Brand History: What is a Brand? How to Brand? - Huxiu#
#Omnivore
Brand History: What is a Brand? How to Brand?#
This article introduces the development of brands and the process of branding. Brands were initially distinguished and validated through symbols and trademarks, and later evolved to emphasize brand experience and cultural strategy, focusing on the importance of consumer participation and community building. Building a brand is a continuous process that requires establishing sustainable relationships with consumers.
• 🌟 Brand development has gone through different stages, from symbols and trademarks to brand experience and cultural strategy.
• 💡 Brand building is a continuous process that requires establishing sustainable relationships with consumers.
• 🤝 Consumer participation and community building have a significant impact on brands, with consumers becoming a decisive force in brand building.
As early as 2008, I published two articles on my public account:
One on December 11, 2008, “A Brief History of Marketing: A Complete Overview of a Century of Marketing History”;
One on December 17, 2018, “A Brief History of Advertising: From Accenture Taking Ads to the Demise of J. Walter Thompson”.
In fact, I also wrote a “Brief History of Brands” at that time, but that article was very brief, only sketching out the evolution of the concept of branding, unlike the other two historical pieces which were more detailed.
Therefore, I have always wanted to rewrite a brief history of brands, forming a trilogy of marketing, branding, and advertising history.
I didn't expect that this thought would last for 5 years. Time flies, my friends; things you want to do should be done immediately. Moreover, my writing speed has noticeably slowed down; the marketing and advertising histories were both completed in about a week, while this brand history has taken me nearly two months to write intermittently.
I believe that a good brief history is not just about listing what happened at what time or what ideas emerged, but rather about grasping the inherent laws and essence of brands through the evolution of history, deepening the understanding of brand concepts through historical reading.
Furthermore, when introducing various brand theories and ideas, it is not just to explain what each theory states, but to elaborate on the historical background and premises before the birth of each theory, so that you understand why this theory emerged and under what circumstances we can apply it.
Additionally, it is necessary to conduct comparative studies of various theories, identifying their similarities and differences, where similarities represent unchanging essence and laws, while differences highlight the true originality and essence of a particular theory.
This is the way to write a brief history, and it is also the reason why you should read this lengthy article of 21,269 words.
Of course, to write a brief history, some rigor and verification in historical writing are also necessary. Most of the theories, authors, and books mentioned in this article have been annotated with their English names for easy retrieval and literature search. Most historical events will also be annotated with dates for clarity. This is one of the reasons why brief histories are difficult to write.
Finally, I recommend reading this article alongside the brief histories of marketing and advertising, as there are no strict boundaries between the three, with many overlaps and intersections. Cross-referencing helps deepen understanding.
I wish everyone a pleasant reading experience and a wonderful day.
Brief History of Brands
Regarding brand building, I have two statements to make.
The first statement is, a brand is like a little girl who can be dressed up by anyone.
Different people have various and often contradictory understandings of brands; some think a brand is a symbol, others think it is a slogan, some see it as an image, while others consider it an enterprise asset, a packaging of products, a representative of a category, a consumer's perception and feeling, an experience, a relationship, a personification, added value, a premium, an IQ tax, a trick, and so on.
Why is there such a significant difference? One important reason is what I want to say in my second statement, a brand is not built in a day.
When a company starts to build a brand, it initially has only a name and a trademark. As it develops, the brand's sales increase, consumers become more familiar with it, and the brand's connotation becomes richer.
For consumers, the brand acquires a certain image and personality, establishing a close relationship with people; for companies, the brand creates intangible value and becomes the most important asset; within the industry, the brand also becomes synonymous with certain products and categories.
A brand can be a symbol, an image, an asset, and everything mentioned above, but a company does not acquire all of this at once; rather, it undergoes a continuous evolutionary process.
These two statements answer “What is a brand?” and “How to brand?” which is how to build a brand.
In this regard, the development of brand thought is the same; in fact, the entire history of brand thought is a continuous search for answers to these two questions. Our answers have also deepened with the development of commerce, media, and social culture. From a historical perspective, the evolution of brands has gone through four major stages.
- The Era of Design
In 1946, Jiang Dayi, the director of the Art Department of the Shanghai Museum, and historian Yang Kuan visited an antique shop and accidentally discovered a printed advertising copper plate, which they immediately purchased. This is the famous Liu Family Kung Fu Needle advertisement in the history of Chinese advertising, and it is currently known as the earliest brand advertisement artifact in China and even the world.
In the center of this copper plate is a white rabbit holding an iron pestle to pound medicine, above the rabbit is “Jinan Liu Family Kung Fu Needle Shop,” with two lines of text on either side reading “Recognize the white rabbit in front of the door,” and the text below states, “Buy high-quality steel bars, make fine needles, do not delay household use, resell for profit, and have extra benefits, referred to as the white rabbit.”
In this advertisement, there is a brand name, a trademark logo, and a claim, which can be said to fully possess the elements of brand composition.
The emergence of brands is primarily an economic phenomenon; it is a product of social development at a certain stage and a natural extension of commercial logic, so the connotation and essence of brands must correspond to the social and economic conditions of the time.
In the long agricultural era, small-scale farming and handicrafts dominated, commerce was underdeveloped, and products were not abundant, so there was no real market economy or commercial competition. The earliest brands often began with word-of-mouth quality, relying on slow accumulation of reputation; they were the result of spontaneous evolution rather than deliberately designed products.
Even the brand names might have been passed down through word of mouth. Initially, products made by a certain region or family became famous for their quality and craftsmanship, so people began to prefix the product names with the place of origin and the producer's surname, thus evolving into the earliest brands.
For example, various artisan brands like Niren Zhang, Weiqing Wei, Brush Li, and Brick Engraver Liu.
Another category is place-based brands, such as Lake Brushes, Hui Ink, Xuan Paper, Duan Inkstone, Su Embroidery, Shu Brocade, etc., like West Lake Longjing, Liu'an Melon Slices, Wuyi Da Hong Pao, and Anxi Tieguanyin.
In the Qing Dynasty, the “Zunyi Prefecture Chronicle” recorded: “Moutai Village in Renhuai City produces liquor, known as the best in Qian Province, with no less than twenty distilleries.”
It can be seen that today’s well-known liquor brands like Fenjiu, Moutai, and Jian Nan Chun historically referred to the liquor produced in the entire regions of Shanxi Fen Yang, Guizhou Renhuai Moutai Village, and Sichuan Mianyang, rather than a specific liquor shop.
As brands formed, imitators began to appear. Thus, brand owners began to design certain symbols or patterns to distinguish themselves. As mentioned earlier, the Liu Family Kung Fu Needle Shop's white rabbit became the earliest trademark artifact in China, serving to create recognition, delineate property rights, and prove quality, and this identifying pattern may be the only consciously designed element in the brand.
