book<\/a> \u201cA History of Brands\u201d by Richard Shear, you\u2019ll see how we got here.<\/p>\nWhen you think of brands, you might immediately picture your own business or a certain kind of candy bar, mac and cheese or luxury car. The makers of those products obviously did their jobs right \u2014 but those things are top of mind also because they\u2019re relatively modern. Branding as marketing, however, goes back nearly 600 years.<\/p>\n
Shear writes that Johannes Gutenberg was the first person to brand a product in 1440, when he printed the first book. Because Elizabeth I founded the British East India Company in 1600, she was the first to create a \u201cglobal consumer brand.\u201d In the mid-1750s, fine china maker Josiah Wedgwood was the first to use \u201cnew business models,\u201d some of which are mirrored in a modern Apple Store.<\/p>\n
After the Civil War ended, American society was driven by \u201cacquisition and consumption as a means of achieving happiness\u2026\u201d Then, at the beginning of the 20th century, department stores learned to \u201cset fixed prices,\u201d which encouraged browsers, and grocery stores allowed customers to touch products directly.<\/p>\n
Newly invented electronic media in the form of movies and radio later allowed exciting new methods of marketing. At that time, national brands weren\u2019t generally widespread, but trademarked items were, and the trademarks were protected by laws.<\/p>\n
By the 1920s, even beauty products were branded, magazines used illustrations that doubled as brands and Black Americans understood that a good slogan could be powerful at the checkout counter. And today, says Shear, there\u2019s an evolution going on in retail that can be summed up in four steps\u2026<\/p>\n
Chances are, to a greater or lesser degree, your life is built on brands. Learning how it happened should be fun, even lively, and while \u201cA History of Brands\u201d explains the evolution of brands and marketing, it\u2019s not an easy lesson here.<\/p>\n
In the beginning of this book, there\u2019s a lot of throat clearing and mind numbing, and author Richard Shear offers readers contradictions, dry personal stories and arguments to be had, things that may leave you perplexed. For instance, he says in a book that \u201cthe nearly six-hundred-year reign of books\u2026 is clearly over.\u201d Huh.<\/p>\n
And yet \u2014 get past that and what\u2019s left is a fascinating and fun look at products we know, love and remember. Shear includes a nice group of \u201cfirsts\u201d and though his history isn\u2019t always linear, it\u2019s wide enough to offer readers a decent overview and a trip down Memory Lane.<\/p>\n
Meant as part of a School of Visual Arts Masters in Branding series, this book can be read as a standalone, but beware those first troublesome pages. You may want to tackle them\u2026 or you may want to just brush them off.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note: News is my Business earns a small commission if you click the link in this post and make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Richard Shearc.2025, Rockport\/Quarto Publishing$24.99, 160 pages Your morning started out all wrong. You couldn\u2019t find your favorite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[130179,17588,3444,130180,66425,3440,130181,77,130182,130183,130184,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-372000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-a-history-of-brands","9":"tag-book-review","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-brand-development","12":"tag-brand-storytelling","13":"tag-branding","14":"tag-consumer-culture","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-marketing-evolution","17":"tag-modern-branding","18":"tag-retail-history","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115088736047646405","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}