Brand Museum

BBC Learning EnglishLondon LifeBrand MuseumYvonne: Now whatever we think of advertising 2 and brandingor about the effect that ithas on shoppers, we’ve got to admit that it’s clever -and it’s big business! But why does it work? You’relistening to bbclearningenglish.com – I’m Yvonne Archer 3.
　　Welcome to London Life!
　　Why are we convinced that we’ll look and feel like thehappy model in the advert 1 if we buy that new shampoo? Andlook, the bottle’s so pretty! Of course, we know what theadvertisers are doing – but we still reach for ourwallets. Why?
　　We left London’s busy shoppers for The Museum of Brands,Packaging and Advertising to find some answers. The museum’s director, Robert Opie, has been collecting brands andpackaging for the last 30 years so he was happy to tell ushow it all began. As you listen, try to catch thethree types of products that Robert mentions; they weresent to the ‘grocers’, the individual shop keepers, ‘inbulk’. What does Robert mean by ‘in bulk’?
　　Robert Opie, Director, Museum of Brands, Packaging andAdvertisingWell if you go back to say the middle of the 19th century,virtually all the products being produced at that time weresent to the grocer in bulk. And he would make up andblend his own specific teas or he would dole 4 out the driedfruits or the sugar or whatever it was. And it would beprepared in front of you and you could see what the productwas.
　　Yvonne: Up until around 1850, the middle of the 19thcentury, the products that grocers sold were sent to them‘in bulk’. Did you work out what that means?
　　Yes,things like tea, dried fruit and sugar - the three productswe were listening out for - were sent to them in largeamounts or quantities, often in large sacks. So shopperscould see what they were getting when they paid for a poundinweight of tea, for example.
　　Now as we know, packaging is bad for our environment andmakes shopping more expensive. So can’t we go back to ourold ways and why the big change?
　　Robert Opie, Director, Museum of Brands, Packaging andAdvertisingCome the packaging revolution, that all disappeared and whywas that? Well, people were getting a bit wary 5 aboutwhat the grocer was putting into his tea and so on. Hewas making up weights of that pound that you ordered withlittle bits of spurious… hmm, perhaps the sawdust from thefloor even!
　　Yvonne: Yuck – sawdust?! That’s certainly‘spurious’ - shavings of wood instead of pure tea?! Itwas the dishonest grocer who brought on the packagingrevolution.  Of course, the people who made theproducts – the‘manufacturers’- soon realised that packaging could meannew publicity 6 opportunities, as Robert puts it ‘a wholenew publicity angle’. And customers got a few extras too!
　　Listen out for two examples – the soap package that Roberttalks about is from the 1880s…Robert Opie, Director, Museum of Brands, Packaging andAdvertisingOnce the manufacturer had control over his product, hecould put recipes on, he could say this is the same qualityas the time before. So the whole thing took on a wholenew meaning and a whole new publicity angle…I’m looking here at a Sunlight Soap package – a brandthat went right around the world. And the great way thatthey attracted customers to this was they offered a ?1,000reward if you could find anything wrong with the product.
　　I mean that was a huge enticement 7.
　　Yvonne: OK, free recipes are quite useful but the soapproduct wins hands down for me!
　　No wonder it was so ‘enticing’ – tempting 8 peopleworldwide. Imagine how many people kept on buyingpackages of that soap to try to find a bar that wasn’tperfect! After all, a thousand pounds in the 1880swould have been a huge amount of money and it still istoday.
　　Of course, branding and packaging is still about sellingproducts but it’s also about another sales message thatwill keep on changing…Robert Opie, Director, Museum of Brands, Packaging andAdvertisingIf you buy my brand, you become a hip 9 kinda, cool kindaperson. That’s the kind of person you want to be. Andof course, that’ll continually change as our perceptionand our ideals change as society changes.
　　Yvonne: Can buying the latest product really make peopleand even children feel better about themselves? And is itOK to try to make us believe that? Why not talk about it inEnglish before our next London Life? And visit us atbbclearningenglish.com for some of the words you could makeuse of.