The same is true in the West. The English word “Brand” has three origins:
One is derived from the Old Norse word “brandr,” meaning “to brand or burn with a hot iron.” When trading livestock, herders would use different patterned branding irons to mark their livestock to indicate property ownership.
The second is derived from the Proto-Germanic root “brandaz,” meaning “flame, burning.” Noble letters would be sealed with hot wax, stamped with the family crest to distinguish and signify identity.
The third is derived from the Old French word for brandy, used to distinguish the estates and regions producing brandy.
This roughly represents the original function of brands: to identify producers, mark ownership, and gradually associate with quality. The pattern branded on the cow's rear thus became the source of today's brand identification.
(Branding iron used in livestock trading)
In modern times, Procter & Gamble inadvertently discovered the value of trademarks in the mid-19th century.
In 1851, P&G produced candles in Cincinnati, and during the sales process to various cities along the Ohio River and Mississippi, barge workers would draw stars, moons, and other marks on their cargo boxes to distinguish their products from others.
P&G's founder, William Procter, quickly noticed that buyers viewed these star and moon marks as symbols of quality and actively purchased; if the mark was missing from the box, the seller would refuse to accept the shipment.
This discovery inspired P&G to design a more formal star and moon logo based on these marks, which was printed on all candle product packaging, becoming P&G's earliest brand trademark and winning early loyal customers.
This trademark was continuously revised and used for nearly a century until it was completely replaced by the “P&G” pure text trademark in 1944, which is still in use today.
This story well illustrates the process of brand identification evolving from nothing to something alongside human commercial development. By the 1870s, trademarks began to receive widespread attention.
In 1873, “Levi’s” jeans applied for trademark protection, pioneering legal protection for brands. On January 1, 1876, the British government approved the first registered trademark, Bass Pale Ale, which was the world's first legal trademark.
(Bass Ale, the world's first legal trademark)
In 1881, the U.S. government established laws for registering and protecting trademarks, making it a top priority for businesses to register trademarks for their products. Many brands that are still renowned globally today, such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Quaker, and Kodak, were established during this period.
The rapid growth of Coca-Cola attracted numerous competitors who sought to imitate it, slightly altering the name and logo of Coca-Cola and placing them on bottles, resulting in a flood of knockoffs like Koka-Kola, Koca-Nola, Celery-Cola, Koke, etc.
Thus, Coca-Cola collaborated with its bottler, Root Glass Company, to design a unique new bottle shape, requiring that it could be recognized by touch even in the dark, and even if shattered, the fragments could still be identified. This led to the classic contour bottle of Coca-Cola, which was patented on November 16, 1915, and approved as a registered trademark by the U.S. Patent Office in 1960.
In 2015, during London Design Week, the renowned American brand design company Lipincott held an exhibition titled “Like Me: Our Connection with Brands.”
In the exhibition, Lipincott showcased a timeline of brand evolution and selected 20 milestones in brand history.
These included cave paintings, livestock branding tools, the Jesus fish, the British flag, Napoleon's hat, Bass Ale, NBC's xylophone logo, Apple's 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.
(A secret symbol used by Christians to avoid persecution from the Roman Empire, confirming each other's identity)
(1950, the first audio service logo)
(January 24, 1984, the birth of Apple Macintosh)
It can be seen that most of these are trademarks and visual patterns, as well as symbolic brand characteristics. During this period, brands were primarily reflected in basic identification elements such as names, trademarks, and product packaging design, especially strong visual style logos.
To learn about brand identity design, please read the second part of the 30 Lectures on Branding “Brand Identity: The Design of Brand Logos, VI, and Symbols”.
At this time, the connotation of brands was still very singular, and their value was extremely superficial. Symbols, as the earliest elements of brand composition, were also the most important brand elements at this time.
We can even say that the essence of a brand is an abstracted and simplified symbol, printed on products to create differentiation, endorsing product quality and merchant credibility. A consumer's understanding of a brand begins with the symbol, which serves as a handle for consumer recognition and memory, a carrier for consumer cognition and feelings.
“Brand recognition” became the initial brand thought.
Even today, we can see this type of brand promotion, such as the slogan of Zunbao Pizza, “When eating pizza, recognize this big yellow elephant,” or Baima Tea’s “Recognize this horse, good tea chooses Baima,” which can be said to be a continuation of Liu Family Kung Fu Needle Shop’s “Recognize the white rabbit in front of the door.”
As commercial competition gradually opened up, companies began to adopt design strategies to establish brands. In 1958, Gordon Lippincott began to elevate design to a theoretical level, proposing the concept of “corporate identity.”
His company, Lippincott, became one of the founding companies of the “CI” theory, specializing in organizing brand strategies through visual design, serving clients including Starbucks, Dell, Walmart, Nissan, Samsung, Sprint, etc., and is considered a pioneer in brand consulting.
The CI theory gradually developed into a complete system, including three main components: MI, BI, and VI, and thus CI is referred to as CIS.
MI refers to the corporate philosophy and values, BI regulates the behavior of internal personnel, especially employees, while VI involves the design and confirmation of visual elements such as brand logos, standard colors, standard fonts, and auxiliary graphics, ensuring their consistent and standardized application across product packaging, advertising, uniforms, office supplies, factory and office signage, transportation tools, and other various displays of the enterprise.
In the 1970s in Japan, CIS was once all the rage. In the 80s and 90s, this trend reached China. At that time, brand building was just beginning to emerge domestically, and the first step in building a brand was to ask a company to design a set of CIS systems. CI became a business card for enterprises; only with CIS could a company be considered to be genuinely building a brand.
CIS was thus widely sought after, becoming a magic weapon for market competition, and the design fees for CIS were also considerable, with a set of CIS plans priced between 2 million to 3 million yuan, even reaching tens of millions. This was the era of design dominance.
However, to be fair, MI and BI often became mere paper documents or empty slogans in many companies, lacking practical utility, while VI remained the most basic visual component of a brand and had to be implemented in product packaging and stores, which is why today CIS has declined, while VI has remained, still an indispensable basic skill in brand building.
VI is very important; it is as fundamental to brand building as the brand name itself, as simple and necessary as breathing. However, ultimately, a company cannot rely solely on VI for sales and customer acquisition; brand building is not just about having a distinctive logo and a set of VI.
Nike’s swoosh, McDonald's golden arches, and Coca-Cola’s red wave font can be considered classics in VI design, but so what? There is still a massive amount of work to be done in brand building and growth.
Despite many scholars attempting to inject new connotations and recognition elements into “brand recognition,” it can no longer exist as an independent theory.
Moreover, in the actual design process, the core of VI is logo, standard colors, and font design; the remaining work involves various arrangements and combinations, then extending to various material systems, which is merely template-based, assembly line work, lacking much technical content.
