Brands, Advertising, and Packaged Goods

A large percentage of the conventional wisdom on brands and advertising comes from consumer packaged goods-- soft drinks, razor blades, toothpaste or detergent. These companies essentially created brand management and have always been heavy advertisers. Moreover, "packaged goods marketing experience" was usually a prerequisite for new marketing executives in industries that adopted brand marketing in the 1980s and 1990s (banking, for example).

What is usually overlooked is that all those brand building efforts took place in a selling context which inherently commoditized products. Coke and Pepsi work hard to create a sense of uniqueness-- yet in Wal*mart or Giant they sit side by side as one of 50 soft drink options.