Brand Name - Use To Create Product Identification

Prior to the Age of Industrialization (sometimes called the Industrial Revolution) in the nineteenth century, day-to-day products were either made by the consumers themselves or by local craftsmen. As packaged goods became available, industrial producers found that in order to compete with well-known local items they had to develop packaging or “branding” to give their items a distinctive look and to cultivate a reputation. Some of the brand names still used in America today date to the nineteenth century.

As advertising and the use of a brand name to make a product stand out from the competition became staples of the business place, marketers learned how to tailor their brand name concepts to certain audiences by age, gender, ethnicity, income bracket, or occupation.

Typically a brand name includes not just the name per se but also a visually appealing logo, certain colors, kinds of lettering, and in the age of television, a particular spokesman or woman.  These combinations create ease of recognition and often a line with multiple products creates an expectation of quality for new items based on the performance of older brand name items.

Sometimes the marketing really has nothing to do with the brand name but simply creates a level of interest that carries with it an association to the item. For instance, in the 1990s, Taster’s Choice coffee ran a series of television ads that said little about their product beyond showing the jar and closing with a tag line including the words “Taster Choice.”

The television commercial series featured a man and woman who meet in their apartment building. In each commercial they wind up sharing a cup of Taster’s Choice coffee and make subtly suggestive remarks to one another. Each spot seemed to promise that more would be revealed about the relationship between these two people in the next commercial. People came to follow the commercials as if they were a serialized narrative rather than a marketing campaign.

Creating this kind of avid interest in brand names is nothing short of a marketing man’s dream. Just recently the makers of Alka-Seltzer resurrected their wildly popular ad campaign from 1972 in honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of their product. Even after thirty-four years the tag line from the commercial is still readily recognized by most Americans, “I can’t believe I ate that whole thing.”

Initially a marketing move to distinguish commercially produced items from those that were homemade or locally produced; brand names have themselves become part of the cultures in which they are sold. Their utility as product identifiers and their ability to convey a perception of quality and value has been proven repeatedly over the years.

Although “generic” or “store” brands have been introduced in recent years to appeal to the budget-conscious, many Americans buy products based solely on brand name and often because that is the product their Mother used. This kind of product loyalty illustrates the very reason behind the creation of brand names in the first place.

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