In advertising companies, the common practice for VI design is for the art director to handle the logo and font, while the extension applications are left to novice designers or even design interns. Therefore, when I entered the industry, VI design fees had already significantly shrunk, dropping to the range of two to three hundred thousand yuan, and many companies directly collaborated with individual designers for a few thousand yuan to get it done. Nowadays, apart from specialized design companies, most advertising agencies no longer take on VI design work.
The era of design-led branding has passed; the next key force influencing brands is advertising communication.
- The Era of Communication
Benjamin Franklin founded the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729, placing advertisements prominently at the forefront of the first issue's editorial, making it extremely eye-catching.
The first issue featured a soap advertisement created by Franklin himself. The advertisement had a huge title, with ample white space around it, making it very attention-grabbing, pioneering the artistic techniques of newspaper advertising. The circulation and advertising volume of the Pennsylvania Gazette subsequently soared to the top of the North American newspaper industry at that time.
Franklin is thus hailed as the “Father of American Advertising.” A biographer later commented, “We must acknowledge that Franklin created the modern advertising system. It can be said with certainty that since he began, we have been able to use a powerful propaganda machine to conduct advertising work as we do today.”
By 100 years later, in 1830, there were already 1,200 types of newspapers in the United States, including 65 daily newspapers, with each newspaper priced at just one penny, making them very affordable, leading to a rapid increase in newspaper circulation. The low price was supported by advertisements; at that time, many newspapers’ front pages were mostly or entirely advertisements.
In 1841, Volney Palmer opened what is widely regarded as the world's first advertising agency in Philadelphia, selling newspaper space to business owners.
However, although media had developed, due to logistical constraints, most products were local and could not achieve nationwide distribution, resulting in a lack of widespread advertising and branding.
Even the retail industry at that time was mostly local general stores selling local products or specialized stores selling imported luxury goods. It wasn't until the latter half of the 19th century that nationwide chain stores began to emerge as the dominant model.
By the 1880s, the pace of the times began to accelerate rapidly. 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 a total length of 290,000 miles of telegraph lines. By 1890, the total mileage of U.S. railroads reached 150,000, completing the major rail arteries across North America from east to west.
The proliferation of telegraphs and railroads greatly accelerated the speed and reliability of product circulation, reducing business risks. Moreover, newspapers expanded their distribution alongside railroads, quickly becoming national media.
Additionally, significant breakthroughs in mechanical manufacturing and processing technology in the 1880s made mass production of standardized small packaged products possible, such as cigarettes, watches, flour, breakfast cereals, film, and canned foods, which left the factory with packaging and printed product labels and brand names.
At this time, manufacturers began to name their products and advertise, leading to a surge in brands. This marked the beginning of modern brand marketing and communication, as commerce entered the era of mass branding, with mass production, mass circulation, and mass exposure becoming the mainstream business model of the past 100 years.
Mass production established a large-scale production system, providing standardized products and implementing mass pricing strategies to meet the needs of the broadest audience, achieving efficiency and profit through economies of scale and cost advantages.
Mass circulation utilized railroads and chain retail terminals for extensive distribution, reaching every corner of the national market, which later gave rise to the theory of deep distribution in China.
Mass exposure involved using national mainstream media and powerful media for large-scale advertising and communication, creating high-visibility brands that influence consumer cognition and purchasing behavior.
I once said, the four basic elements of commerce are products, consumers, media, and channels. For a product to influence consumer purchases, it requires media to convey product information and shape the brand, and channels to distribute and sell, reaching users.
The emergence of railroads, telegraphs, and newspapers, along with advancements in mechanical manufacturing, promoted the upgrading of the three elements: products, media, and channels, while also shaping the final element—consumers.
When consumers from different regions, with different lifestyles and even speaking different languages, began purchasing the same product and developing emotional and loyal behaviors towards the same brand, it became more than just a commercial phenomenon; it facilitated the emergence of a consumer community, connecting those who had never met before through brands, even helping millions of immigrants assimilate and Americanize more easily.
In 1882, Procter & Gamble began large-scale advertising for its Ivory Soap, becoming the first brand in the U.S. to launch nationwide advertising, with the slogan “99.44% pure, floats on water” becoming one of the most famous advertising lines.
The following year, having tasted success, P&G invested $11,000 in advertising for newspapers across the U.S., achieving tremendous success. By 1897, the advertising budget for Ivory Soap had skyrocketed to $300,000, capturing 20% of the national market share.
P&G pioneered the business model of using advertising to expand the national market, prompting competitors to follow suit, and thus using mass media to promote brands became a routine practice in corporate marketing.
With the use of mass media, various new advertising information methods emerged, such as Michelin Tires using mascots in 1900, which was the earliest brand personification element. Slogans, mascots, and advertising jingles became emerging brand components following brand names and logos, helping brands stand out.
(Michelin Tires' mascot, Bibendum, was named “the best logo of the century” in 2000)
The prosperity of advertising also spurred the development of advertising agencies. In 1890, the Ayers & Sons Advertising Company in Philadelphia designed a public advertising price list, informing clients of the base price for purchasing ad space and the commission they would charge—15% of the ad space price.
This system was formally confirmed in 1917, becoming an international convention that has lasted nearly a century. The American Association of Advertising Agencies was established to encourage different advertising companies to agree on a common media agency commission standard to avoid malicious competition. This association is what we now know as the 4A.
On the other hand, in 1902, Unilever began hiring the famous advertising agency J. Walter Thompson as its advertising agency, providing brand agency services for its brands like Lux Soap, marking the beginning of advertising agencies representing brands. J. Walter Thompson created the classic slogan “The soap beautiful women use” for Lux.
(Lux's celebrity strategy helped it achieve great success)
In the early 20th century, brands were primarily built through mass media advertising, thus hiring advertising agencies to manage brand operations became the mainstream in the business world, with advertising agency + media agency becoming the two standard businesses in modern advertising.
Especially after the 1920s, with the advent of radio and television, companies suddenly realized that they could make brands popular nationwide overnight through powerful advertising communication, as mass media endowed brands with tremendous power.
On Christmas Eve in 1906, Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden completed the world's first radio broadcast in Massachusetts, transmitting voice and music to the world.
By 1920, the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh launched the world's first commercial radio station. By 1930, radio broadcasts had spread worldwide.
In 1933, the radio series Ma Perkins sponsored by Procter & Gamble aired in the U.S. and became very popular. Because these early radio programs and television series were mostly sponsored by soap brands, they were referred to as soap operas. Commercial breaks and program sponsorships became widely adopted during this period, becoming common advertising forms.
On the other hand, in 1925, British engineer John Logie Baird invented television, and by the 1930s, television programs began to appear in the U.S. By 1948, the production of televisions in the U.S. reached 1 million units, and the number of television stations increased to 41.
