Apple (18th in 1996)
Google (didn’t exist in 1996)
Coca-Cola (showing the enduring strength of a well-managed brand)
Microsoft (up 5 places in 20 years)
Toyota (up from 31st)
IBM (11th)
Samsung (joint 96th with Gordon’s Gin in 1996)
Amazon (just opened its doors in 1996)
Mercedes-Benz (down just 2 places in 20 years)
GE (which didn’t even place in 1996 because it owned so many independent brands that the folks at Interbrand couldn’t work out how to assign a value to it as a corporate brand)

Furthermore, and for many years, the law had seemed to discriminate in a similar way. Trademarks were applied to products and goods. Retail names like McDonald’s were given ‘service mark’ status in the USA. And even this came about a long time after trademarks were first legally conceived.

Retailers also distinguished between their ‘corporate name’ and their branded products. Some created standalone brand names to apply to their own sourced products, for example M&S created the St Michael brand to apply to a range of goods (from food to clothes) that were only sold in their shops, partly to address this perception problem of ‘goods’ being very different from the service of the store in which they were sold. Or they called the products they sourced directly and put their name on as ‘own label’. Again, this implied that there were ‘branded’ goods made by brand owners and ‘non-branded’ goods supplied by retailers.

These own-label products were typically cheaper and considered of perceivable lower quality. Actually they were often made or sourced from the same factories that were either owned by or supplying the brand owner. The Sun reported in 2017 that Weetabix’s brand of breakfast cereal actually competes in supermarkets alongside the retailers’ own-label wheat biscuits which were also produced by the Weetabix company. It also revealed that other household brands such as McVitie’s, Müller, Patak’s and Andrex also produce unbranded items for supermarkets.

These manufacturer brand owners might be able to do this because they often have spare capacity on their increasingly efficient production lines.

The supermarket own brand battles

Then, in the mid-1990s, the brand versus retailer own-label wars took off. And suddenly the power of the retailer brand was seen and understood.

The battle started in the UK (and was seen elsewhere) when retailers like Tesco and Sainsbury’s began to closely mimic on their own-label packaging the design and graphic cues of leading FMCG brands. Sainsbury’s began producing its own label of premium coffee called Gold, with Gold packaging and a label with pictures of coffee beans, all of which looked very similar to Nestlé’s Nescafe Gold Blend premium instant coffee. And Sainsbury’s sold theirs in a similar-shaped jar. The big difference was in the price, of course. The retailers could sell their similar-looking product at a much lower price than the leading brand. A huge row erupted between the brand owners and the retailers, which became even more complicated when Virgin entered the cola market with a product (produced by Coty) that was in a red can with Virgin Cola in white lettering. Coca-Cola objected. The brand versus own-label brands battle was already complicated enough because of the interdependency of the two protagonists. Nestlé needed the retailers to stock and sell their products, the retailers needed Nestlé both for the sales that brands such as Nescafé generated but also because those brands set the benchmark against which they could closely develop their own labels.

Eventually a settlement was reached. Nestlé produced more distinctively shaped packaging for their products. The shape of the glass jar, for example, was changed to one uniquely designed for them and so more legally protectable. Sainsbury’s and other retailers who could neither afford to invest in highly customized packaging formats nor wanted to continue to fight their vital suppliers agreed to ensure they would respect the intellectual property rights of the brand owners.

Two enduring legacies emerged from this battle. One was the British Brands Group, originally established to help lobby for legislation to protect against rip-offs, as they interpreted the retailer’s actions. Now it lobbies for a wider understanding of the importance and contribution made to the British economy by brands. The other and even more important legacy was a real focus on innovation and differentiation from both sides. This has continued to this day in order to differentiate and distinguish the relative value of offers to consumers.

What the brand versus own-label battle highlighted was the shift in perceptions of who or what was actually a brand. Brands were still consumed as products but in consumers’ minds it was now clear that they were associated with a set of trusted values, which could be transferred from one area to another. In the case of Sainsbury’s, the credibility of its brand as a grocery retailer enabled it to sell its own-branded groceries. For Virgin, its values of fun and taking on the big guys that were built through its record stores and airlines could be applied – with admittedly limited success – to the category of soft drinks.

