The Brand Experience - not as recent as you might think
While any number of old-time brands come to mind - Winchester Rifles, the McCormick Reaper, Singer Sewing Machines, Kellogg’s Cereals, Coca-Cola - I’ve always thought of branding as being something of an artifact of the industrial age. Sure, individual artists and craftsmen made their mark on the wares they created, but the name brand is more or less associated in my mind with mass production and mass marketing.
Apparently the idea of a brand goes back a lot further than that, as I learned from a brief article in the current Atlantic Monthly that references a study by a U-Cal Irvine economist. The study finds that brands of a sort were in use as far back as the Middle Ages. ("Brand Names Before the Industrial Revolution," by Gary Richardson, is available from the National Bureau of Economic Research for five bucks, which I was too cheap to pay, so I’m just going on the write up in The Atlantic.)
Richardson mined "mercantile records, internal guild documents, and other commercial artifacts" and determined that producers of goods developed identifying characteristics that the buyer would recognize, associate with quality, and pay a premium price for. We’re not talking about just labeling something, or marking it. Such labels and marks - as we well know from street hawkers selling "Vuitton" bags and "Rolex" watches - can be replicated by anyone. No, what goods producers did was build in features that would indicate that the product was theirs. Examples cited: "uniquely colored cloth, fabric with a recognizable weave, or pewter that resonated at a particular pitch when dinged." In many cases, goods were purchased from itinerant vendors, not from local trades people. You might not see the guy who sold you something for another 10 years - if ever. Meantime, you could get stuck with shoddy merchandise and no recourse. And, unlike so many of us today, folks then couldn’t just shrug it off and run out and buy another. No, people had very few goods, and what they did have had to last a good long time.
Thus, brand identifiers were developed - and buyers would pay more for something that they knew would be of high quality.
Ah, the good old days, when - other than the ultra-rich - people were not as possession-ridden and obsessed as we are.
And those days were a lot more recent than the Middle Ages.
A few years ago, I read through some census records from mid-19th century Ireland. The records gave an accounting of the goods that poor tenant farmers owned: a chair, a pot, two chickens. (Which, I guess, would make for two chickens in every pot.) It was very interesting poring through these files and thinking about the stark existence that my great-grandparents fled. And this was after the Industrial Revolution began, when there was some mass-manufacture developing in Europe and the US.
Imagine the few things that someone might have owned in the mid-15th century. (Probably not that far removed than the average 19th century peasant. In all cases it was not much.)
Brands these days are, of course, far different. In some cases, they still stand for quality. Quality, I believe, will become more important a differentiator as more and more goods, even those associated with brands historically associatd with quality, get shoddier due to price pressures. But brands today draw on a far broader range of attributes: quality, cost-consciousness, green, luxury, hip, techie…
But it’s interesting to think of a couple of children in the Middle Ages comparing shirts to see who’s wearing "Wool by Mister Thomas" vs. "Joe’s Wool". Arguing over whose father had the better hammer. And whose home had a higher quality pot to piss in.
There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.
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Maureen,
Somewhat thought-provoking. The shirt example is what I use in classes to describe the start of branding. (i.e., how to get the general store to carry “Martha’s” hand-sewn plain white shirts compared to a more generic “brand.”) Your post makes me think of the difference between a true quality benefit or physical difference that sets a brand apart vs. a created perception.
Obviously both can and do work. And while I’d like to think a tangible difference is better than a perceptual one, I’m not so sure. Somebody can go out and match or improve upon a product feature, like a fabric type or color of cloth, etc., but it’s hard to take down the aura that Nike, Apple, and others have achieved. I’m not real comfortable claiming that image tops substance, but some evidence is there.
Ideally, a real difference can be the starting point of an brand aura, but it had better have both.
Martha’s shirts (or whatever the real “brand”) aren’t still around, but Marlboro cigarettes are. And, although I’m not a smoker, what’s different about them EXCEPT for the cowboy image?
Michael - Thanks for extending the discussion with some excellent points. Apple is a good example of doing both - perception and a high quality/differentiated product. I don’t really know the Nike products: are they really great, or is it the do-it-swoosh branding that does it? Interesting to think about, that’s for sure.