By the 1960s, color televisions began to become popular in the U.S.; in 1964, 1.24 million color televisions were sold, totaling 2.86 million units, equivalent to the total of the previous decade. By 1966, the total number of households in the U.S. owning color televisions exceeded 10 million.
Once television became a national medium, the colorful images and audiovisual effects captured the attention of the entire nation, further amplifying the effects of advertising and the allure of brands.
In the 1950s and 60s, the advertising industry experienced a “creative revolution,” with various advertising communication theories emerging, becoming the main tools and methods for brand building. Differentiated brand recognition elements—advertising creativity—mass media created many enduring and powerful brands.
If the 1960s in the U.S. seem too distant for us, we can recall the frenzy of television advertising in China in the 1990s.
In 1995, Qin Pool Wine, from a remote county in the Yimeng Mountains of Shandong, won the CCTV advertising bidding war with a sky-high price of 66.66 million yuan, with the slogan “Forever Qin Pool, Forever Green” spreading across the country through CCTV.
This small winery, which only received its business license in 1990 and had never sold products outside the Weifang area, suddenly faced a product shortage, leading to a nationwide rush to buy. Due to insufficient production capacity, Qin Pool purchased raw liquor from Sichuan and Guizhou for blending, then repackaged it as Qin Pool for sale. After this was exposed, Qin Pool collapsed.
In 2003, the advertisement for Yake V9, endorsed by Zhou Xun, saw a dramatic increase in sales just five days after airing on CCTV, with distributors increasing their orders from 50-60 boxes to 500-600 boxes, and some even ordering 2,000 boxes at once, achieving a brand myth of opening the national market in five days.
This advertisement was planned by local advertising master Ye Maozhong, who proudly claimed to have coined the catchy name “Yake V9,” creating a new category of vitamin candy and shaping the brand image of Yake V9 as sporty and vibrant.
However, consumers and we all know that the secret to Yake V9's success was Zhou Xun's endorsement and the bombardment of CCTV ads; celebrity endorsements + heavy television advertising + terminal distribution became the surefire way to build a brand.
In contrast to the high-profile approaches of Qin Pool and Yake V9, San Zhu Oral Liquid, which emerged around the same time as Qin Pool, took a rural-to-urban approach. San Zhu's advertisements once covered every dirt wall, every telephone pole, and even every cow shed, pigsty, and toilet in rural areas. Their promoters always carried a bucket of paint.
Every weekend, San Zhu's people would wear white coats to the countryside for free consultations, with villagers lining up to come, and of course, you know the results of the consultations. Additionally, there were overwhelming newspaper ads, with large newspapers featuring San Zhu's sponsorship of academic activities, while self-produced newsletters contained various testimonials from ordinary consumers about the miraculous effects of San Zhu.
This advertising strategy was equally powerful; San Zhu Oral Liquid, launched in 1994, achieved sales of 125 million yuan in its first year, skyrocketing to 2 billion yuan in 1995, and reaching an astonishing 8 billion yuan in 1996. Of course, San Zhu Oral Liquid ultimately fell due to false advertising.
In such an era, television, radio, and newspapers dominated the media landscape, and the authority of advertisements disseminated through these media was immense. As long as advertising volume was guaranteed, it could lead to huge sales; it truly was a golden age of “when the advertisement rings, gold flows in.”
In the past, in an agricultural society, brands were primarily shaped by word of mouth, with most brands evolving spontaneously and being sung by the masses. However, entering the industrial society, productivity was liberated, production efficiency greatly improved, and companies began to seek more efficient communication tools, aiming to persuade everyone to purchase the same product with a single advertisement.
Word of mouth is indeed important, but it relies on interpersonal relationships for diffusion, which is too slow and inefficient in terms of both speed and effectiveness.
With the advent of mass media, brand strategies became quite simple and crude; as long as large-scale advertising was invested, combined with celebrity endorsements and endorsements from authoritative media, companies would be viewed as major brands and well-known brands, leading consumers to rush to purchase and distributors to scramble for agency rights.
In the mass consumer psychology, companies that can invest so much in advertising and hire big-name celebrities for endorsements are certainly reliable; and since everyone is buying a brand, it must be fine and without risk for me to buy it too.
At this time, brands were primarily shaped by communication, and the essence of a brand was its visibility, with fame equating to sales. Advertising companies became the main players in brand building, and building a brand primarily meant investing in advertising for communication; this was the era of brand communication.
Communication created a phenomenon where the world of communication did not equal the real world; the facts perceived by people often differed greatly from the actual events. However, for consumers, perception is reality, and feelings are the most genuine.
As early as the 1930s, John Watson conducted a pioneering experiment. He gathered a group of smokers, removed the trademarks and packaging of various cigarette brands, and asked them to taste them.
The results showed that this group of seasoned smokers, who claimed they would only smoke a certain brand, could not distinguish which cigarette they usually smoked.
Watson was a psychologist and one of the founders of the “behaviorism” school, dedicated to studying human behavior. He was also an advertiser, having worked for J. Walter Thompson for many years, later joining the company's board as vice president. The aforementioned experiment was designed for a tobacco client. The experiment proved that the brand perceived by people and the product facts are not the same.
Thus, in 1955, Gardner and Sidney Levy published an article titled “Products and Brands” in the Harvard Business Review.
This classic paper analyzed the differences between products and brands in the minds of consumers, theoretically distinguishing the two and proposing the original idea of “brand image.”
This marked the first leap in the history of brand thought, separating brands from products.
Brands originate from products but transcend them; only after breaking free from the constraints of products could brand thought flourish. This paper inspired many practitioners, and Gardner and Levy thus embarked on the academic study of brands. For a detailed understanding of the relationship between brands and products, you can refer to the third part of the 30 Lectures on Branding “The Dichotomy of Brands and Products”.
Among those inspired by Gardner and Levy was the renowned founder of Ogilvy & Mather, David Ogilvy, hailed as the “Pope of Advertising.”
At the 1955 American Advertising Association annual meeting, Ogilvy delivered a speech titled “Image and Brand,” advocating for the application of brand image in advertising practice and praising Gardner and Levy's article in his speech.
In 1957, Tyler, vice president of another well-known advertising agency, Leo Burnett, published an article titled “Image, Brand, and Consumer” in the Journal of Marketing, proposing that advertising should create an image that transcends product selling points.
The “cowboy” image created for Marlboro cigarettes is a representative case of Leo Burnett's company.
(Marlboro Cowboy, a timeless classic in advertising history)
Then, in 1961, Ogilvy published his seminal work “Confessions of an Advertising Man,” in which he explicitly stated that establishing brand image should be the core philosophy of Ogilvy & Mather, and he famously said, “Every advertisement is a long-term investment in brand image.”