In fact, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and the like went even further. They realized that what their brands stood for was not a specific type of business called ‘supermarketing’ but abstract and greatly appreciated values of convenience, price competitiveness, quality and service. This gave them the authority to challenge other markets where incumbent brand owners were vulnerable. Tesco went into financial services and both Tesco and Sainsbury’s, among others, began selling their own-branded petrol on the forecourts of their largest superstores and later as dedicated petrol stations to which were attached mini-shops carrying their brand, such as Tesco Express.

So by the mid-1990s, a major shift in the understanding of brands and branding was happening and our researcher friends would soon have to reassess their opinion that McDonald’s was not a brand.

Anything could be a brand

It wasn’t just retailers who had by now learnt to regard themselves as brands and to operate with the same kind of disciplined processes and thinking as traditional FMCG brand owners. All kinds of other categories got the brand bug.

Banks began to redefine themselves and to rebrand themselves. Moving away from a product or marketing orientation, creating sub-divisions or new financial services with distinct names, they began to focus more attention on the ‘corporate’ brand and attempted to simplify everything under a single promise or proposition. Barclays redesigned its famous eagle, upgraded and renovated its branches, replaced existing account names and re-badged some of its subsidiary businesses under a global brand identity. HSBC did the same thing on an even bigger scale. Remember the bank brand Midland? It called itself The Listening Bank and used advertising featuring a kindly animated griffin voiced by the popular actor Richard Briers. Well, that all went and became HSBC. To this day, you will find high-profile advertising for HSBC in places such as airports associating it with emotional and aspirational values (like any traditional consumer brand has for years) and positioning it as the world’s local bank.

Airlines similarly overhauled their entire portfolio of subsidiary companies. BA branded everything they could with a new ‘speedmark’ and redesigned BA logo. They ran into a little brand turbulence after a rebrand launch in 1997 when they repositioned themselves as a ‘Citizen of the World’ instead of as a national airline carrier. To express this positioning, they boldly used a diverse set of multicultural artworks on their tailfins to reflect the routes they flew. It caused a great deal of controversy and famously the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher put a handkerchief over a small model plane bearing one of the designs. Eventually, BA adopted one single design based on the Union flag for all its tailfins, things settled down and the global BA branding has been consistent for the past twenty years.

Technology and telecommunications were also becoming branded. When Apple launched its iconic 1984 advert at the Superbowl event of that year, it heralded a complete change in what kinds of things people would see as consumer brands. Computers until then had largely been the preserve of big businesses, governments or educational institutions. In 1977, the CEO of DEC (one of America’s largest computer businesses) had confidently asserted that there would be no need for anyone to have a home computer. In the same year, Steve Jobs confidently predicted that his company would help put a computer in everyone’s home all round the world. Once the cost of computer hardware and software began to fall and the design and user interface was made more human, suddenly people could not only afford to buy their own personal computer, they positively demanded one. A growing consumer market developed and, like any consumer-driven market, it had competition – and where there is competition, there are brands competing for our attention.

As we know, Steve Job’s greatest genius was that he realized not what computers were for but what computing could do. In a speech he gave in 1983 to a small room of listeners in California, he talked about a future in which people would walk around listening to music on tiny computers, watching TV shows, communicating with other people. He saw computing as a means to liberate, educate and entertain people. He saw design-led thinking – graphic, product, software and service design all developed from the point of the experience that the human end-user would most appreciate – as a profound part of Apple’s brand DNA. By relentlessly following design-led, consumer-led, brand-led principles, he created a focused range of innovative products and services that have transformed not only what we do but what we mean when we say ‘brand’.

Utilities and telecommunications likewise became brand conscious. After decades of mostly state-owned control and consequently monopolistic practices, a tidal wave of deregulation, privatization, free and open market trading turned sectors like electricity, gas, water, and telecommunications into competitive ones. The privatized companies rebranded to shed their old state-owned image. New entrants with shiny new brand names like Orange and then EE, Octopus and Buzz have poured into these markets as they have developed and grown. Virgin brings you your broadband, home and mobile phone services, even if it is no longer selling you cola. People were making brand choices not just by choosing between one comparable set of convenient services and price tariffs but by selecting based on what they ‘thought and felt’ about the competing branded offers.

