In 1946, historians Yang Kuan and Jiang Dayi, the director of the art department at the Shanghai Museum, were browsing an antique shop when they stumbled upon a bronze printing plate for an advertisement and bought it. This is the famous Liu's Fine Needle advertisement in Chinese advertising history, and it is the earliest known physical example of a brand advertisement in China and the world.
The plate features a white rabbit pounding medicine with a pestle in the center, with 'Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop' above, 'Recognize the white rabbit in front of the door as our mark' on the sides, and below: 'We buy top-quality steel bars to make fine needles. They are reliable for household use, and for those who resell them, there are extra discounts. Remember our mark.'
It is a typical brand advertisement, containing the brand name 'Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop', the brand logo 'the white rabbit pounding medicine', and the core brand proposition 'top-quality steel bars, fine needles'.
The origin of the English word 'brand' has three traditional explanations:
A. It originates from Old German, meaning sealing wax, representing the family crest of nobility, used to distinguish and highlight status;
B. It originates from Old French, meaning brandy, used to distinguish the origin and the estate producing the brandy;
C. It originates from Old English, meaning branding iron, used to mark livestock during trade to indicate ownership and distinguish from others' property.
These roughly represent the three primary functions of brands: identifying origin and producer, proving quality, and highlighting status.
It's important to note that a brand is an economic phenomenon. It is inevitably a product of socio-economic development and a natural extension of business logic. The meaning and essence of a brand must align with the socio-economic conditions of its time.
The Era of Scarcity
In the long period dominated by agricultural economy, commerce was underdeveloped, goods were scarce, and there was no real market economy or competition. Thus, the earliest brands were the result of spontaneous evolution, not deliberate design.
Brands began with quality passed by word of mouth, used to identify origin and producer, and mark ownership.
Initially, people gradually realized which regions produced better goods and which craftsmen made better products, so these origins and producers were celebrated through interpersonal communication, becoming the earliest brands.
Therefore, the earliest brands were regional brands. Examples include West Lake Longjing tea, Lu'an Guapian tea, Wuyi Dahongpao tea, Anxi Tieguanyin tea; and Hu brush, Hui ink, Xuan paper, Duan inkstone, Su embroidery, and Shu brocade.
For instance, Fenjiu, Moutai, and Jiannanchun refer to production regions: Xinghua village in Fenyang, Shanxi; Maotai town in northern Guizhou; and Mianyang, Sichuan (which belonged to Jiannan Circuit in the Tang Dynasty). These regions are known for producing excellent liquor, not a specific company.
There were also producer brands, such as the aforementioned Liu's Fine Needle Shop, Zhang Xiaoquan scissors, Wang Mazi kitchen knives, or 'XX family donkey meat shaobing' and 'X Ji rice rolls'.
I call this era, dominated by agricultural and natural economy, the Era of Scarcity.
During this period, the connotation of brands was very simple, and brand equity was extremely shallow. Brands were mainly shaped by word of mouth, and word of mouth = awareness + quality.
Whether product brands or producer brands, the main value of a brand was to indicate the product's origin, thereby demonstrating awareness and quality endorsement.
The Era of Mass Production
As China entered modern society and the industrial age, mass production began, more enterprises emerged, and the commodity economy flourished. In the West, this historical process started with the Industrial Revolution, which liberated productive forces and greatly improved production efficiency, moving humanity from the agricultural era to the industrial era.
At this time, according to textbooks, the main contradiction was between the people's ever-growing material and cultural needs and backward social production. There were not enough brands for consumers to choose from, and the few that existed varied in quality, with counterfeit and shoddy products rampant.
To reduce decision-making costs and shopping risks, during this period, the optimal choice for consumers was to choose well-known brands. Because brands that have been verified by the most people have the lowest quality risk. The higher the awareness, the higher the cost for companies to fake it.
Word of mouth could endorse quality, but it relied on interpersonal diffusion, which was too slow and inefficient in the era of socialized mass production.
Therefore, brand building during this period mainly relied on mass media (TV, radio, newspapers, outdoor advertising, celebrity endorsements), and the core of branding was to build awareness.
So during this period, various titles were everywhere, such as 'CCTV-listed brand', 'provincial, ministerial, national quality product', 'China Famous Trademark', 'China Top Brand', and so on.
There was a common consumer psychology: Only brands that appeared on CCTV or had celebrity endorsements were considered real brands. Well-known brands certainly had no quality issues.
(In fact, this is herd mentality.)
Whether it was CCTV-listed brands or China Famous Trademarks, they were essentially about building awareness, using awareness to endorse product quality.
In this era of mass production, brands were mainly shaped by awareness; brand equaled awareness.
