Brand evolution has interesting history. In ancient Roman and Greek society, shopkeepers hung pictures above their shops of the products they sold. There was a high degree of illiteracy in those days, the pictorial representation did help the buyers. Each retailer than started developing symbols to represent his specialty. This led to the development of brand logos. Logos are short-hand devices indicating capability of a brand. The trend continues even now.
In medieval times, craftsmen put their marks on products to indicate the skills which went into making them. Branding based on the reputations of craftsmen have existed over the centuries. Thus suppliers started distinguishing themselves. Branding was used as a guarantee of the source of the product. Later it came to be used for legal protection against copying and imitation. Trademarks now include words symbols and package design, and are registrable.
Branding was associated with the mark put on cattle by red hot iron as a proof of ownership, and this must have influenced Oxford English dictionary’s lexical meaning of a brand ‘as an indelible mark as proof of ownership, as a sign of quality or for any other purpose.’ Ranchers in the old west used brands to identify their cattle. As fencing was not invented, this was the only way to mark their valuable property. Brands thus became differentiating devices, and remain so even today. They identify the products of one seller or group and differentiate them from those of the competitors. Brands can be a name, term, sign, symbol or design or any combination of them.
Classical brand management developed in the retail grocery stores. Manufacturere retailer relationship underwent transformation in the wake up of the Industrial Revolution. Wholesalers were a dominant force then. Manufactures sold unbranded products to the wholesalers and had little contact with the retailers. But technological advances enabled manufacturer to mass produce goods in anticipation of demand. They questioned their reliance on wholesalers. They tried to protect their investment by branding their products and by patenting them. They tried to bypass the wholesalers by advertising these brands directly to the costumers. Advertising then focused on creating awareness of a brand, emphasizing its reliability, and guaranteeing that branded goods were of a consistent quality. Manufacturers also began to appoint their own salesmen to deal directly with the retailers. All this happened by the second half of the 19th century.
The power shifted from the wholesalers to the manufactures thanks to the branding process. Manufacturers took efforts to create brand awareness, and to make their brands different from those of the competitors. They also strove to maintain a consistent quality level. Brands acquired three dimensions – differentiation, legal protection and functional communication.
After the World War II, the consumers hankered after the goods which were short since resources were diverted to the war efforts. People started life afresh and wanted security. Family provisions were a desirable objective. It augured well for the manufacturers. Many of today’s great brands emerged in this period. Brand management became a respectable subject. The famous AIDA model of building awareness, creating interest, building a desire and leading to action of buying arose in this period. This model remained valid for so many decades.
In the last century, brands came to acquire an emotional dimension also. They made personality statements and represented buyer’s moods. But markets are flooded by competing brands. So consumers began to regard brands as shorthand devices to recall brand experiences or marketing claims. Branding reduces the information seeking process. In the last century, there was another development. Apart from manufacturer’s brands, there were distributor’s private label brands too. Distributors tried to make brands generics though they never succeeded in doing so completely. Multiple retailors started marketing distributors brands or private brands to compete with other retailors, since selling just the manufacturer’s brands with resale price maintenance meant service as the only competitive edge.Some retailers formed an association to market a common brand e.g. in India co-oprative super markets started marketing a common brand for many product categories. Distributor brands made their first appearance in groceries, and later entered footwear, menwears, furniture and floor covering. In retail banking, the manufacturer and distributor are one and the same and so distributor brands are common.
In the UK, packaged grocery sector witnessed the return to generics or brand-free products. Generics were frill free. Their packaging was plain. The emphasis was on contents. They were priced 40 percent lower than the brand leader, and 20 percent than the private label brand. But the generics were later withdrawn in 80s. Generics were perceived to be closer to private labels, rather than manufacturer’s brands. So the switchovers occurred between these two.
It is to be noted that a consumer product though a commodity, is open to the branding process by differentiating the offering. Generics make an organisation vulnerable to competition, since its features are easily copiable. Even in industrial products, purchasers are buying not only a basic raw material but a value add on like reliable delivery, well organised re-ordering process, know-how of the product. Marketing of generics has its own fallacies.
AIDA model was followed by product, price, promotion and place model of the four Ps. These elements are to be combined in the right mix and the brand success follows.
But these models are not enough. The world has changed. Brand management must also therefore change. We are on the threshold of a great era of opportunity.