Historical Evolution of Brands

Historically, most products were unbranded. Producers sold goods or commodities to fulfill our core basic needs like taste, hunger or energy. These products did not have any identification mark on them. The first step towards branding a commodity is to package it, e.g. rice, papad, salt. Water, for example used to be sold as a commodity. Today most mineral waters are sold as brands. The company enhances the value of the commodity functionally. Branding started formally when craftsmen put trademarks on their products to protect them against inferior quality. Painters started signing their art works. Pharmaceutical companies were the first to put brand names on their products. Today hardly anything is unbranded. If you look at yourself you will find everything you have worn or carried is of a particular brand, yes, some are successful brands and some are not.

Brands start off as products made out of certain ingredients. Over a period of time, brands are built through marketing activities and communications. They keep on acquiring at- tributes, core values and extended values.

There were examples of brands being used in Greek and Roman times. With a high level of illiteracy, shopkeepers hung picture above their shops indicating the types of goods they sold. Symbols were developed to provide an indication of the retailer’s specialty and thus the brand logo as a shorthand device signaling the brand’s capability was born. Use is still made of this aspect of branding, as in the case, for example, of the poised jaguar indicating the power developed by the Jaguar brand.

In the middle ages, craftsmen with specialist skills began to; stamp their marks on their goods and trademarks. Distinguish in between different suppliers became more common. In these early days, branding gradually became a guarantee of the source of this product and ultimately its use as a form of legal protection against copying grew. Today, trademarks include words (e.g. Duracell and Matchbox), symbols (e.g. the distinctive Shell logo) or a unique pack shape (e.g. the Coca-Cola bottle), which have been registered which purchasers recognize as being unique to a particular brand.

The next landmark in the evolution of brands was associated with the growth of cattle farming in the New World of North America. Cattle owners wanted to make it clear to other potentially interested parties which animals they owned. By using a red-hot iron, with uniquely shaped end, they left a clear imprint on the skin of each their animals. This process appears to have been taken by many the basis for the meaning of the term brand, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘to mark indelibly as proof of ownership, as sign of quality, or for any other purpose’. This view of the purpose 0 brands as being identifying (differentiating) devices has remained with us until today. What is surprising is that in an enlightened era, aware of the much broader strategic interpretation of brands, many of today’s leading marketing textbooks still adhere to the brand solely as a differentiating device, for example, ‘a name, term, sign, symbol, design, or a combination of them, which is intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers, and to differentiate them from those of competitors. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, such a view was justified, as the next few paragraphs clarify. To regard brands as little more than differentiating devices is to run the risk of the replaced demise of the product or service in question.

To appreciate why organizations subscribed to brands as differentiating devices over 100 years ago, and to appreciate why this view held favor until the 1960s, it is necessary to consider the evolving retailing environment, particularly that relating to groceries, where classical brand management developed. In the first half of the nineteenth century, people bought their goods through four channels

• Retailers;
• From those who grew and sold their own produce;
• From markets where farmers displayed produce;
• From travelling salesmen.

Household groceries were normally produced by small manufacturers supplying a locally confined market. Consequently the quality of similar products varied according to retailer, who in many instances blended several suppliers’ produce. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, several factors influenced the manufacturer retailer relationship, i.e.

• The rapid rise of urban growth, reducing manufacturer consumer contact
• The widening of markets through improved transportation; the increasing number of retail outlets;
• The wider range of products held by retailers;
• Increasing demand.

A consequence of this was that manufacturers’ production increased, but with their increasing separation from consumers, they came to rely more on wholesalers. Likewise, retailers’ dependence on wholesalers increased, from whom they expected greater services, until the end of the nineteenth century, the situation was one of wholesaler dominance. Manufacturers produced according to wholesalers’ stipulations, which, in turn, were able to dictate terms and strongly influence the product range of the retailer. As an indication of the importance of wholesalers, it is estimated that by 1900 wholesalers were the main suppliers of the independent retailer who accounted for about ninety per cent of all retail sales.

During this stage, most manufacturers were –

• Selling unbranded goods;
• Having to meet wholesalers demands for low prices; spending minimal amounts on advertising;
• Selling direct to wholesalers, while’ having little contact retailers.

In this situation of competitive tender, the manufacturer’s profit depended mostly on sheer production efficiency. It was virtually commodity marketing, with little scope for increasing margins by developing and launching new products.

By the second half of the nineteenth century, many major manufacturers had embarked on branding; advertising and using a sales, force to reduce the dominance of wholesalers. In fact, by 1900 the balance of power had swung to the manufacturer, with whom if maintained until the 1960s. With branding and national market manufacturers strove to increase the consistency and quality of the brands, making them more recognizable through attractive packaging that no longer served the sole purpose of protection. Increase advertising was used to promote the growth of brands and with manufacturers exercising legally backed control over prices, and more manufacturers turned to marketing branded goods. This changing of the balance of power from wholesaler to manufacturer by the end of the last century marked another milestone in the evolutionary period of brands.

Brand owners were concerned with using their brands as legal registrations of their unique characteristics. Besides this, they directed their efforts towards consumers to make them aware that their brand was different in some way from those of competitors. Furthermore, they wanted their brands name to encourage belief in a consistent utility level that most were prepared to guarantee. Thus, whilst the differentiating aspect of the concept was initially regarded as the key issue, this soon also encompassed legal protection and functional communication.

Throughout this century, manufacturers’ interest in branding increased and with more sophisticated buyers and marketers, brands also acquired an emotional dimension that reflected buyers’ moods, personalities and the messages they wished to convey to others. However, with the greater choice to buyers through the availability of more competing products, the level of information being directed at buyers far exceeded their ability to be attentive to the many competing messages. Because of their limited cognitive capabilities, buyers began to use brand names shorthand devices to recall either their brand experiences or marketing claims and thus saved themselves the effort of having continuously to seek information.

The only other major landmark in the growth of branding was the metamorphosis from manufacturers’ brand of distributors, brand that began to occur around the turn of this century.