20 legends about the emergence of world -famous brands
There is an unspoken rule in the world of big business: a product that is impossible to tell history is not a brand. Famous brands are shrouded in myths and legends, half of which are real facts from the history of their creation, and half are the fruit of the fantasy of marketerists.
Factrum I learned a lot of exciting brands and hurries to share them with you.
1. IKEA
When the first IKEA stores were opened in the United States, which have already received recognition in Europe, sales of furniture did not live up to any expectations. After the study, it turned out that although the Americans liked the simplicity of design, they wanted the furniture to correspond to the larger size of their houses. All that needed to be done is to increase the size of the furniture.
2. Western Union
Western Union owned almost the entire telegraph in the United States. At the very beginning of his commercial activity, Alexander Bell, who at that time had many debts, turned to WU, offering to buy a patent on the phone for only 100 thousand dollars, but the company refused to spend money, considering the phone with a “toy” product. . However, Bell, who founded his own telephone company, sued WU and won the process. So Western Union has lost a telephone business that reduced the demand for its main service – telegraphic communication.
3. Pampers
Leading chemist-technologist Procter & Gamble Viktor Mills, who helped her daughter care for children, had to repeatedly pull wet diapers from under his grandchildren, wash and dry them. The process, of course, did not like it and wanted to somehow make his life easier. Then the idea of a one -time “diaper” came to mind – a folded gasket with a high absorbing ability, which was planned to be placed in a special shape. After several experiments with different materials, Mills developed for p&G, a new product that began to be produced under the brand of Pampers, which became a common.
4. Chupa-Chups
The Chupa-Chups brand was founded in Spain in 1958 of the last century as part of Granha Asturias. Enrique Bernat was the first to create a candy on a stick (originally wooden), which could be sucking and not getting dirty clothes and hands. The design of the brand logo by the owner of the company Enrique Bernat “by acquaintance” was drawn by the famous fellow countryman Salvador Dali. It was he in 1969 that he came up with the shape of a flower for the logo of Chup Chups, which with small modifications safely survived to this day. He proposed placing the logo not from the side, but on top of sweets.
5. Land Rover
Land Rover branded emblem in six decades, in fact, remained untouched. They say that a jar with sardines inspired the development of the emblem of the creators. One of the engineers allegedly forgot her at the drawings. The oil imprint from the jar copied and offered as a silhouette for the emblem of the new car.
6. Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola was invented by the pharmacist John Pemberton, consisted of coca and nuts of the cola, patented as a medicine for nervous disorders and was sold in pharmacies. Cocaine at that time was not forbidden substance, and they still did not know anything about its harm to health, so it was often added to the pleasure and tone to drinks instead of alcohol-Coca-Cola was not innovation in this. When cocaine was prohibited of popularization partly accused Coca-Cola. Cocaine was excluded from the drink, but the positioning of the product has not changed and popularity increased exponentially.
7. Lacoste
The captain of the French tennis team promised a crocodile suitcase to Rene Lacosta if he defeats Davis’s Cup. Because of this dispute, which, by the way, won Rene, the American press called the tennis player “Alligator”. In France, the nickname Lacost was changed to Crocodile and entrenched him even because of stubborn and tenacious behavior on the court. Robert George, a friend of Lacost, painted a crocodile for him, who was later embroidered on a shirt with short sleeves, in which the athlete performed.
8. Swarovski
Daniel Swarovski created the world’s first electric grinding machine for cutting crystal and precious stones, which allowed him to put on the stream of creation of rhinestones. The rhinestones were named after the famous jeweler of the XVIII century, Georges Frederick Strass, who was given up faceted crystal fragments as diamonds. Thanks to the instinct and taste of Swarovski, the imitation stood one level with the original, and the name turned into a world -famous brand.
9. Apple
According to one of the legends to his logo, bitten by the apple, Apple owes an ingenious mathematics, the progenitor of a modern computer, who made a huge contribution to computer science and the victim for his unconventional sexual orientation, Alan Turing.
