Different & Better
1962 was the year that had it all: Missiles and Marilyn; Bond and the Beatles, Warhol and Steptoe. It also saw the introduction of two giants of consumer culture. Things hadn’t started very well for Lou Groen’s McDonald’s franchise in Read More
From The Brand Historian’s Timeline Dwarves were big box office in 1937. Snow White, premiering in Disney’s first full-length feature was befriended by seven, meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Gandalf departed the Shire for the Misty Mountains with Read More
The Brand Historian goes in search of Key Drinkers “What are the three most important concepts of strategy?” was how the Chilean Arnaldo Hax liked to tease the senior managers who attended his workshops as Unilever’s house strategist. His answer, delivered with Read More
The significant challenge for consumer goods companies in anticipating and managing mercurial consumer behaviour was well demonstrated in the profits warning announced this week in Paris by le groupe Bic. Bic, known in France as the Roi du Quatre Couleurs Read More
Forays into the annals and archives of the brands we grew up with. One of the Brand Historian’s less glorious moments – at least as far as his mother is concerned – was the part he played in the rebranding Read More
The Brand Historian We live in the age of Ginoflation when hotel, bar and supermarket shelves are stashed precariously with eccentric designer bottles whose labels proclaim some new angle on botanicals or an ingenious method of hand-crafted distillation. Seriously expensive Read More
An A to Z of Modern Marketing M is for Mobile The Mobile Me In the Museum of Bad Futurology wherein are treasured the dangerous forecasts to which marketers are easily prone, there is an absolute stinker which dates from Read More
The Rise and Rise of Male Grooming Beards are back, and with them a whole new industry of grooming preparations and paraphernalia. But it’s not just the beards that are getting cleaned and moisturised these days. Male grooming is blooming Read More
Discovering the new world of frozen foods The brand historian is as old as the fish finger: the convenience miracle of the modern age will always hold a special place in my heart, not least because creating new frozen foods Read More
Two famous mass merchandisers in the centre of Oxford, Gap and WH Smiths, have rebadged as Clearance Outlets – their commercial people apparently contorting the language to say cheap in ways that might still add value. Well this is Read More
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