the country overnight through powerful advertising, and mass media endowed brands with tremendous power.

On Christmas Eve in 1906, Canadian Fessenden completed the world's first radio broadcast in Massachusetts, USA, transmitting language and music to the world.

In 1920, Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, USA, opened the world's first commercial radio station. By 1930, radio broadcasting had spread all over the world.

In 1933, the radio series Ma Perkins sponsored by Procter & Gamble was broadcast in the United States and became very popular. Because these early radio programs and television series were mostly sponsored by soap brands, they were also called soap operas. Inserted advertisements and program sponsorship were widely used during this period and became a common form of advertising.

On the other hand, British engineer John Logie Baird invented television in 1925, and television programs began to appear in the United States in the 1930s. In 1948, the production of televisions in the United States had reached 1 million, and the number of television stations increased to 41.

In the 1960s, color TVs began to become popular in the United States. In 1964, 1.24 million color TVs were sold in the United States, and the total number reached 2.86 million, which was equivalent to the total of the previous decade. In 1966, the total number of color TVs owned by American households exceeded 10 million.

When television became a national media, colorful images and sound, light and electricity effects firmly attracted the attention of the entire nation, and the effectiveness of advertising and the appeal of brands were further amplified.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the advertising industry launched a "creative revolution" and various advertising communication theories were proposed, becoming the main tools and methods for brand building. Differentiated brand identity elements - advertising creativity - mass media have created many strong brands that continue to this day and have lasted for a long time.

If the United States in the 1960s is too far away for us, then you can look back at the craze for TV commercials in China in the 1990s.

In 1995, Qinchi Winery, from a remote small county in the Yimeng Mountains of Shandong Province, won the CCTV bid with a sky-high price of 66.66 million yuan. The slogan "Forever Qinchi, Forever Green" spread across the country through CCTV.

This small winery, which only obtained its business license in 1990 and whose products had never been sold outside Weifang, was in short supply for a while, triggering a nationwide rush to buy its products. Due to insufficient production capacity, Qin Chi bought raw liquor from Sichuan and Guizhou for blending, and then packaged it as Qin Chi for sale. After this incident was exposed, Qin Chi collapsed.

In 2003, five days after the Yake V9 advertisement endorsed by Zhou Xun was broadcast on CCTV, sales began to rise sharply. Distributors changed from ordering 50-60 boxes at a time to ordering 500-600 boxes at a time, and some even ordered 2,000 boxes at a time, creating the brand myth of opening up the national market in five days.

This advertisement was planned by local advertising master Ye Maozhong, although he himself was proud of the fact that he came up with the resounding name "Yake V9", created the vitamin candy category (satisfying people's strong desire for health after SARS), and shaped the sporty and energetic brand image of Yake V9.

But consumers and we all know that the secret to the success of Yake V9 is Zhou Xun's endorsement and CCTV's bombardment. Hiring celebrities to endorse + spending on TV commercials + terminal distribution have become the only way to build the brand .

Compared with the high-profile promotion of Qinchi and Yake V9, Sanzhu oral liquid, which was launched at the same time as Qinchi, took the path of surrounding the city from the countryside. Sanzhu's advertisements were once all over every mud wall, every electric pole, and even every cowshed, pigpen and toilet in the countryside. Their promoters always carried a bucket of paint in their hands.

Every weekend, Sanzhu people put on white coats and go to the countryside to provide free medical consultations. Folks line up to come, and of course you know the results of the consultations. There are also overwhelming newspaper advertisements. The major newspapers are public welfare reports on Sanzhu’s sponsorship of academic activities, and the homemade tabloids are various testimonials of the miraculous effects of drinking Sanzhu by ordinary consumers.

This advertising method is equally powerful. The sales of Sanzhu oral liquid, which was launched in 1994, were 125 million yuan that year. In 1995, the sales jumped to 2 billion yuan, and reached an astonishing 8 billion yuan in 1996. Of course, Sanzhu oral liquid also died from false advertising.

In such an era, mass media dominated by television, radio, and newspapers monopolized the right to speak. The advertisements disseminated through these media were highly authoritative and influential. As long as the advertising volume was guaranteed, it would bring in huge sales. It was truly a golden age where "one advertisement was worth a fortune."

In the past , in agricultural society, brands were mainly shaped by word of mouth , and most brands evolved spontaneously and were spread by word of mouth. After entering the industrial society, productivity was liberated and production efficiency was greatly improved. Enterprises began to seek more efficient communication tools, trying to use one advertisement to persuade everyone to buy the same product.

Word of mouth is important (and remains important today), but it relies on interpersonal relationships to spread, and its speed and efficiency are very poor.

