Giana Eckhardt: The Origins of Branding in Imperial China

A History of Marketing / Episode 11

When and where did modern branding really begin? The usual narrative suggests it started during the Industrial Revolution, when the UK and the US began mass producing goods.

This week, we’re challenging that story with my guest Giana Eckhardt, Professor of Marketing at King's College London, whose research reveals sophisticated branding practices thrived in Imperial China centuries before the Industrial Revolution.

Early examples of Chinese brands like the "White Rabbit" show how sophisticated targeted marketing and brand symbolism are much older than originally thought.

We also explore Eckhardt’s work on The Rise of Inconspicuous Consumption and analyze how conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption have trended over the 20th and 21st centuries, with cameos from Marty McFly and Larry David.

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Challenging the Traditional History of Branding

Andrew Mitrak: Giana Eckhardt, welcome to A History of Marketing.

Giana Eckhardt: Thank you for having me, Andrew.

Andrew Mitrak: So the typical narrative is that modern branding originates from the Industrial Revolution. But you have research that shows that branding practices date way back further than that, all the way back to imperial era China, more than a thousand years ago. Before we dive into this research, could you give a high-level overview of what the traditional version of this story is?

Giana Eckhardt: What you'll read in every branding textbook that's used with MBA students, for example, is that yes, there are examples of the place origin of where something was from that exists in antiquity. So in other words, if you look at a vase or something that's been found in an archaeological site, it may say the name of the country or even the region from which it was from.

But in terms of modern branding practices, which basically refers to the symbolic uses of brands to say something about who you are as a person and being much more identity focused, that first came into being around the Industrial Revolution. So in the 1800s and typically the UK and the US are the places that are referred to where modern branding practices originated. So this is things like brand mascots, for example. The first brand mascot is Bibendum, who represents Michelin tires.

Andrew Mitrak: I didn't know he had a name.

Giana Eckhardt: He does. Bibendum, yeah. So things like elements where the brand starts to become anthropomorphized. Consumers are willing to pay more for something because it has a particular name on it. All of those types of things originated around the Industrial Revolution and are typically tied to capitalism.

Discovering Branding's Ancient Roots in China

Andrew Mitrak: So if the traditional story is that brands emerged out of the Industrial Revolution tied to capitalism, when did you start to second guess this version of events?

Giana Eckhardt: I did my PhD research in China and what I was doing it on was the symbolic uses of brands in China at the time. And so I have some really, really great stories, which we can talk about some other time about how brands, which were brand new in the 90s in China like McDonald's, what they came to mean in a culture that was so different. But during the process of being over there and doing the research for my PhD in the late 90s, I started to realize that there were all of these brands that were way, way older than that. Meaning like millennia older than that. Using very sophisticated and symbolic uses of visual images or textual words that you can see in brands from basically the Song Dynasty, which is around 900 BC onwards.

Andrew Mitrak: When you say you saw these and found them, how literally did you see them? Did you see them in books? Did you see them at museums? And like what was that aha moment where like, hey, this actually, this looks like branding and this predates the Industrial Revolution by millennia. What was that “aha” moment like?

Giana Eckhardt: Yes, there are brands in museums actually, which you don't really see in a lot of countries outside of China. So that is definitely one place that I saw them. There have been books written on this, although in Chinese only. So we worked with some different people to help us translate a lot of what these ancient brands actually said. And also, some of the brands from that time are still around. So Tong Ren Tang, which is a pharmaceutical brand, for example, still exists now. And the white rabbit, which although not for needles, it's used for candies now, but in terms of a branding symbol from then is still used now as well. So they're still around.

Early Branding Practices in Imperial China

Andrew Mitrak: As you came across this research, what led you to dive in and start to publish literature to correct the narrative and change the story? What drove you to this as an area of interest to keep pursuing?

Giana Eckhardt: I've always been interested in Chinese culture and philosophy in general. And so I think when I realized that all of this had existed, and although it had been written about in Mandarin, it hadn't been written about in English, I really wanted to bring that knowledge to the canon of what people read in the West.

Andrew Mitrak: Let's talk about bringing it to the canon in your article, A Brief History of Branding in China. What were the earliest traces of branding practices that you came across and shared in this article?

Place Branding: The Changzhou Comb and Maotai Liquor

Giana Eckhardt: Yeah, so place branding, so in other words, calling a product by the region in which it's from, is one of the oldest branding practices in general. And in China, we can see this as well. The Changzhou comb is a particular style of comb that was made in the region of Changzhou. And so when people wanted combs that looked like that, they just started calling it the Changzhou. Which one do you want? Oh, the Changzhou comb. And eventually, it became a brand in terms of like a legally protected brand, etc. But at the beginning it was not. So early branding practices of the place brands evolving into more symbolic brands is definitely one.

