Thanks to Alex and the whole team at Pen & Sword for providing me with a review paperback copy of this book that I freely chose to review.

I would not class myself as particularly “brand-aware”. Although when I was younger I wanted to have the latest of everything, especially if all my friends had it (oh, the wonders of peer-pressure, even then), with time I’ve become quite skeptical about it, and I tend to avoid them if I can. (I understand the status thing, but I can’t see why I should have to pay and then, on top of that, be happy to advertise the product by making sure everybody knows what it is). Give me local craft any day! So, of course, I could not resist a book that promised to share with its readers ‘The Dark and Twisted Beginnings of the Brand Names We Know and Love’. And it delivers, for sure. I suspect if you are big authorities on the subject, you might already know a lot of the information contained in this book but if like me, you are just curious, this is a gem.

I’d never read anything by this author before, but his style is engaging and he pitches this volume at the right level for the subject: he includes the adequate amount of historical information about each one of the brands and characters (inventors, creators, public figures…) to make sure that the readers understand the context of each brand and its products, and then focuses on the more intriguing and less publicized aspects of their evolution. Some of them might be more familiar than others (I suspect a lot of readers will know about Coca-Cola and its early cocaine content), but even then, MacNabb manages to unearth elements of the story that are bizarre and less well-known (so Coca-Cola still contains extracts of coca leaves [no actual cocaine though, don’t worry!] supplied by the only lab in the US with a permit to import coca leaves).

While some of the chapters are curious and amusing (like the Coca-Cola one or the chapter on the Kellogg’s ‘war on sex’), some can be quite disturbing. There are many connections to Nazi Germany I was not aware of, like Hugo Boss’s manufacture of Nazi uniforms, Adidas & Puma’s Nazi connections (I had no idea the creators of these two brands were brothers, either), Chanel’s spying for the Germans (and the fact that the information was kept under wraps by the French government). For me, the most shocking were the chapters on Bayer (not so much the Heroin production, even if they seem to have become aware of its addicting properties quite early on, but its direct connection to slave labour and the production of Zyklon B, used in the gas chambers in the concentration camps), and Henry Ford and his anti-Semitic beliefs and writings (that seem to have inspired Hitler). The chapters on Winchester and Bakelite were intriguing (as I didn’t know anything at all about the history of the objects, other than some vague notion of the importance of the rifle) but sad, due to the personal tragedies behind the stories.

This book is a great read, a page-turner, and I suspect most readers will move on to read full accounts on some of the selected topics. Although the brands are chosen for their interesting stories, the author gives credit where credit is due and always tries to offer as balanced an account as possible of the people and the companies, making sure to emphasise how things have changed for most of them. It is a sobering thought to reflect upon the past of some of these household names, and it is important we don’t forget the lessons learned.

I recommend this book to anybody interested in brands, pop culture, history, and it will be a resource of interest to writers and researchers. (The notes contain bibliographical information for those interested in further reading). Another great addition to the publisher’s varied catalogue.

 

In my other life, where I read a lot of business books - with pleasure - I review them for this journal. My review of these three books will be in the March-April issue. Just in time for spring, a review of books about growth.

In the late nineteenth century, cocaine was considered a wonder
drug. Heralded by medical journals, pharmacists, Freud and even several Popes - Pope Leo III was a regular imbiber of Vin Mariani, a wine created in 1863 that contained 2.16 grains of cocaine, in the recommended dose of six glasses per day. No doubt he felt very holy indeed, and his long life and "all-radiant" eyes were probably less due to his piety than his daily dose of this "healthful" and "life-sustaining" drug that had been so valued by the Incas.

Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta druggist and doctor - he held two degrees and had created a master reference work containing over 12,000 tests - was anxious to create a drink that would be healthful and profitable. He was not immune to the vast literature hailing cocaine as a wonder drug. "The use of the coca plant not only preserves the health of all who use it, but prolongs life to a very great old age and enables the coca eaters to perform prodigies of mental and physical labor," he wrote in 1885. It was a time when patent medicines and elixirs were all the rage. Soda fountains would often offer as many as 300 different combinations of drinks. Advertisers tried to influence consumers to purchase one in favor of others, and huge signs were erected along railroads and roads to get the traveler's attention. It was not unusual for a patent medicine "advertiser of the era to clear-cut an entire mountainside to that he could erect a mammoth sign for Helmholdt's Buchu." A contemporary traveler described, "enormous signs are erected in the fields, not a rock is left without disfigurement, and gigantic words glare at as great a distance as the eye is able to read them."