With the advent of mass media, the way to promote a brand is quite simple and crude. As long as there is large-scale advertising, coupled with celebrity endorsements and endorsement from authoritative media, the company will be regarded as a big brand, a well-known brand. Consumers will then rush to buy it and dealers will rush to become its agent.

In the public consumer psychology, a company that can invest so much in advertising and hire big stars to endorse its products must have no problem with quality; and since everyone is buying a brand, then there must be no problem or risk if I buy it (in fact, this is a consumer psychology of herd consumption and authority worship).

At this time, brands were mainly shaped by communication. The essence of a brand was its popularity, and fame was sales. Advertising companies became the main body of brand building. Branding mainly meant advertising and communication. This was the era of brand communication.

Communication has created a phenomenon, that is, the world of communication is not equal to the real world. The facts perceived by people are often different from the actual facts, or even completely different. But for consumers, cognition is the fact, and feeling is the most real.

As early as the 1930s, John B. Watson conducted a groundbreaking experiment. At that time, he gathered a group of smokers together, removed the labels and outer packaging of various brands of cigarettes, and asked them to taste them.

The results showed that this group of veteran smokers who claimed that they would not smoke any cigarette other than a certain brand could not tell at all what kind of cigarettes they usually smoked.

Watson was a psychologist and one of the founders of the theory of "behaviorism". He has long been committed to studying human behavior. He was also an advertiser who worked for JWT for many years and later joined the company's board of directors as deputy general manager. The above experiment was designed by him for a tobacco client. The experiment proved that people's perception of brands and products is not the same thing.

So in 1955, BB Gardner and Sidney J. Levy published an article titled "Products and Brands" in Harvard Business Review.

This classic paper analyzes the differences between products and brands in the minds of consumers, theoretically distinguishes the two, and puts forward the original idea of ​​“brand image” [12].

This was the first leap in the history of brand thinking, which separated the brand from the product.

Brand originates from product, but it is higher than product. Only after breaking away from the restriction of product, brand thought flourished. This paper inspired many practitioners, and Gardner and Levy started the academic research on brand. If you want to know more about the relationship between brand and product, you can read the third part of the 30 Lectures on Brand, "The Antinomy of Brand and Product" .

Among those who were inspired by Gardner and Levy at the time was David Ogilvy, the famous founder of Ogilvy & Mather, known as the "Pope of Advertising".

At the 1955 American Advertising Association annual meeting, Ogilvy delivered a speech entitled "Image and Brand", advocating the application of brand image to advertising practice, and highly praised Gardner and Levy's article in his speech.

In 1957, W.D. Tyler, vice president of Leo Burnett, another well-known advertising company, published an article titled “Image, Brand and Consumer” in the Journal of Marketing (JM), proposing that advertising should create an image that goes beyond the selling points of the product.

The “cowboy” image created for Marlboro cigarettes is a representative example of Leo Burnett Company.[13]

Then, in 1961, Ogilvy published his masterpiece "Confessions of an Advertising Man", in which he clearly proposed that building brand image should be the core concept of Ogilvy, and said the famous saying that has been passed down to this day: "Every advertisement is a long-term investment in brand image."

Following in Ogilvy’s footsteps, another established advertising agency, Grey, proposed a brand personality philosophy, emphasizing that the communication between brands and consumers is divided into three levels: logo, image, and personality, with personality being the highest level.

The "Brand Character" (or Brand Personality) theory was theoretically improved by brand scholar Jennifer Aaker in 1997.

It sounds like Grey is better than Ogilvy, but in fact there is no real difference between the two. Image theory advocates delivering more emotional benefits in advertising and building emotional brands, while personality theory advocates giving personalized characteristics to brands. Both are just to create intangible value for products beyond physical functions.

To learn more about image theory and personality theory, please refer to Lecture 13 of 30 Brand Lectures: "Brand Personality" .

The USP theory, "Unique Selling Proposition" , which was born in the early 1950s , is opposite to and complements the image personality. The theory was proposed by Rosser Reeves, chairman of Bates Advertising, and is the first systematic advertising theory.

This theory emphasizes that every advertisement must make a statement to consumers and give a clear promise of benefits. This statement comes from the excavation of the product's unique selling point, which must be a product feature that similar competing products do not have or have not advertised.

In 1969, Al Ries and Jack Trout took the USP theory a step further and proposed the "Positioning Theory" . This theory advocates that a brand should occupy a prominent position in the category with the help of unique product characteristics, and this category position will be the handle for consumers to recognize and remember the brand.

In the 1950s and 1960s, brand concepts emerged in large numbers. In addition to the rapid development of the media, another core reason was that after World War II, production was no longer an obstacle, goods were no longer scarce, business and markets entered an era of diversification, and the products of different companies became less and less different.

Especially after the 1960s, competition began to become fierce and consumers became more picky, so how to create a differentiated brand and how to implement communication and promotion became the top issues facing enterprises.

