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“Creating brand” explores various constructs and examples focused on the origination of a brand. In other gallery sections of this web we will note that the best brands are continuously re-created by such people as:
-consumers who experience the brand and in some cases wear it as part of their own social identity
-employees who live the brand : think how much a service brand’s greatness depends on whether employees care about the brand’s purpose and are motivated to serve its promise
-organisational leaders who make a company’s largest investment decisions, with direct impacts on a brand’s integrity to innovate
If we investigate where brands originated from, we will often find the answer is either in a founder who had a passionate vision for a company or a creative agent who had an idea that was BIG in communications terms or preferably both. These days the failure to do both will probably cost a company dear because a company’s biggest brands steer its strategy, culture, competences and operating model of the business. Half a century ago this wasn’t the case, brands were often pure expressions of communications creativity and the story of Marlboro provides a classic case.
The cowboy imagery of Marlboro man was created around 1954 in America at a time when press and posters were the main communications medium. Marlboro had in fact existed as a niche brand for a couple of decades are research showed its image was that of “a fancy smoke from dudes and women”. The Philip Morris Company decided they wanted to make a mainstream brand out of the Marlboro name and their advertising director gave an advertising brief to the Leo Burnett Agency saying that in the future the brand should be the “cigarette designed for men that women like”. Strongly masculine photographs and copy were needed to reverse the feminine snobbish image and turn Marlboro into a popular man-sized filter cigarette. Specifically the advertising had to have virility without vulgarity, quality without snobbery. The big creative idea was to adopt the image of the cowboy, America’s Number 1 symbol of masculinity. (Source : Julian Watkins, The 100 Greatest Advertisements, 1959)
Communications simplicity is a great creative asset if your brand is advertising led through a medium (eg tv, press) where viewers would prefer to be watching something else ( the film the tv spots have interrupted, the news article which the advertisement is trying to divert your gaze from). In Marlboro’s case, we should note that the common branding ploy of benefiting tremendously from image transfer. Hollywood movies had created the nation-wide image and romanticised meaning of the cowboy; Marlboro was appropriating that imagery for its consumers to wear precisely as briefed : “for men who women like”.
However, I believe that there may be far wider generalisations about brand creativity to be gained from Coca-Cola, which ranks as many experts’ most famous of all 20th Century brands, and in at least one sense the first brand to go global. Here’s a short chronicle of the first century in Coca-Cola’s creative history “Robert Woodruff was Coca-Cola's mentor for most of the twentieth century. His definition for the brand's marketing mission was "to be within arm's reach of desire" around the world. This has had a fundamental effect on Coca-Cola's operational strategy. At the first sniff of a new market, the company's reflex reaction is distributive. No investment is spared to have the first and best bottling network in place. The most amazing coup of distribution made on behalf of any branding came with America's entry into the second world war. Woodruff immediately issued the direction that, regardless of the cost to the company, Coca-Cola would go wherever American GI's went at a cost of 5 cents a bottle. Woodruff was so convincing on Coca-Cola's powers as a morale booster that America's war office contributed significantly to the investments in bottling plants that Coca-Cola needed to be the GI's mascot. Palazzini, author of 'Coca-Cola Superstar', takes up the story: "Woodruff took care to justify the need for his drink to be in the daily ration of the troops, through a written document to the government with the meaningful title 'The importance of relaxation in the supreme fatigue of war'. Obviously, in the foreground was Coca-Cola, the "pause that refreshes", symbol of civilian life at home. Once he got the go-ahead, Woodruff assembled a team of technicians, "Coca-Cola Colonels", whose duties were to make sure that no soldier went without his Coca-Cola; not even in the most inaccessible place or where the battle was fiercest. Overcoming the most incredible difficulties of transport and supply, the men managed to meet their target. By the end of the war, five billion bottles had been consumed. But Coca-Cola did more than help troop morale - in many places it gave the local people their first taste of Coca-Cola, and it was a taste most liked. It put the company in position to take a giant leap forward. In 1940 Coca-Cola was bottled in 44 countries; by 1960 the figure had more than doubled and Coca-Cola had become