You could even have brands within brands, as Intel Inside and NutraSweet showed.

Brands were built even where there were no consumers

Business-to-business brands were also developing. In the early 1990s Louis Gerstner took over IBM and quickly identified that it was too diversified, had business units which did not create enough value and some which made no strategic sense when looked at from the point of view of what IBM stood for. One of the tools he used to help him streamline the global business was brand valuation. It helped him to identify which parts of the IBM empire added value to the brand and which didn’t. Of course, behind that was his appreciation of what IBM meant – what the brand represented. IBM’s purpose has long been to develop information technologies that help mankind. In its pursuit for smarter ideas for a smarter planet, it has constantly evolved its offer. Thomas Watson, its legendary chairman who coined that purpose back in 1915, would not recognize the types of things the business does now, but he would surely recognize what IBM stood for.

Business-to-business brands abound. Walk through airports or railway stations, leaf through magazines or newspapers and you will see advertising for companies such as SAP or Accenture. The average consumer will never commission Accenture to implement an IT strategy for their house, so why do these companies advertise so publicly? It’s brand building. They want their customers, CEOs, CFOs and CTOs to be constantly reminded of their strength, reliability and scale.

Brands became important even in sectors that made no money. Charities began to understand that they were in a highly competitive market – in fact one of the most competitive there is, that of the human conscience. They had to fight for awareness and emotional relevance to ensure that people were prepared to give them the money they needed for their good works. Oxfam underwent a major rebranding exercise globally, bringing all its various subsidiary and affiliated organizations in different countries (which often had different names and logos) under a single Oxfam name and a new highly distinctive logo that could be recognized anywhere in the world as a symbol even where the Roman alphabet letters of Oxfam were incomprehensible.

WWF similarly focused on a global brand with imaginative global campaigns such as its annual Earth Hour where all round the word, people are encouraged to turn off their electricity for an hour to dramatize the amount of energy we are consuming and the consequent pressure we are putting on our planet’s resources.

Sports federations such as FIFA rebranded. The World Cup became the FIFA World Cup and a stylized version of the FIFA World Cup trophy (one of the most recognized trophies in the world) became incorporated into every logo every four years. Broadcasters such as CNN, Sky and the BBC turned attention on to their brands as the battle between terrestrial and satellite television morphed into a battle on a digital ground.

Some brands don’t make anything at all

The digital world has produced brands that do not make anything at all. Not even their own programmes. Facebook and YouTube essentially curate (at best) but mostly just host content produced by people like you and me or source content that is of interest to you and me. But these are brands nonetheless.

What all of these brands, in whichever category you care mention, understood was that they needed to reflect a personality for their brand; a sense of identity over and above the principal function of their operations or the legal requirement of a trademark. A brand personality, whether serious and reassuring like an IBM or engaging and fun like Facebook, is key to brand preference.

As brand personality became central to the perceived value of a brand, it would only be a matter of time before a personality became a brand.

The rise of the person as a brand

Famous personalities had long been used to confer their particular charisma or credibility on a brand. John Wayne used to endorse Chesterfield cigarettes many years before his death from lung cancer. Paul Newman developed his own brand of salad sauces. Pop stars and sports stars from George Best to O J Simpson have endorsed their own range of products.

In 1993, the pop star Prince used branding to make a dramatic public and professional statement. He rebranded himself. He dropped the name Prince and instead adopted a graphic device without letters, , the ‘Love Symbol’. His decision to rebrand was in response to a long-running contract dispute with his label Warner Brothers and also to his belief that he was being commercially and creatively constrained. In frustration with this, he had written the word ‘SLAVE’ on his face. By rejecting the brand name Prince, he not only freed himself from metaphorical chains, he had also freed himself from contractual and commercial constraints. His contract with Warner Brothers was with Prince. was not contracted to anyone.

It was a clever use of the tools of modern commercial marketing against modern commercial marketers.

But all of this was just a warm-up for the big breakthrough in the modern phenomenon of personality as a brand.

In 1996, the same year that Interbrand asserted that McDonald’s was not only a brand but the world’s greatest one, a future and unique global brand first caught the public eye.