The practice-stimulation theory and the marketing management ideas of Philip Kotler, the "father of modern marketing", were also established during this period.

Ogilvy and others believed that after products become homogenized, advertising must build a differentiated image at the brand level to differentiate itself from competitors and cater to consumers' decision-making patterns that rely on emotion rather than rationality to create psychological satisfaction for them.

The basis of Ries and Trout's argument is that fierce market competition has led to the continuous differentiation of product categories. If a brand wants to defeat its competitors, it must occupy a product feature and become the representative of a niche category. If it does not want to be the only one, it must be the first. Only in this way can it stand out from the minds of consumers.

In particular, in 2004, Reese published the book "The Origin of Brands", which clearly stated that brands come from the differentiation of categories, and the goal of branding is to occupy categories.

However, what they all emphasize is to influence consumers’ minds through differentiation. What consumers remember and recognize from the communication directly determines the strength of the brand.

USP, brand image, and positioning constitute the three dimensions of brand communication. They spread the brand and establish value from three different perspectives: product function, user image and personality, and category status. As for whether brand communication should be rational or emotional, it has become a century-long debate in the industry for decades.

In 1986, Korean-American scholar Choong Whan Park and his collaborators published a paper "Strategic Brand Concept" in the Journal of Marketing, trying to stitch these different brand ideas.

The brand concept management theory he proposed (Strategic Brand Concept-Image Management, referred to as BCM) divided the brand into three dimensions: functional (Functional), experiential (Experiential), and symbolic (Symbolic) [14].

This theoretical framework not only unifies different brand ideas, but also clarifies the fundamental difference between brands and products at the theoretical level, that is, products are only one-dimensional, while brands have three-dimensional concepts, which responds to the ideas of Gardner and Levi in ​​1955.

In the past, in the era of scarcity, the center of branding was to establish identification, and its key role was to form distinctions and indicate product origin and endorsement quality. The expression was those obvious brand elements, such as brand name, LOGO, advertising slogan, mascot, packaging design patterns, etc. "The brand is just a name and logo", this is the original brand idea.

But in the 1980s, Parker did not agree with this superficial, empirical, and superficial understanding. He emphasized the intrinsic and implicit values ​​of the brand, including emotions, personality, respect, satisfaction, etc. The center of branding is the symbol of creation, and the key is value-giving [15].

Parker's idea is to systematically sort out the brand's connotation, and it also provides theoretical explanations and construction of various brand communication methods since the 1950s and 1960s, but it cannot provide specifications and standards for systematic management of brands. However, it is only one step away from that a new era is coming.

3. The era of management

Once a strong brand is established, it can help companies grow rapidly and replicate in batches with the help of new business models and large-scale retail systems. This model is the brand licensed business model pioneered by Disney in the 1930s, and the brand franchise store business model pioneered by McDonald's in 1953.

In 1968, McDonald's launched a golden arch logo, and the golden "M" logo gradually appeared in every corner of the world, becoming a global brand with great influence.

Moreover, during this period, large retail brands represented by Walmart flourished, and a large number of brands grew and grew. Brands embarked on the road of large-scale expansion, and the market competition pattern changed, and a number of giant companies were born.

In 1980, P&G's sales exceeded US$10 billion, becoming one of the largest multinational companies in the United States. To further expand, P&G began a large number of brand acquisitions.

During this period, the fourth wave of large-scale corporate mergers and acquisitions occurred in Europe and the United States, and the number and amount of mergers and acquisitions were unprecedented. For example, in 1984, California Mobil Oil Company merged Gulf Oil Company for US$18.5 billion; in 1985, General Electric acquired US Radio Company for US$6 billion.

There is often a phenomenon in corporate mergers and acquisitions, that is, the capital market's valuation of a company is often higher than the company's own book value.

Before the 1980s, the bidding ratio for corporate mergers and acquisitions was not more than 1:7 or 1:8; and since then, the bidding ratio for branded companies has exceeded 1:25, that is, the price is more than 25 times the book assets [16]. Typical cases, for example, in 1988, Nestlé acquired Rowntree (it owns the famous chocolate brand KitKat KitKat).

This fully demonstrates that brands have huge intangible value and can help companies obtain potential value-added effects in the capital market. So the question follows, how to scientifically evaluate and calculate this intangible asset? This is an urgent need in the business community.

So in 1988 , the US merger and acquisition wave reached its peak (the annual merger and acquisition finance reached US$350 billion),

The American Institute of Marketing Sciences (MSI) proposed the concept of "Brand Equity" to reflect the valuation and premium brought to the company by brand ownership. It has become the most important research direction in the marketing field.

