Study Task 5 - Triangulation

This task was to use the triangulation of text method of academic writing. I ended up writing more that I expected so I chose to continue this piece on into my essay.

In the 19^th century advertising and promotions of products did not need as much branding as is used now. This is mainly down to the fact that during that time the only things being advertised and promoted were new things which had been invented, one of many authors have commented on this, N Klein best explains this point, (2000)

‘The first mass-marketing campaigns, starting in the second half of the nineteenth, had more to do with advertising than with branding as we understand it today. Faced with a range of recently invented products – the radio, phonograph, car, light bulb and so on – advertisers had more pressing tasks than creating a brand identity for any given corporation; first they had to change the way people lived their lives. Ads had to inform consumers about the existence of some new invention, then convince them that their lives would be better if they used, for example, cars instead of wagons, telephones instead of mail and electric light instead of oil lamps. Many of these new products bore brand names – some of which are still around today – but these were almost incidental. These products were themselves news; that was almost advertisement enough.’

It was the products which in fact sold themselves and the newness of the idea which was what people were buying, mainly due to the fact that the products there were selling actually would have made your life easier not how now in the present time when it is in fact the brand which you are buying into. Klein has commented on this as well, (2000)

‘The search for the true meaning of brands – or the “brand essence” as it is often called – gradually took the agencies away from the individual products and their attributes and toward a psychological/anthropological examination of what brands mean to the culture and to the people’s lives. This was seen to be of crucial importance, since corporations may manufacture products, but what consumers buy are brands.’

One of the main reasons as to why now advertising and marketing is such a lucrative business and plays such a large portion of selling anything these days is because of this, and how in trying to brand your product is not only about the product but is more about what benefits you would get from buying into it. It was this crucial moment when companies and large brands had started to think about what Klein was describing as ‘brand essence’. Berger in Ways of Seeing supports this as he states that (1972)

‘It is important here not to confuse publicity with the pleasure or benefits to be enjoyed from the things it advertises.’

This is also further supported by Olins in On Brand as he states (2003)

‘Branding has moved so far beyond its commercial origins that its impact is virtually immeasurable in social and cultural terms. It has spread into education, sport, fashion, travel, art, theatre, literature, the region, the nation and virtually anywhere else you can think of.’