Following Ogilvy's footsteps, another old advertising firm, J. Walter Thompson, proposed the philosophy of brand personality, emphasizing that communication between brands and consumers is divided into three levels: identity, image, and personality, with personality being the highest level.
The theory of “brand personality” was theoretically refined by branding scholar Jennifer Aaker in 1997.
It sounds like J. Walter Thompson is more advanced than Ogilvy, but in reality, there is no substantial difference between the two; the image theory advocates conveying more emotional benefits in advertising to create emotional brands, while the personality theory advocates endowing brands with personified traits; both aim to create intangible value for products beyond their physical functions.
For a detailed understanding of image theory and personality theory, you can refer to the thirteenth part of the 30 Lectures on Branding “Brand Persona”.
In contrast to the dual peaks of image and personality, there emerged the USP theory—“Unique Selling Proposition” in the early 1950s. This theory was proposed by Rosser Reeves, chairman of the Ted Bates Advertising Agency, and is the first systematic advertising theory.
This theory emphasizes that every advertisement must present a proposition to consumers, offering a clear benefit promise. This proposition comes from uncovering the unique selling points of the product, which must be characteristics that competing products do not possess or have not advertised.
In 1969, Al Ries and Jack Trout advanced the USP theory by proposing the “Positioning Theory.” This theory advocates that brands should occupy a prominent position in the category through unique product characteristics, and this category position will be the handle for consumers to recognize and remember the brand.
In the 1950s and 60s, brand thought emerged in abundance, not only due to the significant development of media but also because, after World War II, production was no longer a barrier, and products were no longer scarce, leading commerce and markets into a diversified era, where products from different companies became increasingly indistinguishable.
Especially after the 1960s, competition became fierce, and consumers became picky, making it a top priority for companies to figure out how to shape differentiated brands and implement promotional strategies.
Practice inspired theory; the marketing management ideas of “the father of modern marketing,” Philip Kotler, were also founded during this period.
Ogilvy and others believed that after product homogenization, advertising should construct a differentiated image at the brand level to distinguish from competitors and cater to consumers' reliance on emotional rather than rational decision-making, creating psychological satisfaction for them.
Ries and Trout's foundational argument was that fierce market competition led to continuous differentiation of categories; for a brand to defeat its competitors, it must occupy a product characteristic and become a representative of a subcategory, aiming to be the first even if not the only, thus standing out in consumers' minds.
In particular, in 2004, Ries published “The Origin of Brands,” clearly stating that brands originate from category differentiation, and the goal of branding is to occupy a category.
For details on positioning, please read the fourth part of the 30 Lectures on Branding “The Leap of Brands and Categories”.
However, what they all emphasized was to influence consumer minds through differentiation. What consumers remember and recognize from communication directly determines the strength of brand power.
USP, brand image, and positioning constitute the three dimensions of brand communication, each approaching from different angles: product function, user image and personality, and category position, to communicate the brand and establish value. Whether brands should be rationally dominant or emotionally supreme during communication has become a century-long debate in the industry.
In 1986, Korean-American scholar David Aaker and his collaborators published a paper titled “Strategic Brand Concept” in the Journal of Marketing, attempting to stitch together these different brand thoughts.
He proposed the brand concept management theory, dividing brands into three dimensions: functional, experiential, and symbolic.
This theoretical framework not only unified different brand thoughts but also clarified the fundamental differences between brands and products at a theoretical level, namely that products are one-dimensional, while brands have a three-dimensional concept, responding to the ideas of Gardner and Levy in 1955.
In the past, during the era of scarcity, the center of branding was establishing recognition, with its key role being to create differentiation and indicate product origin and quality endorsement, manifested through those explicit brand elements, such as brand names, logos, slogans, mascots, and packaging design patterns. “A brand is just a name and a logo,” this was the initial brand thought.
However, by the 1980s, Aaker disagreed with this superficial, experiential, and shallow understanding; he emphasized the intrinsic, implicit values of brands, including emotions, personality, respect, satisfaction, and so on. The center of branding is to create symbolism, and the key is value endowment.
Aaker's thought systematically sorted out the connotation of brands while also providing theoretical explanations and constructions for various brand communication methods since the 50s and 60s, but it still could not provide norms and standards for systematic brand management. However, it was just one step away; a new era was about to arrive.
- The Era of Management
Once strong brands are established, leveraging new business models and large retail systems can help companies grow rapidly and replicate in bulk. This model is the brand licensing business model pioneered by Disney in the 1930s and the brand franchise model established by McDonald's in 1953.
In 1968, McDonald's adopted the golden arches logo, and the golden “M” gradually appeared in every corner of the world, becoming a highly influential global brand.
During this period, large retail brands represented by Walmart flourished, leading to the growth of many brands. Brands embarked on a path of scaled expansion, changing the competitive landscape, giving birth to a batch of giant enterprises.
By 1980, Procter & Gamble's sales exceeded $10 billion, making it one of the largest multinational companies in the U.S. To further expand, P&G began a massive brand acquisition spree.
During this period, Europe and the U.S. experienced a fourth wave of large-scale corporate mergers, with both the number and value of mergers being unprecedented. For example, in 1984, California's Mobil Oil acquired Gulf Oil for $18.5 billion; in 1985, General Electric purchased RCA for $6 billion.
In corporate mergers, a common phenomenon often occurs: the capital market's valuation of a company is often higher than the company's book value.
Before the 1980s, the bidding ratio during corporate mergers did not exceed 1:7 or 1:8; however, after that, the bidding ratio for acquiring brand companies exceeded 1:25, meaning the price was more than 25 times the book assets. A typical example is in 1988, when Nestlé acquired Rowntree for several times the book value.
This fully illustrates that brands possess immense intangible value and can help companies gain potential appreciation effects in the capital market. The question then arises: how to scientifically evaluate and calculate this intangible asset? This is an urgent need in the business world.
Thus, in 1988, the peak year of the American merger wave, the American Marketing Science Institute proposed the concept of “brand equity” to reflect the valuation and premium that brand ownership brings to companies, becoming one of the most important research directions in marketing.
Around this topic, the industry began to explore. In 1989, Murphy of Interbrand Consulting published a specialized work on brand evaluation, continuously improving the company's evaluation methods.
At the same time, academic research results quickly emerged. In 1991, David Aaker, a marketing professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and vice president of Prophet Brand Strategy Consulting, published “Managing Brand Equity.”
In this book, Aaker viewed brands as the most valuable intangible asset of a company and described and defined brand equity.
This book, along with Aaker's subsequent works “Building Strong Brands” and “Brand Leadership,” is collectively referred to as the “Brand Management Trilogy.”
These three works became bestsellers worldwide, having a broad and profound impact on the business community in various countries, and Aaker became a world-class brand management master, an authoritative scholar and leader in the field of global branding, hailed as the “father of brand equity.”
