A Brief History of Branding

The word brand originally meant anyone hot or burning, and for hundreds of years was linked with the process of marking an animal with a unique sticker so that the owner could identify it at a later date. The institution complicated heating a branding iron that was fashioned into a symbol, letter or name, in a fire, which would then be pressed against the hide of an animal, burning the hair and skin and leaving a permanent scar on the body.

The term brand now has a wider meaning, and is used to chronicle a name, logo or catchword linked with a singular company, product or service. Brands came about as a way to identity a companies' products from similar products of rival businesses, but of course branding could also be used to disguise an inferior product as one of higher quality; in old China, merchants sometimes used branding to falsely pass off lower grade orchad tea as higher grade hill tea, by using names such as "Misty Mountain Tea", or "Garden in the Sky Tea".

Damage History

A brand is all about how a customer perceives a product or company. A successful brand is recognisable and creates an instant relationship with a product or service. For example, habitancy see a McDonald's Restaurant, and they know they can get quick and cheap food there. Construction a brand can take a long time and is a aggregate of a having a consistent product, as well as strong advertising and marketing.

The highest level of achievement in the world of branding is to create a brand that is abruptly recognisable even without the name of the business present. This takes years of marketing and huge amounts of investment; fellowships that have achieved this include Nike (with its "swoosh"), McDonald's (with its Golden Arches), Playboy (with the Playboy Bunny) and some car manufacturers such as Mercedes, Jaguar and Mitsubishi.

These days, fellowships spend thousands of pounds Construction and promoting their brands, holding up on the latest media news and advancements. A company's brand is vital to its success and therefore it's imperative that a business monitors its brand image to ensure that it is being perceived in the way it wants to be.

Negative press relating to a singular brand can have very detrimental effects and can mean that the public connect a brand with negative aspects, which is obviously bad for business, and a damaged brand can take months or even years to recover, if it ever recovers at all.

A Brief History of Branding