Turing was a homosexual that at that time in the UK was prohibited by law, and homosexuality was considered a mental illness. In 1952, Türing was accused of sodium and convicted. To choose from, he was offered two sentences in prison, or suppression of libido through injections of the female hormone estrogen, which, in fact, was a chemical castration. The scientist chose the second.
One of the effects was growing breasts and a decrease in libido. In addition, as a result of conviction, he lost his work and the right to work in the field of cryptography. For a whole year, the scientist lived in reclusion, and then committed suicide, poisoned by cyanide potassium. The tsanide solution of Turing injected into the apple, biting which he died. The apple was found on a night table next to the dead body.
10. Nestle
Nestlé’s initial logo founded in the 60s of the 19th century looked like this: a nest with three chicks and their mother. As a trading sign for his first products, Henri Nestle used the family coat of arms. At that time, parents and three children were considered a traditional family. Later, closer to the middle of the 20th century, traditions have changed. The logo also changed. Now in the nest, traditionally for Europe, only 2 chicks.
11. Ariel
There is a myth that the so -called Casual Fridays, when you can move away from strict dressing code accepted in large companies and change the official costume for everyday clothes, came up with in p&G. In the 80s of the 20th century, the largest world company P&G was a leader in the market of washing powders in the United States. But, despite the high advertising activity, the market share did not want to grow. Then the company conducted a study and evaluated the clothing market. As a percentage, it turned out that the powder was used in 65% of cases, and dry cleaning – in 35%. Further, the company found that 70% of the consumers of the washing powder work for hire and 5 out of 7 days a week go in costumes that they give to dry cleaning.
Further, joint research p p&G and Levi Strauss Jeans showed that employees in everyday clothes are more creative and work much more efficiently than those who wear costumes. And what they did? P&G inside his company introduces the right to walk on Friday in everyday clothes. This news by the efforts of both companies received huge coverage in the press, and many corporations followed their example. The market for washing powders grew by 20%.
12. Pirelli
Photo: Drew Gibson/GP3 Media Service
The Italian company Pirelli is distinguished by the high quality of its products and specializes in the production of automobile tires, high -voltage and telecommunication cables. Many, however, judge Pirelli exclusively by calendars with beautiful models – the result of the ingenuity of the specialists of the marketing company, so the company was widely known, new customers and success in the market. Pirelli calendars are considered the best advertising course of the 20th century and works of art.
In 2002, Pirelli violated more than forty -year -old tradition and released its famous calendar with photographs of dressed, rather than naked women. On the cover of the publication, a photo of a girl in an autumn coat was placed, and the seventeen -year -old niece of the then US President George Bush was chosen as a model. Loren Bush, the granddaughter of the 41st president of the United States (Bush Sr.), was just happy and shared emotions with reporters: “I talked with my grandparents, and they were satisfied. And when I said that I would be in clothes in the photo, – they rejoiced even more “.
13. Absolut
ABSOLUT concept is the longest campaign in the history of advertising, which has become the standard of creativity and good taste. And initially, back in 1979, the advertising concepts of the Swedish brand developed by marketers tried to emphasize the Swedish roots of the new brand. According to one of them, they wanted to call vodka the “vodka of the Swedish blondes” with the image of the Vikings on the label engaged in robbery, and according to the other – the “vodka of the tsarist court” with the image of a decanter covered with hoar. It was even proposed to wrap the bottle in paper. However, none of the ideas gave a proper idea of the quality and origin of vodka.
The solution came after the shape of the bottle was chosen. Advertising specialist Gunnar Broman looked at the window of an antique store in Stockholm and suddenly saw a Swedish pharmacy bottle there. She was elegant, non -standard, simple in outlines and very “Swedish”. Several designers were instructed to finalize the shape of the bottle, after which they decided to completely abandon the label so as not to close the crystal clean content of the bottle.