In an English Premier League football match between Wimbledon and Manchester United, a relatively little-known Manchester United midfielder scored an extraordinary goal from within his own half of the pitch. It was an astonishing act of style and skill. Captured by TV cameras, the goal was shown countless times around the world. It was the moment that launched Brand Beckham.

‘I couldn’t have known it then, but that moment was the start of it all: the attention, the press coverage, the fame,’ David Beckham wrote in his autobiography, My Side. ‘When my foot struck that ball, it kicked open the door to the rest of my life.’

The Beckham brand phenomenon

David Beckham has achieved incredible success on and off the pitch. He once topped a list of the 50 wealthiest players in the world, according to an index that looked at net worth taking salary, endorsements and assets along with outside business interests into consideration. He was closely followed by Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Those wealthiest players, according to Goal.com, had a combined wealth of over £1.7bn, which was greater than the GDP of Liberia. Goal.com estimates that Beckham’s net wealth is now $400m.

Beckham has become a byword for a new type of brand in the 21st century – an authentic personality brand who can sell different types of products to anyone, anywhere in the world because of what he does and who he is. He is not a single product brand with a manufactured appeal that is communicated relentlessly to the same target audience globally.

The book Brand It Like Beckham shows how the Beckham brand has been developed by effectively following the best practices and principles of any great international brand: a clear set of values and image, proper trademark protection, long-term planning, thoughtful communications and extensions. Adidas and other brands would choose celebrities to endorse their products that matched the values of their brand and the desired self-image of their consumers. The Beckhams – because it is not just about David, it is also about Victoria and it might even be about any or all of their children – have done the same thing in reverse. They have been very clear about what they want to stand for and then chosen commercial partners who reflect their values and image.

There are specific reasons why the brand has been so successful.

1 His dedication to football

Football is the world’s biggest sport, and it shows no signs of decline. From Seattle to Shanghai, people consume football avidly, on TV, online, on mobile, in the stadium, in the pub, in the papers, in stores and in betting shops. If Beckham were a basketball player, blessed with a similar talent and charm, it is unlikely that he would be this big worldwide.

His enduring dedication to playing football at the highest level appealed to people. Twenty-one years after he made his debut for Manchester United, he was playing at Paris St Germain, in the UEFA Champions League. Beckham is unique in having played for top teams in four of the five main European leagues, with arguably the biggest clubs in each, and he has won every senior club honour of note. And that list of achievement does not even include the US adventure where he helped to raise the profile of the sport.

He was 37 and still playing at the highest level when he topped that Rich List. You cannot fake that level of dedication and longevity. People recognize it and the vast majority admire it. The best brands are based on some genuine product quality and that is true of Beckham’s love of football. It’s been extended by his decision – foresightedly written into his contract with LA Galaxy back in 2007 – to develop an MLS Franchise in Miami.

2 The appeal of his personality beyond football

He is perhaps the only footballer who could claim to be a household name anywhere in the world, even in houses where no one likes football. He is good-looking and has natural design sensibility, which make him incredibly photogenic in an age that is more visual in its media consumption than ever before and which is obsessed with style, glamour and celebrity.

At the same time, paradoxically for someone so famous, he is humble or down to earth – his manner of speaking is quiet, he is respectful of others, he likes simple pleasures like ‘pie and mash’ (a dish popular in East London, where he was born) and he has never seemed to lose a sense of his roots. This is important for people who like to see authenticity and not arrogance in their heroes.

Outside football, the Beckham brand is enhanced by his wife’s own career. The brand comprises both Victoria and David. Victoria, already a pop star with the Spice Girls (another brand), has had a successful second career with her fashion range. The two of them present a complementary ‘his and hers’ offer in products such as perfumes. This helps to give near ubiquity to the Beckham name, which helps to keep the brand top of mind.

The way that the Beckham brand has extended beyond David’s football career is a great example to any brand manager looking to extend a brand. The Beckham brand is ‘consumed’ in one way or another by almost every conceivable demographic (age, ethnicity, socioeconomic or sexual definition – almost everyone seems to like Beckham).

