A Short History of Brands
The word brand comes from the Old Norse brandr, meaning to burn, and from these origins made its way into Anglo-Saxon. It was of course by burning that early man stamped ownership on his livestock, and with the development of trade buyers would use brands as a means of distinguishing between the cattle of one farmer and another. A farmer with a particularly good reputation for the quality of his animals would find his brand much sought after, while the brands of farmers with a lesser reputation were to be avoided or treated with caution. Thus the utility of brands as a guide to choice was established, a role that has remained unchanged to the present day.
Some of the earliest manufactured goods in "mass" production were clay pots, the remains of which can be found in great abundance around the Mediterranean region, particularly in the ancient civilisations of Etruria, Greece and Rome. There is considerable evidence among these remains of the use of brands, which in their earliest form were the potter's mark. A potter would identify his pots by putting his thumbprint into the wet clay on the bottom of the pot or by making his mark: a fish, a star or cross, for example. From this we can safely say that symbols (rather than initials or names) were the earliest visual form of brands.
In Ancient Rome, principles of commercial law developed that acknowledged the origin and title of potters' marks, but this did not deter makers of inferior pots from imitating the marks of well-known makers in order to dupe the public. In the British Museum there are even examples of imitation Roman pottery bearing imitation Roman marks, which were made in Belgium and exported to Britain in the first century ad. Thus as trade followed the flag - or Roman Eagle - so the practice of unlawful imitation lurked close behind, a practice that remains commonplace despite the strictures of our modern, highly developed legal systems.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the elaborate and highly sophisticated system of trade that had bound together in mutual interdependence the Mediterranean and west European peoples gradually crumbled. Brands continued to be used but mainly on a local scale. The exceptions were the distinguishing marks used by kings, emperors and governments. The fleur-de-lis in France, the Hapsburg eagle in Austria-Hungary and the Imperial chrysanthemum in Japan indicated ownership or control. (Interestingly, the chrysanthemum signifies death in Korea, intermittently over the centuries a Japanese colony.) In a similar fashion the cockleshell, derived from the legend attached to the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostella in north-west Spain, a favourite medieval centre of pilgrimage when the holy places of Palestine were closed to pilgrims by the Muslims, was widely used in pre-Renaissance Europe as a symbol of piety and faith.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the volume manufacture of fine porcelain, furniture and tapestries began in France and Belgium, largely because of royal patronage, factories increasingly used brands to indicate quality and origin. At the same time, laws relating to the hallmarking of gold and silver objects were enforced more rigidly to give the purchaser confidence in the product.
However, the widescale use of brands is essentially a phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The industrial revolution, with its improvements in manufacturing and communications, opened up the western world and allowed the mass-marketing of consumer products. Many of today's best-known consumer brands date from this period: Singer sewing-machines, Coca-Cola soft drinks, Bass beer, Quaker oats, Cook's tours, Sunlight soap, Shredded Wheat breakfast cereal, Kodak film, American Express travellers' cheques, Heinz baked beans and Prudential Insurance are just a few examples.
Hand in hand with the introduction of these brands came early trade mark legislation. This allowed the owners of these brands to protect them in law (indeed, the Bass "Red Triangle" trade mark was the very first registered in the UK in 1876, and the beaming Quaker, who adorns the pack of the eponymous oats, is now well into his second century). The birth of advertising agencies such as J Walter Thompson and NW Ayer in the late 19th century gave further impetus to the development of brands.
But it is the period since the end of the second world war that has seen the real explosion in the use of brands. Propelled by the collapse of communism, the arrival of the internet and mass broadcasting systems, and greatly improved transportation and communications, brands have come to symbolise the convergence of the world's economies on the demand-led rather than the command-led model. But brands have not escaped criticism. Recent anti-globalisation protests have been significant events. They have provided a timely reminder to the big brand owners that in the conduct of their affairs they have a duty to society, as well as customers and shareholders.
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