By 1993, another branding master, Kevin Keller, a marketing professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, also published a groundbreaking paper proposing the idea of “Customer-Based Brand Equity,” or the CBBE model.
This theory further expanded the connotation of brand equity, gradually becoming the core of modern brand theory. In 1998, Keller expanded his classic paper into the book “Strategic Brand Management,” which is regarded as the “Brand Bible.”
The theory of brand equity views brands from the perspective of corporate operations and finance, enhancing the status and role of brands in corporate management, providing strong reasons for companies to build brands. From then on, brands were no longer just tools for short-term promotions but represented the core competitiveness of enterprises, directly influencing corporate valuations, significantly increasing the meaning and importance of brands.
This marks the second leap in brand history, elevating brands from tactical tools to the strategic level of enterprises.
In 2014, Aaker, in his book “Brand Master,” specifically recalled, “The concept of ‘brands as assets’ has gained traction, closely related to the decline of the previous view that ‘the main role of brand marketing is to stimulate sales.’”
Professor Lu Taihong emphasized in his book “The History of Brand Thought” that modern brand theory is built on two pillars: one is brand equity, and the other is brand strategy. The transition from brand to brand equity, from tactics to strategy, is a watershed that distinguishes modern from traditional.
Aaker and Keller's definitions and classifications of brand equity provided the basis and standards for brand management. Although today different companies, brand consulting firms, and advertising agencies have their own brand models and evaluation standards, if you carefully study and compare these models, you will find they are fundamentally similar, all based on Aaker and Keller's definitions.
For a detailed study of brand equity, see the nineteenth part of the 30 Lectures on Branding “Managing Brand Equity”.
Brand management has since become the most focused topic in both academia and industry, with managing, maintaining, and enhancing brand equity becoming the most important task for enterprises, leading to a flourishing of research on brand management functions.
In 1994, the authoritative journal “Journal of Marketing Research” published a special issue on brand management research; the “Journal of Marketing” published a commentary special issue on strategic brand management; and “Harvard Business Review” also published a collection on brand management.
Interbrand also published “Brand Power” in that year, and in 1998, another book titled “Brands: New Creators of Wealth,” strongly advocating the importance of brand equity and management, representing the cutting-edge views of academia and top global brand consulting firms.
In fact, the title “Strategic Brand Management” is not exclusive to Keller; as early as 1991, Jean-Claude Kapferer, a professor of strategy at HEC Paris, published a book of the same name, which had a significant influence in Europe.
Additionally, Professor Elliott from the University of Bath in the UK and Professor Alexander Chernev from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management published books with the same name in 2007 and 2015, respectively. Professor He Jiaxun from East China Normal University also has a book titled “Strategic Brand Management.”
Why do these different scholars insist on using the same book title? This fully indicates that brands possess a certain commonality in their minds, which is reflected in the words “strategy” and “management.”
Strategy represents the central position of brands within enterprises; brands are the main source for enterprises to achieve growth and enhance competitiveness. Management implies that brand building is not just the responsibility of the marketing department but concerns the overall operation and management of the enterprise.
As Professor Lu Taihong said, “Strategic brand management constitutes an unbroken tradition.”
Among the authors of the aforementioned “Strategic Brand Management,” Keller and Chernev became the second and third authors of Kotler's classic work “Marketing Management” in 2004 and 2022, respectively, while Professor He Jiaxun served as the translator of “Marketing Management.” Brands have become the center of modern marketing.
In addition to Aaker and Keller, another figure setting a standard for brand management is Professor Don Schultz from Northwestern University, who proposed “Integrated Marketing Communication” and published the book “Integrated Marketing Communication” in 1999.
The IMC concept emphasizes that the information consumers possess is the only competitive advantage for an organization, and how consumers understand and perceive a company is the true marketing value. Therefore, consumer communication is everything in marketing, and the goal of corporate marketing is to influence consumers' reception and perception of corporate information.
Moreover, communication is not just about placing media advertisements; in fact, everything a company does in marketing is about communicating with consumers, whether it is product development, packaging design, pricing, channel activities, promotions, or public relations, all conveying the same message to consumers, collectively establishing a brand in their minds.
Since everything is communication, all touchpoints where a company interacts with consumers are carriers of communication and brands. Therefore, the core work of corporate marketing is to operate information flow, coordinating various marketing methods of the company; this is integration.
Brand building does not solely come from advertising but from the integration of all business behaviors of the enterprise, collectively communicating outward. Everything in marketing is for communication, to establish a brand.
IMC has pointed enterprises' marketing in a new direction, elevating the understanding of brands to a new dimension. “Integration” has since become a buzzword among marketers, and Schultz has become one of the most renowned marketing masters in the world, hailed as the “father of integrated marketing communication.”
Given this, many companies previously entrusted brand work entirely to an advertising agency, relying on advertising communication and media placement to promote the brand and drive sales performance, which is a one-sided approach, a short-term behavior, and has serious shortcomings.
Relying solely on advertising cannot build a strong brand; it is only a small part of brand building, and building a brand is no longer just the responsibility of advertising agencies. Companies must pay more attention to brand building at the strategic and overall operational levels.
Aaker also expressed this view in “Brand Master”: “Considering brand management from a tactical perspective used to be the dominant paradigm, which assumed that brand management could be entrusted to the advertising department manager or advertising agency, as it seemed more like managing issues related to product image, advertising planning, distribution strategies, product promotions, packaging, and enhancing sales... At the same time, the scope of brand management will further expand, covering market insights, inspiring breakthrough product innovations, corporate growth strategies, brand portfolio strategies, and global brand strategies.”
So how can the functions of brand management be reflected in organizational structure and work philosophy? How can the strategic position of brands be ensured? This goes back to 1931, when Procter & Gamble invented the brand manager system.
(In 1931, 27-year-old Neil McElroy proposed the brand manager system to the company, later becoming P&G's president and U.S. Secretary of Defense)
Internally, a brand is fully managed by a dedicated brand manager who has their own operational team; externally, a brand hires a separate advertising agency to handle communication and promotion, supported by independent brand strategies.
The brand manager, as the direct operational head of a brand, is responsible for the entire process from product development to marketing promotion and bears the sales responsibility. This is the brand manager system.
This mechanism promoted P&G's transition from functional management to brand management, establishing a brand-centered marketing approach, gradually forming P&G's own brand management system. It brought vitality to P&G, ensuring the long-term vitality of the brand, allowing P&G, a nearly 200-year-old company, to remain the world's largest daily chemical giant with a host of successful brands.
Today, the brand manager system is widely adopted worldwide, especially as the organizational management paradigm for consumer goods companies.
From this mechanism, it can also be seen that the brand department and brand manager have always had the function of overall planning, coordinating, and controlling the entire process of product development, production, brand building, advertising communication, and marketing promotion. They must connect various departments such as R&D, production, marketing, logistics, sales, and finance to achieve brand goals.