14. Uncle Ben’s
The UNCLE Ben prototype is Frank Brown, a met -deferer of one of the pre -war Chicago restaurants, often visited by the company’s management at one time. The image of Uncle Ben is tied to American folklore. One of the old stories talks about a black farmer, which was known throughout the country grown by him excellent in quality and taste with rice.
15. Michelin
At the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in the twenties, every large factory or small workshop acquired its own signature sign. These were the heroes of mythology, and the images of animals (Leo Peugeot and Crocodile Lacost), and symbols created from the company’s products, such as bibenudum. BibenDum was created by the artist by cartoonist O’galop in 1898, which realized the idea of Andre Michelin. Myth says that at the bicycle tire exhibition, all models have put on each other. The resulting stack in shape was very reminiscent of a fat man. For more than 100 years, Bibenchu has undergone strong changes, but remained the character of the Michelin concern.
16. Mazda
Zoom-zoom is an imitation of the sound of a rapidly moving object. “Zoom- Zoom” speak English-speaking boys playing cars. And Mazda so creates an image of a brand with a sports character, capable of his drive to introduce a buyer into truly childish delight. By the way, speaking of Ferrari, they use the expression “Vrom-Vroyoom”, and Mini Cooper makes “beep-beep”.
17. Heinz
When buying a ketchup of this brand in stores, pay attention to the inscription in the upper part “57 Varieties” (57 species). There is a myth that once in the summer of 1896, 51-year-old Henry Hinz (at that time already the owner of several factories) walked around New York, on the street he saw an advertisement for a shoe store that offered customers “21 style shoes”. By analogy, he decided to calculate the number of types of products that produced his factories. “I counted much more than 57, but the number“ 57 ”continued to spin in my head,” Henry Heinz himself recalled. – The seven possessed such a psychological charm that the number of “58” or “59” was no longer attracted to me ”. A week after this, the events on the labels and all the advertising products of Heinz appeared these same “57 Varieties”.
18. Red Bull
Photo: vladimir rys
Red Bull Energy drink was born in 1982, when Dietrich Mateshits became interested in widespread energy drinks during a business trip in East Asia. He acquired licensed rights to the Krating Daeng brand known in Thailand (translated from Thai Red Bull) and to use the recipe for Taisho Pharmaceuticals (Japan. When the drink was brought to a wide market (Europe, USA), Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Molson, Labatt, and Anheuser-Busch were the main competitors. The concept of everyone was similar – they tone and stimulated, and the Jolt Cola power engineer contained, among other things, also doubled, compared to Red Bull, a dose of caffeine.
Then Dietrich Mateshitz went to a risky step: artificially overestimated the price by half compared to competitors, reduced the volume of containers in the shape of a battery, and began to place banks in stores not in the drinks, but in any others (pay attention when in the nextOnce you go to the store – Red Bull banks, along with other power engineers, can be found almost in the sausage department, including in alcohol).
In addition, Red Bull boxes were distributed to students in university campus for free. Red Bull went with a bang on student feasts, because, by random and happy coincidence, it was quickly found that he perfectly lays down on vodka. So the new Vodka Red Bull cocktail was born to the new, which became very popular.
19. Hewlett-Packard
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty images
The founders of HP Bill Hughlet and Dave Packard threw a coin to decide whose name would be the first in the name. As you know, Bill won.
20. Adidas and Puma
It is known that Adidas received its name in honor of one of the founders of Adolf Dasler. And Puma was created by his brother Rudolf Dasler. There is a legend that the father of the Brothers Dasler worked all his life with a baker. Adolf and Rudolf Daslers together opened a workshop for sewing sports shoes to order. Adolf possessed the qualities of a designer, Rudolph – a marketer.
After the Second World War and the death of his father, the brothers seriously quarreled and shared not the small company Dassler (about 60 people) in half. This happened in the German town of Duchenerahs, which the quarrel of the brothers also divided into two parts. The employees of these factories went only to their taverns, drank different beer, their children attended different schools. Companies contained their own football teams.
And until now, an employee of one company is awaiting immediate dismissal if he is noticed in shoes or clothes produced by a competitor.