The industry took the lead in exploring this topic. In 1989, J. Murphy of Interbrand brand consulting company edited and published a specialized work on brand evaluation, constantly improving the company's evaluation methods.

At the same time, academic research results also appeared quickly. In 1991, David A. Aaker, honorary professor of marketing at the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley, and vice president of Prophet Brand Strategy, published the book "Management of Brand Equity".

In the book, Ak regards the brand as the most precious intangible asset of the company and describes and defines the brand assets.

This book is known as the "brand management trilogy" along with the subsequent publication of "Creating a Strong Brand" (1995) and "Brand Leadership" (2000) by Ak.

These trilogies were sold well around the world and had a wide and far-reaching impact on the business circles of countries around the world. Ak has therefore become a world-class brand management master, an authoritative scholar and leader in the global brand circle, especially in the field of brand assets, and is known as the "original brand assets".

By 1993, another brand master, Kevin Lane Keller, professor of marketing at the Tucker School of Business at Dartmouth University, also published a groundbreaking paper, proposing the idea of ​​"customer-based brand equity", namely the CBBE (Customer-Based Brand Equity) model.

This theory once again expanded the connotation of brand assets and later gradually became the core of modern brand theory. In 1998, Keller expanded his classic paper into the book "Strategic Brand Management", which was hailed as the "Bible of Brands".

Brand equity theory, looking at brands from the perspective of corporate operations and finance, has improved the status and role of brands in corporate management and provided strong reasons for companies to build brands. From then on, brands are no longer tools for short-term promotions, but represent the core competitiveness of the company and directly affect the company's valuation. The significance and importance of the brand have been greatly improved.

This is the second leap in brand history, which elevates the brand from tactical means to corporate strategic level.

In 2014, when Ake published the book "Brand Master", he also specifically recalled: "The concept of "brand is an asset" is deeply related to the decline of the view that the main role of brand marketing was to stimulate sales." [17]

When writing the book "History of Brand Thought", Professor Lu Taihong also emphasized that modern brand theory is based on two cornerstones, one is brand equity and the other is brand strategy. From brand to brand equity, from tactics to strategy, are two watersheds that distinguish modern (brand concept) from tradition [18].

Ake and Keller's definition and division of brand assets provide basis and standards for brand management. Although different companies, different brand consulting companies, and advertising agencies today have their own brand models and brand evaluation standards, if you study and compare these models carefully, you will find that they are basically the same, and they are all based on the definitions of Ake and Keller.

If you want to study brand assets, please refer to the article "Manage Brand Assets" 30 Lectures of Brands.

Brand management has now begun to become the most concerned topic of the entire academic and industry. Managing, maintaining and improving brand assets has become the most important task of the enterprise, and the functional research of brand management has begun to flourish.

In 1994, the authoritative journal Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) published a special issue on brand management research; the Journal of Marketing published a special issue on strategic brand management; and the Harvard Business Review also published a collection of essays on brand management.

Intel also published the book "Brand Power" this year, and in 1998, another book "Brand: New Wealth Creator", vigorously advocated the importance of brand equity and management, which represents the view of frontier academics and top global brand consulting companies [19].

In fact, the title of "Strategic Brand Management" is not Keller's patent. As early as 1991, Jean-Noël Kapferer, a professor of strategy at HEC Paris and a Frenchman, published a book of the same name, which has a huge influence in Europe.

In addition, Richard Elliott, a professor at the University of Bath in the UK, and Alexander Chernev, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the United States, also published the book of the same name in 2007 and 2015. Professor He Jiaxun of East my country Normal University also has a book called "Strategic Brand Management".

Why do these different scholars have to use the same title? This fully demonstrates that brands have some commonality in their minds, and this commonality reflects the words "strategy" and "management".

Strategy represents the central position of a brand within the enterprise, and the brand is the main source for the enterprise to gain growth and enhance its competitiveness. Management means that brand building is not just a matter of the marketing department, but is related to the overall operation and operation of the enterprise.

As Professor Lu Taihong said, “Strategic brand management constitutes a continuous tradition” [20].

Among the authors of "Strategic Brand Management", Keller and Chernev became the second author (12th edition) and the third author (16th edition) of Mr. Kotler's classic book "Marketing Management" in 2004 and 2022, while Professor He Jiaxun is the translator of the book "Marketing Management". Brands have become the center of modern marketing .

In addition to Aker and Keller, another who sets an example for brand management is Don E. Schultz, a professor at Northwestern University in the United States. He proposed "Integrated Marketing Communication" (IMC), and published the book "Integrated Marketing Communication" in 1999.

IMC's idea emphasizes that the information that consumers have is the only competitive advantage of corporate organizations. How consumers understand and recognize a company is the real marketing value. Therefore, consumer communication is the whole of marketing. The goal of corporate marketing is to influence consumers' reception and awareness of corporate information.