With the deepening of reform and opening up and China's entry into the WTO, we began to integrate with international standards. The market became more developed, goods became more abundant, and competition intensified.
When goods were no longer scarce and production was no longer an obstacle, and when products became increasingly homogeneous, the question of how to build brands and market them came to the forefront.
In the 1950s, the first advertising theory—USP (Unique Selling Proposition)—was born in the United States.
It emphasized that every advertisement should propose a unique selling proposition, telling consumers how this product differs from competitors and why they should buy it.
By the 1960s, competition became even fiercer, and differences between products became smaller.
At this point, Philip Kotler said:
Enterprises should not just focus on production; they must first study consumer needs, know what consumers want, and then produce accordingly.
A single product cannot satisfy everyone; companies must segment the market and target specific segments to meet their needs.
Then, David Ogilvy said:
Product homogenization means consumers make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, so advertising must build a unique brand image, give products emotional appeal, and create psychological satisfaction for users.
Then, Jack Trout and Al Ries said:
As competition intensifies and categories continue to differentiate, brands must occupy a distinct position in consumers' minds—either first or unique.
Then, Michael Porter said:
Differentiation is a basic competitive strategy for enterprises.
So we can see that in this era of industrial economy, mass production, and full market competition (which I call the Era of Homogenization), various advertising, branding, and marketing theories emerged one after another.
In essence, most theories emphasize the same thing—differentiation.
In the Era of Homogenization, with fierce competition and little product difference, it was natural to create differences through branding.
Brands are shaped by differentiated benefits, values, and meanings (values).
No differentiation, no brand.
The Era of Big Bang
Next, we enter an era dominated by the internet economy. This era has two major characteristics: product explosion and information explosion.
Shelves are saturated, and consumers' various needs can be met. For example, shampoo: anti-dandruff, nourishing, smoothing, repairing, styling, herbal, traditional Chinese medicine, black hair, anti-hair loss, silicone-free, amino acid, scalp care, for men, for women, 3-in-1, 5-in-1... All imaginable functions already exist, making differentiation increasingly difficult.
If you search for clothing on Taobao today, you can find 1.24 million stores. How can you differentiate? What new category can you create?
If categories are further subdivided, consumers will explode. Today's consumers already suffer from choice overload.
A more serious problem is that today's information overload makes brand communication increasingly costly, making it harder for brands to communicate their differentiation to consumers.
In the past, goods were scarce, and consumer attention was abundant (as soon as you advertised, consumers would notice);
Now, attention is scarce, and goods are abundant (no matter how much you bombard with ads, consumers don't care).
If you want consumers to notice your differentiation, being just a little better than competitors is useless; users won't notice. You must be 10 times better for users to perceive that you are different.
But today's brand building still relies on the communication logic of the Era of Homogenization.
Every communication effort desperately seeks a differentiated selling point, differentiating for the sake of differentiation, resulting in selling points that may differ from competitors by only 5%. Or the differentiation found is something consumers don't care about at all.
In this era, the new consumer spirit is: pursuing refinement over quality, spiritual satisfaction over material function, standing out over conformity, and wanting over need.
Today's consumers, when shopping, don't care who is the segment leader, who has the highest awareness, or how different you are from competitors.
They care about whether the brand they buy can satisfy and express their spiritual, aesthetic, self, and interest expressions.
They care about whether you can create an unforgettable, personalized experience for them through the brand. This includes the brand's texture and style, the feeling after using the brand, the story and culture behind the brand, and whether the brand highlights my image and personality.
In 1997, a viewer told Steve Jobs: I think Apple needs to be perceived as different from others; that's important. Because if Apple says we are the same as everyone else, just better, that doesn't seem very interesting.
Jobs replied: I don't care about being different; I just want to be better. If we have to be different to achieve that, then we will be different. If we can be better without being different, that's fine too.
Apple's chief designer Jony Ive added at the iPhone 7 launch: 'It's easy to make a product different, but hard to make it better.'
Apple's market value exceeded one trillion not because Apple is different, but because Apple created an ultimate user experience. Ultimate experience brings emotional resonance, and emotional resonance brings fans and communities. This is the brand logic of the Era of Big Bang.
With product explosion and information explosion, attention is increasingly scarce. For a brand to reach consumers, it must first evoke resonance and confirmation. Otherwise, no matter how much you bombard with ads, appearing a hundred times in front of consumers, they still won't respond. At this time, building a brand means creating an ultimate experience that resonates with users.
In the Era of Scarcity, brands represented word of mouth.
In the Era of Homogenization, brands represented awareness and differentiation.
In the Era of Big Bang, brands represent experience.
Source: Kong Shou (ID: firesteal13)
-END-