P6 - “mass-produced products were virtually indistinguishable from one another. Competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age – within context of manufactured sameness, image-based difference had to be manufactured along with the product.”
P6 - “familiar personalities such as dr brown, uncle ben, aunt jemima and old grand-dad came to replace the shopkeeper, who was traditionally responsible for measuring bulk foods for customers and acting as an advocate for products…a nationwide vocabulary of brand names replaced the small shopkeeper as the interface between consumer and product”
P10 'Not only was Marlboro dead, all brand names were dead. The reasoning was that if a ‘prestige’ brand like Marlboro, whose image had been carefully groomed, preened and enhanced with more that a billion advertising dollars was desperate enough to compete with no-names, then clearly the whole concept of branding had lost its currency.’
‘The ad would say something complimentary about itself or the person drinking it, and importantly, add a dollop of humor so the “we’re the best” claim wouldn’t be so boring or pretentious. Absolut would be a product that didn’t take itself to seriously. Its brand was nothing but a blank bottle-shaped space that could be filled with whatever content a particular audience most wanted from its brands: intellectual in Harper’s, futuristic in Wired, alternative in Spin, loud and proud in Out. The brand re-invented itself as a culture sponge, soaking up and morphing to its surroundings’
CoP: No Logo