Communication is not just about putting in media advertisements. In fact, everything that corporate marketing does is to communicate to consumers. Whether it is product development, packaging design, pricing, channel activities, promotions, or public relations, it is all about conveying the same information to consumers and jointly establishing a brand in the minds of consumers.

Since everything is dissemination, and all contacts when a company and consumers are the carriers of communication and the carrier of the brand, the core work of corporate marketing is to operate information flow and let the company's various marketing methods collaborate, which is integration.

Brand establishment not only comes from advertising, but from the integration of all business behaviors of the company and joint external communication. All marketing is for communication and to build a brand.

IMC has pointed out a new direction for corporate marketing and has a new dimension to the understanding of brands. "Integration" has since become a hot word for marketers. Schultz has thus become one of the most famous marketing masters in the world and is known as the "father of integrated marketing communication". To learn more about the integration ideas, I recommend reading 30 lectures on Brands 21 "Integrated Brand Communication" .

Since this is the case, in the past, many companies have appointed brand work to an advertising agency with full responsibility. The practice of promoting the brand through advertising communication and media delivery, thereby driving sales performance is one-sided, short-term behavior, and serious shortcomings.

Advertising alone cannot create a strong brand, that is only a small part of brand building, and building a brand is no longer just an advertising agency. Enterprises must pay more attention to brand building at the strategic level and overall management level.

Ake also expressed this view in "Brand Master": "From a tactical perspective, brand management was once the dominant paradigm, which believed that brand management could be entrusted to advertising managers or advertising agencies because it looked more like management of product image, advertising planning, distribution strategies, product promotions, product packaging and enhanced sales.

…At the same time, the scope of brand management will be further expanded, covering multiple aspects such as market insights, stimulating breakthrough product innovation, corporate growth strategy, brand portfolio strategy, and global brand strategy. ”[21]

So how do we reflect the functions of brand management in our organizational structure and work philosophy, and how do we ensure the strategic position of the brand? This will go back to the brand manager system invented by Procter & Gamble in 1931.

Within the company, a brand is fully responsible by a full-time brand manager and has its own dedicated operation team; outside the company, a brand hires a separate advertising agency to be responsible for communication and promotion, with independent brand strategy support.

The brand manager, as the direct management person of a brand, is responsible for the entire process from product development to marketing promotion, and assumes sales responsibilities. This is the brand manager system.

This mechanism has promoted the transformation of P&G from functional management to brand management, established a brand-centered marketing method, and gradually formed P&G's own brand management system. It has brought vitality to P&G, guaranteed the long-term vitality of the brand, and made P&G, an old store with a history of nearly 200 years, still the world's largest daily chemical giant, with a number of successful brands.

Today, the brand manager system is widely adopted in the world, especially becoming the organizational management paradigm of consumer goods companies.

From this mechanism, we can also see that the brand department and brand manager have actually had the functions of overall coordination, coordination and control of the entire process of the company's product development, product production, brand building, advertising communication, and marketing promotion from the very beginning. It must connect various departments such as R&D, production, marketing, logistics, sales, and finance to achieve brand goals.

However, with the complexity of business and the refinement of division of labor, many companies' brand departments have now become advertising departments and material design departments, losing their due guidance role in the product departments and sales departments, so the central position and strategic role of the brand cannot be guaranteed.

Regarding this issue, we will leave it to the article "Building Brand Organization" 18, 30 lectures, and discuss it in detail.

At the same time, advertising companies are also evolving, trying to prove that they are not just about being creative and producing advertisements, but are responsible for the company's brand management.

In the early 1990s, Ogilvy proposed the operating concept of "brand housekeeper", and in the mid-1990s, it was upgraded to "360° brand manager".

Ogilvy's 360-degree includes six major aspects: product, image, consumer, channel, visual management, and business reputation. It emphasizes that every consumer touchpoint must be fully managed, which can reflect the core value and image of the brand and achieve the overall communication effect. This is a complete set of corporate marketing plans and the product of brand management ideas.

This approach has expanded the business scope of advertising companies and enhanced its influence on corporate customers. Major advertising companies around the world have successively transformed from advertising agencies to brand agencies, began to serve customers with brand-centered approach, and put forward their own brand management concepts.

For example, Thompson Total Branding (TTB), Brand Wheel/Essence, Publicis’s “La Holistic Difference” (LHD), etc.

(Or the wheel)

(How come the wheels are always there)

P&G's brand management system and advertising companies' brand management ideas ensure the brand's height and status at the strategic level from the perspective of organization and concept, and implement it in corporate management practices.

Brand assets, strategic brand management and integrated marketing communication ideas represent a new era, pushing brands to reach a peak in corporate operations and reaching new heights. And behind one mountain is another peak.