Andrew Mitrak: This is so interesting because today we see place brands all the time. There's Kentucky Fried Chicken, there's Fiji Water, there's Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Almost every sports team is a place brand as well because it's tied to a city or an area. And how did a region become associated with Combs?

Giana Eckhardt: Well, that's where they were made. That style of really brightly colored and having a person on the comb. Again, things that aren't necessary from a utilitarian standpoint, that was only happening within that one region. And there are a lot of other products that are similar to that too. It was very organic. We tend to think of branding as something that is very intentional, right? That it's something a company is doing or maybe a country is doing, branding itself or whatever. But it's very intentional and actually, if you look at a lot of these older brands, they just evolved into the brand rather than having it be a managerial decision.

Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, and another place name example that you cite is Maotai liquor. And I thought it was so interesting to see a liquor example given that we associate alcoholic beverages with the region so much, whether it's breweries and microbreweries or macro breweries like the Rocky Mountain Coors lights and the macro beers of Michigan or the scotches of Scotland and the wines of France and of Napa. But here you have Maotai liquor as being associated more than a thousand years or so before modern day liquor brands evolved and it's a region known for its liquor. So I just think that's really fascinating that this seems like an organic way for a brand to emerge.

Giana Eckhardt: Exactly, and you have to support it as it grows. You can't just leave it there to continue that way organically. For Maotai liquor, the key moment was when Richard Nixon went to China in the 70s. That was the first time that a US president visited since the Communist Party had come in charge. It was the first time that a US president had been invited. And when Nixon arrived to China, he was served Maotai. And all of a sudden the brand became so famous. Oh, what is he drinking? What is that? It's still very difficult to get Maotai outside of China now. So it's not like it had a huge boom in terms of sales after that outside of China, but it definitely had a boom in terms of brand recognition.

Andrew Mitrak: Let’s go back to Imperial-Era China, well before Nixon’s visit. Let’s say we’re in 960 AD or some time like that, and I'm looking for a product. What is my experience of branding in these early days? If I'm or if I'm a merchant selling a product, what are the forms of branding? What are the primary functions that it's serving? Because this is outside of capitalism as well. So like who is involved in creating brands and who is involved in purchasing and identifying brands? What does that look like?

Giana Eckhardt: It often stemmed from consumers themselves wanting to have a way to be able to find the same thing of the same quality that they wanted the next time. That's the Changzhou combs, right? How do I know that this is going to be made in the way that I'm looking for? You need some sort of language in which to explain that, right? So consumers would oftentimes come up with their own names, like which sometimes were place brands, but some sometimes weren't.

The government also as well. The government realized that this was a way to help regional development. And also, in the same way that in the UK, the royal family will still endorse particular products, the emperors always endorsed particular products. And they realized that that was very strategic also. And so it was their way of helping saying, “Oh, why don't you call yourself this and we'll give you a seal that says that the emperor has endorsed this.” And so these are some of the ways outside of, we have a company and a brand manager who makes these decisions. These were some of the ways that were happening then.

The White Rabbit: A Case Study in Early Brand Symbols

Andrew Mitrak: One of my favorite examples in your paper from this era is the white rabbit, which we referenced earlier. And can you tell listeners what the white rabbit is and what the brand of the white rabbit is?

Giana Eckhardt: The white rabbit is widely considered to be the first modern brand. So in other words, a brand that just goes beyond identifying where it's from or something like this, but has more symbolic aspects to it.

Andrew Mitrak: And it was for needles, right?

Giana Eckhardt: Exactly. So it was needles that typically women back then would be using to sew. And it's important to say that the women who were the target segment for this were largely illiterate. So there is text on the brand. So there are the characters for a white rabbit. But people would recognize it, just who couldn't read that. And the reason why they would recognize the white rabbit is because that is a key character in a Chinese myth that everyone would know. And it's a character that represents females because the white rabbit is an empress ascended to the moon in a particular story that is very long to tell. But she ended up on the moon and the only thing she brought with her from Earth was her white rabbit. And so it's a symbol that's associated with women who were the target segment.

And where you would see these images of a white rabbit is in the wrapping paper. So when you would buy your sewing needles, they would wrap them up in a brown paper and it would have the symbol of the white rabbit on it. It was also outside of the store, the first store, to show people where it is you could go to buy it. So it really served so many functions that current brands serve, in terms of making people feel seen and feel like this is for them because they can understand and relate to the different images and messages that are associated with the brand.