However, with the increasing complexity of business and the refinement of divisions, many companies' brand departments have devolved into advertising and material design departments, losing their guiding role over product and sales departments, thus failing to ensure the brand's central position and strategic role.
Meanwhile, advertising agencies are also evolving, striving to prove that they are not just about creativity and making ads but can also be responsible for corporate brand management.
In the early 1990s, Ogilvy proposed the concept of “brand steward,” which was later upgraded to “360° brand steward” in the mid-90s.
Ogilvy's 360 degrees included six aspects: product, image, consumer, channel, visual management, and business reputation, emphasizing that every consumer touchpoint must be fully managed and reflect the brand's core values and image, achieving an overall communication effect. This is a complete corporate marketing plan and a product of brand management thought.
(Ogilvy's 360°)
This practice expanded the scope of advertising agencies' business and enhanced their influence over corporate clients. Major global advertising agencies have successively transformed from advertising agencies to brand agencies, beginning to serve clients with a brand-centered approach and proposing their own brand management philosophies, such as J. Walter Thompson's all-around brand creation, Bates' brand essence/wheel, and Publicis' “all-around differentiation,” etc.
(Still a wheel)
(Why is it always a wheel?)
P&G's brand management system and the brand management philosophy of advertising agencies ensured the height and position of brands at the strategic level, as well as their practical implementation in enterprise management.
Brand equity, strategic brand management, and integrated marketing communication thoughts represent a brand new era, pushing brands to the peak of enterprise operations and achieving new heights. And after one peak, there is another.
- The Era of Users
Since the new century, with the development of the internet, digitalization has become a new topic in brand marketing.
In 2000, the renowned consulting firm McKinsey first proposed the concept of “digital branding” in the McKinsey Quarterly, making a significant industry statement. In 2010, the Harvard Business Review published another McKinsey article titled “Branding in the Digital Age,” reiterating this concept.
By 2016, global advertising budgets reached $605 billion, with digital advertising spending for the first time surpassing television advertising, making brand digitalization imperative. However, digitalization does not equate to merely placing digital media ads or using more digital technology in production and marketing processes.
At a deeper level, digitalization signifies a shift from “enterprise subjectivity” to “user subjectivity.”
In the past, brand building was characterized by enterprise subjectivity. Although marketing began emphasizing customer orientation since the 1960s, and Keller proposed customer-based brand equity, brand management thought has always stood from the enterprise perspective.
Enterprises dominated brand building, responsible for evaluating and maintaining brand equity, leading brand communication and messaging.
Consumers were the audience, the silent majority, greatly influenced by brands and advertising in their lives, but with limited influence over enterprises.
However, digitalization has empowered consumers, establishing user subjectivity, allowing consumers to take the lead in brand communication, resulting in a significant reversal of the relationship and status between brands and consumers, with consumers now taking the initiative.
Around the turn of the millennium, two heavyweight papers appeared in the core journal “Journal of Consumer Research.”
One was Susan Fournier's 1998 paper titled “Consumers and Their Brands,” which first proposed the theory of “brand relationships”;
The other was a 2001 paper by Muniz titled “Brand Communities and the Sociology of Brands,” which introduced the theory of “brand communities.”
This marked the third leap in brand history, shifting brand thought from focusing on the brand itself to emphasizing the brand-consumer relationship.
First, it prompts us to rethink the fundamental question of “what is a brand.”
In the past, whether brands were understood as identification symbols, images, or assets, they were ultimately defined based on the brand itself; now, they are defined based on the brand-consumer relationship.
In fact, in marketing thought, starting from the 1980s and 90s, relationships have become a new paradigm of marketing theory. In 1985, Barbara B. Jackson proposed the theory of relationship marketing; in 1999, Gartner Group Inc. introduced the concept of CRM.
However, these ideas viewed establishing and maintaining customer relationships as the goals and outcomes of marketing promotion. In contrast, brand relationship and brand community theories suggest that relationships are not just a means but the essence. Brands are the embodiment of the relationship between products/enterprises and customers, and the strength of this relationship determines the strength of brand power.
In Muniz's paper, he defined communities as “special social groups formed based on admiration for a particular brand, unrestricted by geography.”
This definition indicates two points: first, communities arise from admiration; second, communities occur offline, forming circles of loyal fans, such as the Harley-Davidson club.
However, since the publication of this paper over 20 years ago, reflecting on the sweeping internet revolution, along with the rise of social media and the widespread adoption of smartphones, as well as the development of new technologies and new play styles such as short videos, algorithms, live streaming, private domains, AR/VR, and the metaverse, digitalization has not only disrupted traditional media communication methods and changed purchasing behaviors but has also permanently reshaped social and lifestyle patterns. In the digital survival era, the bond between brands and consumers has been unprecedentedly strengthened.
Regarding brand communities, we should also clarify two points:
First, communities have shifted from offline to online, and their scale and influence have greatly expanded, with consumers forming small circles on major social media and online platforms, deeply integrating into them;
Second, communities primarily arise not from admiration but from more direct connections established between consumers and brands, such as private domains.
Consumers can directly follow brand social media accounts, like, save, share, and comment on the content published by enterprises; they can actively participate in corporate marketing activities and spread the word; they can freely express evaluations and opinions about corporate products. On the other hand, enterprises can also gain a better understanding of their consumers, as everything on the internet is transparent.
In 2009, Muniz proposed the concept of “Brand Engagement” based on brand communities, which can be translated in various ways, such as brand immersion, brand participation, brand commitment, etc., but I personally feel that these translations are not accurate or evocative enough.
“Engage” emphasizes consumer participation in the process, interacting with brands.
In the past, during the era of communication, brand communication was one-way; “what to say” determined what kind of brand the enterprise would build and what brand image and value it would possess, making information strategy crucial.
But today, the importance of information dissemination has given way to social behavior; what is more critical than “what to say” is the feedback from consumers regarding corporate marketing actions. Whether consumers respond and how they respond to the information disseminated by enterprises is more important than the information itself. Compared to “what to say,” enterprises should listen to what consumers have to say, consciously open nodes in brand marketing, design interactive mechanisms, and allow consumers to participate, enhancing their sense of involvement.
On the other hand, “Engagement” advocates for consumers and enterprises to collaborate in creating value, forming some unwritten agreements.
For example, consumers spontaneously maintain brands online and in life, actively helping brands voice their opinions, co-creating content with brands; brands continuously communicate with consumers, gaining valuable information and business data, co-creating products with consumers;
The result of this practice is that brands and consumers form a shared interest, with brands gaining greater development from user management, and consumers obtaining more emotional value, social incentives, and a sense of belonging from brand development. Both rise and fall together, such as the user communities of Lululemon and NIO, or the user organizations of Xiaomi and Huawei.