4. The age of users

Since the new century, with the development of the Internet, digitalization has become a new brand marketing topic.

In 2000, McKinsey, a famous consulting company, took the lead in proposing the concept of "digital branding" in "McKinsey Quarterly" and gave the forefront of the industry. In 2010, Harvard Business Review published McKinsey's article "Branding in the Digital Age", which once again emphasized this concept.

In 2016, the global advertising budget reached US$605 billion, of which the amount of digital advertising exceeded that of TV advertising for the first time, and brand digitalization is imminent. However, digitalization does not mean serving digital media advertising, or using more digital technologies in all aspects of production and marketing.

From a deeper perspective, digitalization means a transformation from "enterprise subjectivity" to "user subjectivity".

In the past, brand building was the subjective nature of the enterprise. Although marketing has been emphasizing customer orientation since the 1960s, and Keller proposed brand assets based on customers. However, brand management ideas have always been from the perspective of the enterprise.

Enterprises occupy a dominant position in brand building, are responsible for evaluating and maintaining brand assets, and dominating brand communication and communication.

Consumers are the audience and the silent majority. They are greatly influenced by brands and advertising in their lives, but their influence on the company is limited.

However, digitalization fully empowers consumers and establishes user subjectivity. In turn, consumers have dominated brand communication. The relationship and position between brands and consumers have undergone a major reversal, and consumers have turned their backs.

Around the new millennium, two heavyweight papers appeared in the core journal Journal of Consumer Research.

One is the "Consumer and Brand Relationship Theory" published by S. Fournier in 1998, which first proposed the "Brand Relationship" theory;

Another article is the paper "Brand Community and Sociology of Brands" published by AMMuniz in 2001, where he proposed the "Brand Community" theory .

This is the third leap in brand history, and the brand's thinking has changed from focusing on the brand itself to emphasizing the brand-consumer relationship.

1. It prompts us to rethink the basic topic of "what is a brand"

In the past, whether it was to understand a brand as an identification symbol, image or asset, it ultimately meant to define the brand based on the brand itself, but now it is to define the brand based on the brand-consumer relationship.

In fact, in marketing ideas, relationships have become a new marketing theory paradigm since the 1980s and 1990s. In 1985, Barbara B. Jackson proposed the relationship marketing theory; in 1999, Gartner Group Inc proposed the concept of CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

However, these ideas are all about establishing and maintaining customer relationships as goals and results of marketing promotion. Brand relationships and brand community theory remind us that relationships are not just means, but also essence. Brands are the embodiment of the relationship between products/enterprises and customers, and the strength of relationships determines the strength of brand power .

In Monitz's paper, he defines a community as a "special, unregulated social group formed based on the admiration of a certain brand" [22].

This definition points out two points: one is that the community appears because of worship, and the other is that the community occurs offline, and is a circle formed by loyal fans, typical of which is the Harley-Davidson Club.

However, since the publication of this paper, it has been more than 20 years. Looking back at the magnificent Internet revolution, with the rise of social media and the popularization of smartphones, as well as the development of new technologies and new gameplay such as short videos, algorithms, live broadcasts, private domains, AR/VR, and meta-universe, digitalization not only subverts the communication methods of traditional media and changes people's purchasing behavior, but also permanently recreates people's social and lifestyles. In the era of digital survival, the bond between brands and consumers has been unprecedentedly strengthened.

For brand community, we also need to explain two points:

First, the community has shifted from offline to online, and its scale and influence have greatly expanded. Consumers have formed small circles on major social media and online platforms to deeply integrate into it;

Second, the community does not mainly come from worship, but because consumers have established more direct connections with brands, such as private domains.

Consumers can directly follow the brand's social media accounts and like, collect, forward and comment on the content posted by the company; they can actively participate in the company's marketing behavior and spread it out; they can freely comment on the company's products. On the other hand, companies can also have a fuller understanding of their consumers, and everything on the Internet is transparent.

In 2009, Monitz proposed a concept called "Brand Engagement" based on the brand community . This concept has many translations, such as brand infiltration, brand participation, brand pledge, etc., but I personally think these translations are not accurate enough and vivid enough.

On the one hand, "Engage" emphasizes that consumers participate in corporate marketing and interact with the brand.

In the past, in the era of communication, brand communication was one-way. "What to say" determines what kind of brand a company will build and what brand image and value it has. Information strategy is crucial.

But today, the importance of information dissemination gives way to social behavior . What is more important than "saying" is consumers' feedback on corporate marketing behavior. Whether consumers respond and how to respond to the information disseminated by companies is more important than the information itself. Compared with "saying", companies should listen to what consumers say, consciously open nodes in brand marketing, design interactive mechanisms, allow consumers to participate, and enhance consumers' sense of participation.