Andrew Mitrak: So the artifact that's preserved with the white rabbit and is an image that's copied in your article is an etched metal stamp that would be used to imprint on a piece of paper. And in this image, you have it all. You have an image of the white rabbit. You have text around it and the text, the translation that I read is quote, we buy high quality steel rods and make fine quality needles to be ready for use at no time, unquote. And it sounds like it has all the hallmarks of a very modern advertisement. The image of the rabbit, of course, is on something that could be stamped and repeated and be consistent and you have positioning that emphasizes the quality and the speed of use. And it just seems remarkably contemporary, even though it's from close to a thousand years ago.

Giana Eckhardt: Yeah, I 100% agree. And I would just highlight that in addition to everything that you said that leads it to sound remarkably modern, it's also speaking to a specific target segment, which brands that just identified things they did not do. And this is something that I think is really important to emphasize because it's one of the keystones of modern brand management now, right?

Early Chinese Celebrity Endorsements and Target Audiences

Andrew Mitrak: So we've talked a lot about some of these keystones. We've talked about branding places. Are there any other favorite examples of early branding practices in China that you want to highlight?

Giana Eckhardt: Celebrity endorsements. This was during the 1900s, but there is a cigarette brand that's featured on their packaging, the different generals that had fought in the war and been successful. And so you can have this idea of hero worshipping and promoting nationalism, using people who were well known and widely admired. Especially in the age of social media, a lot of people think this is something that is so new. And yeah, maybe the medium in which it's being disseminated is new as compared to cigarette packaging or something like that. But what they're trying to do is remarkably similar.

The Spread (or Lack Thereof) of Branding Beyond China

Andrew Mitrak: Let's look at how this might have influenced branding outside of China. Do you see these early branding practices as a unique offshoot that developed within China and didn't influence the outside world or do you feel like these early beginnings of brand development influenced how areas outside of the Chinese region also practice brand development?

Giana Eckhardt: China was remarkably insular for thousands of years. And this was because China was never a colonizing power over other areas. If you think about like as when we were talking before about modern day branding practices and those stem from the Industrial Revolution. Well, think about the UK at that time, for example, like and how many colonies they had. So that way of doing things, it's easy to see how it spread. With China, it wasn't until others went to China that even that this was even that these practices were realized. Of course, there was the Silk Road. So, products from China had been going to Europe for a long time. But the branding practices that went along with them because you need a level of cultural understanding to get what these brands mean and why they would be important. And so they didn't travel. And this is why we don't know about a lot of these brands and these types of practices even now in the branding literature. It's something that has been under the radar. And of course, now some Chinese brands are starting to become more prominent globally. Now, we can of course see this with Byte dance and TikTok, for example. It's been something that's been insular to China for a long time.

Independent Development of Eastern and Western Branding Practices

Andrew Mitrak: The idea of branding and consistency and stamping sounds like within China it was identified and developed first and then almost independent of that years later, then the Industrial Revolution also adopted these practices, not necessarily influenced by what happened early in China, but they just came to a lot of the same ideas independently at a later time. Is that the right way to think about it?

Giana Eckhardt: Yes, I think so. In terms of the symbolism attached to branding, that's something that yes, I think that definitely developed during the Industrial Revolution, but also in China, as we've seen and been discussing. So I think it's yeah, similar practices that developed from different cultural milieus that didn't, yeah, so they developed independently even though as you said, they can be so similar now.

Conspicuous and Inconspicuous Consumption

Andrew Mitrak: Let's just segue into a separate topic. There’s another area of your research that I wanted to cover with you, which is this idea of conspicuous consumption and inconspicuous consumption. And by the way, these words are a mouthful and I'm gonna probably get tongue tied. But I think that this idea of conspicuous consumption, it was an idea I've heard this phrase before, but admittedly I had to look it up and catch up on who Thorstein Veblen was and where these ideas came from. But could you define what conspicuous consumption is for listeners and how it relates to ideas of luxury and branding?

Veblen and Defining ‘Conspicuous Consumption’

Giana Eckhardt: Veblen is the first person and still who people look to when they think about conspicuous consumption. He was writing at the turn of not this past century, but the one before. So in 1899. And this was the era of the robber baron. If we think about the Rockefellers of the world and those types of people.

He defined conspicuous consumption as the purchase of expensive goods to wastefully display wealth rather than to attempt to satisfy the more utilitarian needs of the consumer. For the sole objective of gaining or maintaining higher social status. So it's the idea that consumers buy things, expensive things, not because they need to, but because they want to signal something to others and it has to do with social status.