a symbol of peace the world over. "As far back as 1911, Coca-Cola's advertising budget first exceeded a million dollars. A good product alone could never have afforded such visibility. The password for Coca-Cola's function was 'refreshing'; its 1904 slogan being 'the most refreshing drink in the world'. But the image link which kept the brand apart from others was its emotional appeal as the socially acceptable drink. Only once in late adolescence, as its commercial fame was soaring, did Coca-Cola come near to being spoilt by its success. Coca-Cola had enjoyed the natural good fortune of being born (1886) into the right social circles. While Victorian Britons had their tea houses and the French had their cafes, American society had soda fountains. Coca-Cola soon became the standard drink of this set. Until Coca-Cola was into its teens as a product, the only way to participate in the Coca-Cola experience was by sharing it in such genteel company. In 1899, Asa Candler (the proprietor of Coca-Cola) was approached by two young men, Thomas and Whitehead, who wanted the concession to bottle Coca-Cola. The idea seemed distant from the core business which Candler had nurtured. He surrendered the right to bottle Coca-Cola in the United States for the peppercorn royalty of one dollar. Over the next decade, it was the bottle which developed the product's mass public. In doing so it spawned a rash of competitors. As well as Pepsi, Palazzini's list of Colas of the time cites the likes of Cola Congo, Cola Sola, Cola Kola, Cola Nova and Better Cola. Surrounded by imitators in name and flavour, how was Coca-Cola to retain its unique identity? Thomas's inspiration was that a very special bottle could be the best resort for the brand's identity. He began in 1913 a competition to 'find a bottle that anyone would recognise even in the dark; a bottle unique in the whole world'. By 1915 Thomas's vision had been answered by a shape which has become the packaging industry's most famous son. The evocative style of Coca-Cola's bottle came just in time to renew the unique social standing of the drink. Within a few years American society was to play into Coca-Cola's hands. Prohibition started. Coca-Cola was the one brand of drink which was properly attired in every sense. Under Woodruff's careful steering, Coca-Cola's once optimistic sounding claim to be the most friendly drink in the world eventually became a commercial reality in the making. A few snapshots illuminate the consistency of the process. In the Thirties, when there was no tradition of a worker's coffee break, it was Coca-Cola that popularised the idea of a refreshment break and persuaded factory owners to install vending machines...During the second world war, Big Red became the soldier's friend and the friend of his loved ones back home...Coca-Cola is visible wherever tourists go, a friend however far you are from home...As the Berlin Wall crumbled, Coke made sure it was the first brand to be sampled to East German border-crossers (at one early checkpoint cans were given out at a rate of ten thousand per hour)...If there is a pre-eminent commercial symbol of the American Dream, Coke is it. 'Think Big' seems to be the corporate motto of Coca-Cola. Yet even Coca-Cola's President Donald Keough admits to some doubts whether 'our system is going to handle 1992'. His calendar for the year is full of mega-events that offer pan-European marketing challenges : the Olympics in Barcelona and Albertville, the World Fair at Seville, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage and the opening of France's Euro Disneyworld, where Coke is the exclusive soft drink. Ultimately, the resilience of Coca Cola's image is a testimony to the investment in branding. An example helps to show how an image superpower makes its own contribution to the popular history of our times. By 1970, Vietnam had damaged America's image to the extent that being a part of the American dream was turning into an international liability. Coca-Cola's response was to declare a peace treaty in a way that no American President ever could. Here is how Coke's 'biographer' Palazzini tells this episode of Coke's history in his 1989 book “Coca-Cola Superstar”: "In 1971, the famous 'Hill Top' advertisement was simultaneously broadcast in all countries, achieving what young people aspired to - a world without frontiers. It showed young people in their national costumes representing 30 countries. Together in a group on a hillside, they sang the appealing jingle, " I'd like to buy the world a home, and furnish it with love, grow apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves." And not for eight lines was Coca -Cola mentioned : ... I'd like to buy the world a Coke. In the very first week the advertisement screened, more than 4000 letters of approval arrived in Atlanta from young people. The pop group, the New Seekers were licensed to make a non-commercial version of the jingle. It reached the top of the hit parade and royalties were donated to UNICEF. The ad appealed to all ages and established once and for all Coca-Cola's universal charisma.”
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