interested in innovation and creativity

Brief History of Advertising, Marketing and Branding

Posted: January 17th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Advertising, Social-Media | Tags: | 11 Comments »

I found this great video from German Ad agency Scholz & Friends via twitter friend Gabriel Rossi. In the video they lay out a very accessible history of advertising with some lovely animation and music. What I do like at the end is the question they ask of their fictitious Brand X “Don’t you have something interesting to say”. It seems that after years of “crafting messages” to appeal to the faceless mass consumer market many brands have lost their ability to do or say anything interesting. Exceptions of course are companies that stand for things more meaningful than just promoting the consumption of their products.


Scholz & Friends: “Dramatic shift in marketing reality” from Michael Reissinger on Vimeo.

On a related note I put a presentation together a year or so ago to present to some Industrial Design students on the topic of branding. I took a similar, historical approach calling it “A Brief History of Branding” which i’ve shared on SlideShare.

Brief History Of Branding
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: branding history)

If you are interested in this kind of stuff you should follow me on Twitter where I share a lot of this sort of thing


  • http://www.bigdealpr.com Carri Bugbee

    Extremely entertaining animation – I’ll pass that along and incorporate it into presentations myself! Also checked out your slide show. All good info.

    I think the important thing that marketers are (or should be) realizing is that there are so many options available, it’s going to a lot harder to figure out how to reach customers. But the upside is, we have potentially much more effective ways to do that.

    TV and coupons may always be the best way to sell toothpaste – or any low-priced commodity. Nobody needs to “participate” or “create value” for that stuff. However, any brand that occupies a narrow niche and/or requires a more sophisticated decision process for purchasing can and should engage with consumers in more targeted, multi-touch, (and perhaps most importantly) RAPID ways.

    What this means for marketing firms (ad agencies, in particular) is that their job becomes less about the “big idea” Ogilvy touted in the ‘60s and more about a zillion small ideas that happen virtually on the fly – without pitching concepts and getting client approvals. Of course, this represents a radically different philosophy and operating structure for marketing firms, though less so for PR firms who generally have carte blanche to engage with bloggers, journalists, and occasionally customers, as necessary.

    It’s a brave new world of transparency – and I, for one, am thrilled about it. I think many who traffic in hubris and hucksterism will eventually fall by the wayside. Those of us who are marketers because we are intensely interested in what drives people and want to nurture relationships will, I hope, thrive.

    @CarriBugbee

  • http://www.themarketer.info/18-01-2009/pubblicita-declino-scholz-friends/ Pubblicità Declino Video Scholz & Friends Group | The Marketer 2.0

    [...] sul Friend Feed di Karl Long ho intercettato un twit in cui Karl citava un suo post in cui descriveva il video di un’agenzia tedesca segnalato via Twitter dal suo amico [...]

  • Inge

    The video is no longer available on Vimeo.. Anywhere else?

  • http://josephsherman.typepad.com/my_weblog/ Joseph Sherman

    Thank you for this post. I watched the video at:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NewrL-Tw_Wk
    The final line “lets get the people engaged again” leves me wanting more. The video shows the progression of market dominance by a few brands to a market flooded with choices. It can go farther. People are not only selecting brands, they want to connect to something greater and to take part in creating an experience.

  • http://www.businesstribes.com/ Joseph Sherman

    Great article. Thank you.

  • http://cutesista.co.cc/213/expectations-of-brand-continuity.htm Expectations of Brand Continuity – Cute Sista

    [...] Conversation Capital friends from Sid Lee. (Scholz & Friends video found via: David Griner and Karl Long) – My question to you: How much of a brand’s continuity is within a company or brand [...]

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  • http://www.facebook.com/josephjoelsherman Joseph Joel Sherman

    Carri,
    Thank you for your comments. I agree with you that “…marketers are (or should be) realizing is that there are so many options available…” And as you note, we have gone form a few media streams to a zillion.

    I think we have also come into an era when some products and services that use to be specialty items have become commodities, and yet some commodities have (or have the potential to) become niches. Some companies defy the paradigm.

    Computers were once niche markets, yet now the market is flooded with PCs, yet Macs stand out as its own brand.

    Toothpaste may be a commodity sold by big brands, but there is also room for small firms to grow. Is there a market for toothpaste made of only organic products? Would some consumers buy a toothpaste if it benefited a cause? Tom’s Shoes gives a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair that it sells. Suppose an average big name toothpaste company spends 25-33% of its cost on traditional advertising. One toothpaste company decides to sell tubes in three or four packs, and promises gave a tube to a needy child for each pack sold. Or the toothpaste company sells the packs and has a bin at the grocery store where customers can give one of the tubes in their packet to a local homeless shelter. How would people feel about the “non-advertising” toothpaste that just let them give away a tube to a person in need? I think it would do much more than TV ads.

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