So we can think about contemporary brands now, like people are always asking, why would someone pay $1,000 for a t-shirt when you can buy a t-shirt in Walmart for $10. And so it's about what you're signaling to others. And I think this notion that Veblen had about wastefully displaying wealth, it's this idea that this isn't something, yeah, that I need in any way and because it is wasteful, that's what makes it valuable to me because it tells other people that I can afford to be wasteful and they can't.

And back in Veblen's day, the symbols of what was called conspicuous was for example, having a tan because if you at that time, if you had a tan, you were either a laborer who was working outside and so getting tanned from the sun, not because you wanted to, but because you had to. But if you were a person of leisure who was outside playing tennis, you would get a tan from that. And so it morphed from a symbol of not having high social status to having high social status. So those are just, yeah, that's how Veblen was thinking and writing about it at the turn of the last century.

Andrew Mitrak: So Veblen coined this term in 1899. That's not to say that it didn't exist before then of course, you think of Pharaohs in Egypt being buried in extravagant tombs with all sorts of things that their dead body probably doesn't need. Of course, there's always been displays of wealth that are extravagant, but for the first time we had this in economic words, a phrase conspicuous consumption to identify it.

Inconspicuous Consumption: IYKYK

Andrew Mitrak: And that if this extravagance and luxury and perceived wastefulness of spend is conspicuous consumption, then inconspicuous consumption must be the opposite of that, right? It's consumed in a more subtle, less flashy way.

Giana Eckhardt: So inconspicuous consumption is when you consume not because others will be able to recognize these symbols, but so that they won't be able to recognize the symbols of what a brand is saying. There's a term that's used, if you know, you know. (IYKYK) And inconspicuous consumption is embodied by that, right? And we can think about more modern terms like quiet luxury, which you hear a lot as well now, which is that no one would be able to know because there isn't anything that people can immediately recognize that says, this is the brand that this is. So along with that, this is the strata of society that I am from. It's keeping that more quiet and more hidden. And so there's a lot of talk now that inconspicuous consumption is more desirable than conspicuous consumption. I think it depends on who the people are and what the context is. But that's the contrast between the two.

Andrew Mitrak: So they can of course coexist with each other and it's not to say everybody's conspicuous or inconspicuous, but there are cultural trends where one seems to dominate more than the other.

Trends of Conspicuous vs. Inconspicuous Consumption

Andrew Mitrak: If you think of how conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption have trended over time since since Veblen introduced this concept in at the turn of the last century, how would you describe the ebbs and flows or the pendulum swinging between one and the other?

Giana Eckhardt: Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, you can look at some of the most expensive brands at the moment and I would definitely categorize them as an inconspicuous brand. There's a new luxury brand in China that's partially owned by Hermes, but it's called Shang Xia and it is extremely expensive, but you would never ever know that it was a Shang Xia from, you really have to be in the know to even. So in terms of luxury, the highest levels of luxury have switched almost in a complete 360 from Veblen's Day when it was very obvious, if someone was a laborer versus a robber baron. Whereas now you really can't necessarily tell that immediately anymore. So think about one of the most expensive bags from the past few years, one that looks like an IKEA plastic bag that they give out at IKEA for you to put your purchases in. And IKEA sells them for like $3, right? But so this idea that something is inconspicuous, it actually has more social cache now, flipping Veblen's theory on his head.

Economic Cycles and Consumption Patterns

Andrew Mitrak: I think of the roaring 20s and flapper dresses and extravagance. Then the great depression happens and it's probably you probably don't want to be seen wearing the fanciest things and it doesn't quite strike the right tone to be flashing your wealth when a lot of folks are in poverty. And how much do the trends in this tie to how the macroeconomy is doing in the culture?

Giana Eckhardt: It definitely does tie into that. So when we started to see a rise in inconspicuous consumption was after the 2008, I don't know what exactly we're calling it, but...

Andrew Mitrak: The great financial crisis of 2008 to 2011, 2012-ish….

Giana Eckhardt: Exactly. So during that 2008 to 2012-ish period, we may not have seen a lot of inconspicuous consumption immediately, but from 2000, yeah, kind of, well, actually 10, I would say onward, it was very evident to see. So I think that connection is definitely still there.

Cultural Examples: Marty McFly & Larry David

Andrew Mitrak: An illustration you give in one of your lectures is Back to the Future where Marty McFly, of course, is from the 1980s and wearing 1980s clothes and he's transplanted back to the 1950s. Could you tell the story of the branding example in particular of what this tells us about conspicuous consumption and how the 1980s contrasts with the 1950s?

Giana Eckhardt: So there is one scene where Marty McFly, the main character in Back to the Future, has his pants off so you can see his underwear. And his underwear says Calvin Klein on it because that's what he was wearing when he left the 1980s.