On the other hand, "Engagement" advocates that consumers and enterprises cooperate to create value and form some unwritten agreement in the results.

For example, consumers spontaneously maintain brands on the Internet and in life, actively help brands speak out, and jointly build content with brands; for example, brands obtain valuable information and business data from it through continuous communication with consumers, and create products with consumers;

The result of this approach is that the brand and consumers form a certain kind of sharing of interests, the brand gains greater development from user management, and consumers gain more emotional value, social motivation and sense of group belonging from the development of the brand. Both prosper and the other lose, such as Lululemon and NIO's user community, such as the user organizations of rice noodles and pollen.

So I think the accurate translation of "Brand Engagement" should be a brand community formed by brands based on social interactions with consumers, which is the ultimate pursuit of establishing brand relationships.

Like the "20 milestones in brand history" mentioned in the aforementioned Lipincote, the last one is called the New Era of Brands. As an example, Airbnb, founded in 2008, is a representative of the new generation of brands. Airbnb is a model for establishing a brand through online communities and virtual communities.

2. Start with the consumer-oriented

Brand relationships and brand communities have further stimulated new thinking on branding, which is to answer the question "how to build a brand".

Against the backdrop of the dominance of users, the new branding concept emphasizes the need to start from consumers and pay attention to consumer feelings, especially the emphasis on emotions and personalized elements.

The six major variables of consumer-brand relationship he finally identified in Fonia are: love and passion, self-relationship, trust, dependence, intimacy, and brand partner quality. Obviously, this set of variables has very strong personalized traits [23].

Emotional marketing was particularly popular after 2000. For example, Marc Gobe published "Emotional Branding" in 2001, and later he established a consulting company called Emotional Branding;

"Lovemarks" proposed by Kevin Roberts, the world's largest advertising company, in 2004.

For example, Parker mentioned in the second chapter, he proposed "Brand Attachment" in 2005 (meaning attachment and attachment). In 2016, Parker published the book "Brand Worship" with his collaborators;

There is also a bestseller in 2017, from "Building a StoryBrand" by New York Times bestseller writer Donald Miller.

In addition, "Brand Sense" published by Martin Lindstrom, a world-renowned brand master, in 2005, became the beginning of advocating the emotional branding route. The views of cool brands, trendy brands, cute brands and other ideas that were born thereafter, as well as the concept of paying attention to product design and brand aesthetics, can be regarded as the aftermath of the emotional route.

However, since the theory of brand image and brand personality has been proposed, the idea of ​​emotion and sentiment has not been a new concept, and the above concepts can also be said to be similar. In the era of user-led, there are two brand ideas that have truly produced influence.

One is the brand experience.

In 1998, two founders of the American strategic consulting firm Horizon (LLP), Joseph Pine II and JHGilmore, published a post on Welcome to the Experience Economy in Harvard Business Review and wrote the book The Experience Economy the following year, emphasizing that experience is a new economic form and the ultimate content of consumption. "Experience" quickly became a new focus that attracted much attention from the industry.

Inspired by this book, Professor BH Schmitt of Columbia Business School proposed the academic theory of "experiential marketing" in the same year, and published two books, "Experiential Marketing" (2000) and "Customer Experience Management" (2001).

In 2009, Schmidt published an in-depth paper on brand experience in the Journal of Marketing, proposing a scale for measuring and managing brand experience. The measurement scale includes four dimensions: sensory, Affective, Behavioral, and Thinking [24].

The experience builds a new bridge.

First of all, at the beginning of the brand idea, Gardner and Levi mentioned that "the brand idea flourished after they were free from product restrictions." Most of the past brand ideas emphasized the independence of the separation of brands and products.

However, experience is first based on products. Only unique and high-quality products and services can create good experiences. Experience makes the product differentiated and significant in the minds of consumers. The brand stands out and experience becomes a new path to establishing a brand.

Secondly, experience is different from emotional routes, because experience is the ultimate goal of consumption, while emotion is only added value. The experience theory elevates "experience" to the economic level, emphasizing that consumption is a process of experience, which means that consumers consume not only for a certain product function, but also in wanting to obtain a unique and unforgettable experience.

Experience is not only related to consumers' senses and emotions, but also to consumers' life scenes, lifestyles and cultural background. A good brand can leave a deep impression and memory on consumers and strengthen connection with consumers. Therefore, experience deepens the brand relationship.

Experience connects products more closely with brands, consumers and brands, providing new ideas for branding. For in-depth research on experience, please refer to the article "Experience Brands" of 30 Lectures by Brands.

The other is cultural strategy.

In 2002, DB Holt, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School and Oxford University, published a paper titled "Why Brands Are In Trouble?" in the Journal of Consumer Research, exploring the relationship between consumer culture and branding, providing a new cultural perspective for brand strategy.