Pemberton's first product was French Wine Coca. It was loaded with cocaine, an extract of the kola nut (very high in caffeine) and damiana, the leaf of a plant with supposed aphrodisiacal powers. The concoction was advertised as a cure for virtually everything from nerve trouble and dyspepsia to impotence and morphine addiction.

Opiate addiction was a huge problem after the Civil War. Known as the "Army Disease" because so many veterans were addicted. Pemberton himself was an addict trying to break the habit. He was convinced that cocaine was the best treatment for morphine addiction.

In the meantime, by 1886, temperance was becoming a movement in the Atlanta area, so Pemberton began experimenting with a new beverage that excluded the wine. By adding citric acid, he eliminated some of the sugary sweet taste and eliminated the damiana but kept the coca and kola, hence the alliterative choice that his colleague Robinson came up with: Coca-Cola. They advertised it both for its medicinal benefits and as a new soda fountain drink. One ad read, "The new and popular soda fountain drink containing the properties of the wonderful coca plant and the famous cola nut." As it gained in popularity, the business convolutions kept pace, with Pemberton selling his rights to the business several times over. It was soon a mess.

Asa Candler finally wound up with ownership of the trademark. He remained committed to quality and insisted that his distributors (a rather unique arrangement for the time) not tinker with the syrup recipe, although some of them did, one adding saccharine in an attempt to preserve the drink -- it was also an ironic attempt to make the drink as sweet as possible. Candler never thought bottling the drink would amount to much, so he virtually gave away the bottling rights, a prognosticatory failure that was to cost the company millions in later years to purchase them back. He and Frank Robinson (the real marketing genius, who invented the script logo for the drink) soon were collecting huge amounts of money as Coke took off.

By 1900, Coca-Cola had become so popular it became a target for those who were terribly afraid someone might be out there enjoying themselves, i.e., the self-righteous, and soon pulpits all over attacked the nefarious qualities of the drink that was addicting children, of all people. It had also become a popular drink among the black population, and soon the KKK was suggesting that the black population was drinking Coca-Cola, becoming "drug fiends" and roaming the countryside in search of white women to ravish. Some white farm owners had indeed paid their sharecroppers, mostly black, with cocaine, since it was cheaper than alcohol, and cocaine addiction had become a serious problem. Ironically, Candler had already removed the minute traces of cocaine that had been in the formula. (The purity of the formula was somewhat of a joke, as several of the bottlers had added saccharin to make it sweeter, but also as a preservative.) The company by 1902 was promoting Coca-Cola as a healthful drink and the official Coke line is that the drink never contained cocaine, a typical PR prevarication, and not a particularly astute one since earlier company brochures had bragged about the healthful benefits of cocaine. In any case, the do-gooders, who wanted Coke declared an adulterated product because it contained caffeine managed to enlist the mighty forces of the FDA. Many expensive years later the suit finally died although Coke did reduce the amount of caffeine in the formula. They spent massive amounts of money on advertising, plastering the Coke logos on the sides of barns and giving out millions of items with the Coke logo. It was widely successful and soon Coke was the most popular drink around.

Pendergrast's section on the infamous New Coke marketing disaster - or was it really an enormous accidental success - is fascinating. The outrage was enormous, but the publicity that resulted showed tremendous loyalty to a drink. Odd hype occurred almost everywhere. A study at Harvard Medical School compared the douche properties of the old Coke to those of the new, and found that the old Coke killed five times as many sperm as the new Coke. That's weird. The company completely failed to recognize that Coca-Cola had become an American institution, an icon. "They talk as if Coca-Cola had just killed God," moaned one executive. Coca-Cola had come to symbolize America; it was "associated with almost every aspect of their lives - first dates, moments of victory and defeat, joyous group celebrations, pensive solitude."