3 Their professionalism in managing their business

David and Victoria Beckham own a complex series of legal rights to their names and images, which are properly protected and can be commercially exploited. These rights are intellectual property such as trademarks, copyrights, image rights etc. They are managed via a company – or in their case a series of companies – for different purposes. Huge international companies (Adidas, Armani etc) want to use their image for endorsement, sponsorships, licences and so on, in sectors as diverse as clothing and food supplements. It’s a highly complex legal situation, with different legal rights applying in different countries internationally. It needs professional management.

Then there are the products and services and other projects which the Beckhams directly create, own and manage, for example Victoria’s fashion range and the Beckham fragrance range.

A unique aspect to the Beckhams is how astute they have been in taking good advice to protect and grow their branded business. They have assembled a strong team around them who clearly understand the complex business and legal issues around image rights, commercial ventures and brand building internationally, so that their dealings are profitable and appropriately protect their image.

Their reputation as well as their consumers’ rights are protected, preventing people from selling products with Beckham’s name or image when they have not been given permission to do so.

An example of this astuteness was the appointment of 19 (XIX) to be their partner in developing the Beckham brand beyond their core product of football and popular music. Simon Fuller, who founded 19, knew Victoria from her days in the Spice Girls so he was someone that they could both trust on a personal and a professional level.

Dealing with the issues to which we have referred above (image rights, the range of activities that they are involved in) as well as the 24/7 media goldfish bowl they live in, requires skills and experience which the average football agent simply would not have. The world is fascinated with the Beckham phenomenon, and global media never switches off. It would be impossible to cope with this level of attention without some highly experienced help. It is also easy to forget that the Beckhams are people with four kids, friends and other family. Maintaining some semblance of normality in the highly exposed world in which they live requires professional help.

You need a good team around you to do that. That means you need to be able to judge, appoint and take the advice of a good team. And the smartest thing that smart people do is know how to take smart advice.

4 His understanding of the ‘right thing to do’

Beckham has repeatedly shown the ability to make forward-thinking choices that build a consistent but always engaging story that captures people’s imagination. A crucial part of that story is his – and his wife’s – desire to give something back to the world. He has gone beyond donations to charity, even beyond setting up foundations. He has become an ambassador for causes and issues that he is concerned about and which are congruent with people’s perceptions of him.

Sport and children are enormously important to him, so it’s no surprise that he was not only involved in helping to win the bid for London to host the Olympics but played a high-profile role at the opening ceremony too. When he joined Paris St Germain, conscious of the severe economic difficulties that France and the whole of the Eurozone faced, he waived all his revenues from his image rights and donated his estimated €3.5m salary to charity. For five months of that year, he did not earn anything from playing football for the first time since he signed as an apprentice for Manchester United. It was an extraordinary act which earned him praise from many people. We are too often encouraged to be cynical about the motivations of anyone in the public eye. We are especially conditioned to be conscious of marketing spin and PR. However, people see David Beckham as a decent guy who likes to put something back.

Here is an anecdote to support that point. I (Andy) was waiting to go on TV in the UK recently to talk about Beckham. I had to have make-up put on, as most guests do, to stop the glare of studio lights reflecting off their skin on camera. The make-up lady who was looking after me was probably in her late fifties, maybe early sixties. She asked me what I was going to talk about on the show and I said David Beckham. She said: ‘Oh, I like him. He’s good at what he does and he does good things.’ Her words are as good a summary of why Beckham is so popular as a brand as you can get.

Beckham does what a lot of brands wish they could do and which the best ones do: he stays true to his promise, extends his offer appropriately, makes sensible investments, engages with his fan base and stays profitable.

As we said in Chapter 6, brands have economic value not only in the sense that they create value for themselves but also in benefiting a wider economy. The Beckonomics of the brand are that it:

makes money directly from salaries, bonuses, image rights, sponsorships, licence fees, image rights, merchandise sales, ticket sales
makes money directly for clubs, sponsors, official commercial partners, agents, employees, entertainment businesses
makes money indirectly for broadcasters, football federations, press/online media, advertisers, production companies, publishers
helps the wider economy as it inspires economic activity through the MLS franchise, youth academy, development and aid through UN and charitable roles