In 2004, Holt published "How Brands Become Icons/ The Principles of Cultural Branding);

In 2010, he and Douglas Cameron published Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands at Oxford University Press. Cultural Branding became his signature.

Holt worked and taught in Europe, and was deeply influenced by the European brand school, and emphasized the influence of culture on the brand. At the same time, Holt also has a very strong practical spirit. He has served as the marketing director of the famous brand L'Oreal and has worked in many companies in charge of brand work.

In 2010, in order to practice his unique brand strategic thinking, he also founded the Cultural Strategy Group and personally served as president.

If the contribution of brand communities to the theory of relationship is to use the interaction between consumers and the influence of circles to strengthen brand relationships, and transform the one-to-one relationship between brands and consumers into one-to-many relationships between brands and groups and many-to-many relationships within consumer circles.

Then, the cultural strategy lies in influencing consumers through social popular culture and subculture, using social public relations to leverage brand relationships, and truly turning "my brand" into "our brand".

Many people mistakenly believe that brand relationships are emotional connections, but it is difficult to make consumers fall in love with and be loyal to a certain brand. It is unrealistic. It will only happen to a very small number of loyal fans. Most consumers will not project strong personal emotions to the brand.

The real brand relationship comes from social interaction with consumers, allowing consumers to participate in brand marketing, enter the brand community, and impress consumers through the power of circles and culture.

In 2013, Carlos J. Torelli, a professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign, published the book Globalization, Culture, and Branding.

The subtitle of this book is very long, called "How to Leverage Cultural Equity for Building Iconic Brands in the Era of Globalization", which means how to operate cultural assets to build a totem-style brand in the era of globalization. This book proposes the concept of "Culture Equity" , and cultural construction has also become one of the core elements of brand globalization.

Branding based on culture has opened up new routes and new ideas for brand strategy. As brand asset management becomes the mainstream in the industry, these new brand ideas prompt us to think that customer assets and cultural assets may be more important than brand assets.

3. Relationship and community theory also consolidate the reason for "why build a brand"

In the digital age, consumers have greater power. Consumers' participation and interaction can determine the effect of brand marketing and communication; consumers' feedback and public opinion can greatly affect brand awareness and image; consumers' active voice and diffusion also largely determine the brand's performance and performance.

When Lipingkot selected the "20 milestones in brand history", the 17th was the withdrawal of the Gap logo. At that time, Gap released a brand new brand logo, but consumers did not like it, and formed many communities on social media to protest, so Gap had to change it back to the old logo. This shows that consumers have become the decisive force in brand building.

(In 2010, Gap's new short-lived logo)

In view of this, it has become unprecedentedly important to influence consumers and establish relationships with them. Digitalization is not just about building digital media and e-commerce channels, but about data and technology to understand consumer needs, understand consumer behavior, and rebuild consumer relationships.

The emphasis on relationships has reshaped the brand concept and changed the practice of branding, which can better enable us to grasp the essence of the brand and thus strengthen brand building. Only when a brand establishes sustainable relationships with customers can a brand create lifelong customer value and achieve sustainable growth.

Notes to this article:

Most of the quotes of brand ideas proposed in various periods in the history of brand development come from Professor Lu Taihong's book "A Brief History of Brand Thought". Here, I would like to pay special tribute to Professor Lu.

[1][6][7][8][9] Lu Yilin, "Modern American Commodity Retail Industry", Tsinghua University Press, May 2001, 1st edition;

[2] "20 milestones in the history of brands", author: DATS Design Translation Group, Source: Zhaiku, 2015, link: https://www.zcool.com.cn/article/ZMTc3OTAw.html

[3] "History of Brand Theory Development [Second Stage]: Brand Identity (Brand Identity), Source: Zhihu user "Shredder", 2023-05-07, https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/626948606;

[4][5] Oriental Fortune Network, Advertising Encyclopedia, link: https://baike.eastmoney.com/item/%E5%B9%BF%E5%91%8A

[10] "History of Brand Theory Development [Phase I]: Origin and Early Practice of Brands", Source: Zhihu user "Shredder", 2023-05-07, Link: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/625815299;

[11] [12][14][15][16][18][19][20][22][23][24] Lu Taihong, "A Brief History of Brand Thought", Machinery Industry Press, 2020-6;

[13] "History of Brand Theory Development [Stage 3]: Brand Image", Source: Zhihu user "Shredder", 2023-05-07, Link: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/627338172

[17] [21] David Aker, "Brand Master: 20 Rules for Shaping Successful Brands", CITIC Publishing House, 2015-7-1;

Author: Empty-handed

WeChat public account: Empty Hands (ID: firesteal13)