And so the 1950s folks, when they see him think it's his name and start calling him Calvin. When he has to explain like, no, this is the name of who made this underwear and not my name. They don't get it. Well, why would you have the name of someone else, of some other person on your own underwear? And hearing him try to explain that is quite humorous.

Andrew Mitrak: One of the examples that I wanted to share with you is from a favorite show of mine. It's called Curb Your Enthusiasm. Have you ever seen the show at all?

Giana Eckhardt: I have. Yeah.

Andrew Mitrak: There's this episode called the Anonymous Donor and Larry, he sponsors a hospital wing and it's called the Larry David Wing.

But then somebody else at the same time gets another wing at the hospital and it's the anonymous hospital wing. And Larry looks like a jerk because he put his name on it, the inconspicuous. Somebody else and it turns out to be his friend Ted Danson, gets the anonymous wing. and he gets all the cache of being anonymous, but people know that it's Ted Danson and Ted Danson looks like a hero because he's doing something but not getting credit, but everybody he is getting credit even though because everybody knows he's the one behind anonymous.

It's a funny interplay of how the elites who have all the wealth to sponsor a hospital wing, they want to show off their wealth, but they don't want to be perceived as showing off their wealth. It also ties into how there's psychological mind games, and reverse psychology to how conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption can interact with each other.

Giana Eckhardt: I love that example. I love that TV show too, although I haven't seen this episode, but I love this example because it shows that there's always a tension between wanting people to know what it is, what status you have in society, etc, but also, yeah, wanting to be thought of as a good person, right?

So a lot of people, the critiques of brands for super expensive brands, for example, are like, well, you could take all the money that you just spent on that and why haven't you donated it to people who need it in other parts of the world or something like this. So this idea that you can be a good person but not necessarily reap the social rewards for it. That's directly against Veblenism, right? So not that a lot of people even know what that is anymore, but really it's a great example of showing that there are still downsides to publicly consuming in this way and I'm going to go and watch the episode now to see how this one humorously plays out.

Luxury Brands Shift to Inconspicuous

Andrew Mitrak: I'm wondering if you have any favorite examples of how how marketers or companies and their brands have tapped into the cultural zeitgeist when it comes to conspicuous versus inconspicuous consumption, either adapting their brand or launching new product lines that embrace the the tone that's in vogue at the moment. Do you have any favorite examples of that?

Giana Eckhardt: One of my favorite examples is Louis Vuitton, and their famous LV brand. In terms of the iconography and the way that it visually looks, the brand visually looks. And they will go from having the word Louis Vuitton printed as large as it could possibly exist on a handbag to a handbag where you can't even tell it's a Louis Vuitton. There may be an LV inside of it somewhere, but that's it. And so some brands will try and play in and have both of these in their product line, right? So think about the Ralph Lauren pony. Yeah. It can be very small on a shirt or it can be very large and that can be changed and you can see the changes over time when this conspicuous versus inconspicuous, when either one is more in vogue and you can see that. So yes, I think that brands adapt to the zeitgeist, absolutely. But they don't necessarily have to embrace one versus the other. That can change over time or even to target different audiences at the same time.

Read Giana’s article: Luxury Branding Below the Radar

Giana Eckhardt: Further Reading and Resources

Andrew Mitrak: Giana Eckhardt, this has been such a fascinating conversation. I've really enjoyed getting this new look into the well both what we were just talking about the history and the ebbs and flows of conspicuous versus inconspicuous consumption, especially over the last century. But then even dating back further the origins of branding in China. I think this is really fascinating and this is just exactly the type of stories I'm hoping to uncover in this podcast. The things that listeners may not be aware of and that might change how we think about the history of marketing, of branding. So I think this has just been such a fascinating talk. Thanks so much for your time. Where can listeners find more of your work online?

Giana Eckhardt: I've been doing some work recently on digital nomads and the fact that when people don't have a permanent place to live, it really changes how they consume as a consumer. That's a Harvard Business Review piece. I've also been doing work on the rise of analog consumption as compared to digital. And why consumers want to go back to analog. And I have a book that's coming out with Princeton University Press. It's called In Praise of Inconvenience. So it's about why consumers are seeking out the inconvenient rather than the convenient and what benefits that brings them. So keep your eyes open for that when it comes out as well.

Andrew Mitrak: That's great. Thanks so much for your time. We might have to do a follow-up conversation at some point because I feel like we just have scratched the surface of these fascinating histories of brands and all the great research and work you've done.

Giana Eckhardt: Sounds good.

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