Therefore, I believe the accurate translation of “Brand Engagement” should be the brand community formed on the basis of social interaction with consumers, which is the ultimate pursuit of establishing brand relationships. For an in-depth analysis of brand relationships and user interactions, please read the seventeenth part of the 30 Lectures on Branding “Social Brands”.
As mentioned earlier, the 20 milestones in brand history selected by Lipincott culminated in a new era of branding, exemplified by Airbnb, founded in 2008, as a representative of the new generation of brands, which established its brand through online communities and virtual communities.
Second, starting from a consumer-centric perspective, brand relationships and brand communities further stimulated new thoughts on branding, answering the question of “how to build a brand.”
In the context of user dominance, new branding concepts emphasize starting from consumers, focusing on consumer experiences, especially the importance of emotional and personified elements.
Fournier, mentioned earlier, ultimately determined six major variables for the consumer-brand relationship: love and passion, self-connection, trust, dependence, intimacy, and brand partner quality. Clearly, this set of variables possesses very strong personification traits.
Emotional marketing has become particularly popular since 2000. For example, Mark Gobe published “Emotional Branding” in 2001, later founding a consulting company named Emotional Branding;
Kevin Roberts, CEO of the world's largest advertising company Saatchi & Saatchi, proposed the concept of “Lovemarks” in 2004.
Additionally, Parker, mentioned in the second chapter, proposed “Brand Attachment” in 2005, and in 2016, he co-published “Brand Worship”;
In 2017, there was also a bestselling book by New York Times bestselling author Miller titled “Building a StoryBrand.”
Moreover, the globally renowned branding master Martin Lindstrom published “Brand Sense” in 2005, which became the origin of the emotional branding route, and the subsequent emergence of cool brands, trendy brands, and cute brands, as well as the emphasis on product design and brand aesthetics, can be seen as the aftershocks of the emotional route.
However, since the theories of brand image and brand personality were proposed, advocating for emotions and sensibility is not a new concept. The aforementioned ideas can be said to be largely similar. In the era of user dominance, two truly influential brand thoughts have emerged.
One is brand experience.
In 1998, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, founders of the U.S. consulting firm Horizon, published an article titled “Welcome to the Experience Economy” in the Harvard Business Review, and the following year, they wrote the book “The Experience Economy,” emphasizing that experience is a brand new economic form and the ultimate content of consumption. “Experience” quickly became a new focus of attention in the industry.
Inspired by this book, Professor Bernd Schmitt from Columbia Business School proposed the academic theory of “Experiential Marketing” that same year, publishing the books “Experiential Marketing” and “Customer Experience Management.”
In 2009, Schmitt published an in-depth paper on brand experience in the Journal of Marketing, proposing a scale for measuring and managing brand experience, which includes four dimensions: sensory, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive.
Experience established a new bridge.
First, at the very beginning of brand thought, Gardner and Levy mentioned, “Brand thought flourished after breaking free from the constraints of products.” Most past brand thoughts emphasized the independence of brands from products.
However, experience is fundamentally based on products; unique and high-quality products and services can create good experiences, and experiences allow products to possess differentiation and prominence in consumers' minds, enabling brands to stand out, making experience a new path for brand establishment.
Second, experience differs from emotional routes because experience is the ultimate purpose of consumption, while emotion is merely an added value. The theory of experience elevates “experience” to an economic level, emphasizing that consumption is a process of experience, indicating that consumers consume not only for a product's functionality but also to gain a unique and unforgettable experience.
Experience relates not only to consumers' senses and emotions but also to their life scenarios, lifestyles, and cultural backgrounds. A good brand can leave a deep impression and memory on consumers, strengthening the connection with them. Thus, experience deepens brand relationships.
Experience tightly connects products with brands and consumers with brands, providing new thoughts for branding.
The other is cultural strategy.
In 2002, Harvard Business School and Oxford University marketing professor Douglas Holt published a paper titled “Why Brands Get 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 Cameron published “Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Unique Cultural Brands” with Oxford University Press. Cultural branding strategy became his hallmark.
Holt, working and teaching in Europe, was greatly influenced by the European branding school, emphasizing the impact of culture on brands. At the same time, Holt also possessed a strong practical spirit; he had served as the marketing director for the famous brand L'Oréal and held brand management positions in several companies.
In 2010, to practice his unique brand strategy ideas, he founded the Cultural Strategy Group and personally served as president.
If brand communities contribute to relationship theory by leveraging consumer interactions and circle influence to strengthen brand relationships, transforming the one-to-one relationship between brands and consumers into a one-to-many relationship between brands and groups, and a many-to-many relationship within consumer circles.
Then, cultural strategy aims to influence consumers through social pop culture and subculture, leveraging social public relations to leverage brand relationships, turning “my brand” into “our brand.”
Many people mistakenly believe that brand relationships are emotional connections, but getting consumers to love or be loyal to a brand is difficult and unrealistic; this only happens with a very small number of die-hard fans, while most consumers do not project strong personal emotions onto brands.
True brand relationships come from social interactions with consumers, allowing consumers to participate in brand marketing, enter brand communities, and use the power of circles and culture to move consumers.
In 2013, Professor Torelli from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign published “Globalization, Culture, and Branding.”
The subtitle of this book is lengthy: “How to Leverage Cultural Equity for Building Iconic Brands in the Era of Globalization,” meaning how to manage cultural assets to establish totemic brands in the era of globalization. This book introduced the concept of “cultural equity,” making cultural construction one of the core elements of brand globalization.
Cultural-based branding opened up new routes and ideas for brand strategy. As brand equity management became the mainstream in the industry, these new brand thoughts prompted us to consider that customer equity and cultural equity might be more important than brand equity.
Third, relationship and community theories also solidified the reasons for “why to build a brand.”
In the digital age, consumers have gained greater power. Consumer participation and interaction can determine the effectiveness of brand marketing and communication; consumer feedback and word-of-mouth can greatly influence brand perception and image; consumers' proactive voices and dissemination also largely determine brand performance and results.
When Lipincott selected the “20 Milestones in Brand History,” the 17th was the withdrawal of the Gap logo. At that time, Gap released a new brand logo, but consumers disliked it, forming many communities on social media to protest, forcing Gap to revert to the old logo. This illustrates that consumers have become a decisive force in brand building.
(2010, Gap's short-lived new logo)
In light of this, influencing consumers and establishing relationships with them has become more important than ever. Digitalization is not just about building digital media and e-commerce channels but is about using data and technology to gain insights into consumer needs, understand consumer behavior, and rebuild consumer relationships.
The emphasis on relationships reshapes the brand concept, changes branding practices, and helps us grasp the essence of brands, thereby strengthening brand building. Brands can only create lifelong value for customers and achieve sustainable growth by establishing sustainable relationships with them.
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