From Groot Constantia to Google: 1685 to 2010 includes over a thousand pictures and illustrations including advertisements, brand registrations, products, packaging, consumer culture and moments in history, many never published before. In addition, there are lessons for today’s marketers and brand custodians in the interesting anecdotes that pepper the narrative.



“We’ve tried very hard to make the book a colourful and fascinating read of remarkable stories and anecdotes, as well as provide valuable insights into branding, advertising, intellectual property and packaging history,” said publisher, Ken Preston.



“For example, the history of advertising in South Africa feature begins with the launch of the Cape Colony’s first newspaper, on Saturday August 16, 1800: the bilingual Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser or Kaapsche Stads Courant en Afrikaansche Berigter. Owned by Alexander Walker and John Robertson – slave dealers, privateers and sole printers to the corrupt governor, Sir George Yonge – the newspaper proudly announced that all advertisements it published would be charged for in proportion to their length and place in the paper.



“There was no such thing as advertising agencies, space was bought for sixpence a column inch and brokered for two or three pence more. Mostly, they were notices in which shop keepers informed potential clients of their goods.



“Little care was taken with copy and the creative side, and in fact much was simply brought in from England and adjusted to suit the local market. Smaller advertisements were even more basic, listing names, addresses and services offered, but the big spenders were the shipping companies. Notices of the departure of ships, their destinations and whom to contact for freight and passage played an important part of the early advertising, as did the frequent arrival of mail ships at the coastal ports which publicised their manifests.”



Almost 100 years later the first advertising agency was launched, by Cecil James Sibbert, who started SA Advertising Contractors in Cape Town in 1899.



One of Preston’s favourite brand cameos is that of the multi-purpose Sunlight Soap.



In 1891, a Mr Carroll was sent from the United Kingdom to South Africa to help promote Sunlight Soap in this country. He astonished the Cape Town city fathers by seeking permission to paint the Sunlight Soap logo in giant capitals on the slopes of Table Mountain. Undaunted by the rejection he received, Mr Carroll made for Port Elizabeth and the town awoke to find the Sunlight logo had been neatly painted along the pavements of the main street. Poor Mr Carroll was ordered to remove them with immediate effect but his efforts must have eventually born fruit as Sunlight can still be found in our homes over 100 years later.



There’s also the story of a little fox terrier, Nipper, who made his advertising ‘debut’ on ‘His Master’s Voice’ record labels in 1900. It illustrates a point in an intellectual property article in the book.



Nipper was a stray dog found in 1884 by Mark Barraud in Bristol in the United Kingdom. When Mark died three years later, his younger brother, the artist Francis Barraud, took the dog with him to Liverpool. Nipper’s fascination with the phonograph (a cylinder recording and playing machine) inspired the artists to paint the scene, albeit three years after Nipper’s death. 'His Master's Voice'* in its original form, completed in early 1899, was submitted for copyright by Francis Barraud on 11th February 1899 under the title 'Dog Looking at and Listening to a Phonograph'.



Later, Barraud renamed the painting 'His Master's Voice' * and tried to exhibit it at the royal academy, but was turned down. He had no more luck trying to offer it for reproduction in magazines. “No one would know what the dog was doing” was given as the reason!



Next on Barraud's list was the Edison Bell company (leading manufacturer of the cylinder phonograph), but again without success. “Dogs don't listen to phonographs,” the company said.



A friend then suggested that Barraud could make the picture more attractive by replacing the black horn with a more modern brass one - and this might better his opportunity for a sale. Barraud visited the newly formed gramophone company, with a photograph of his painting and a request to borrow a brass horn to use as a model. The manager of the gramophone company, Gary Owen, liked the painting and offered to buy it if Barraud replaced the Edison Cylinder phonograph with a Berliner gramophone. The artist made the changes and the revised painting was delivered on 17th October 1899.



At his visit to London in May 1900, Emile Berliner (the Germany-born and Washington-based inventor of the flat disc record and the gramophone) saw the painting hanging on the wall in Owen’s office in the gramophone company. Berliner contacted Barraud and asked him to make a copy of the painting, which he took back to the United States and immediately sought a trademark registration, granted by the patent office on July 10, 1900. From then on, Nipper became a familiar and iconic image around the world.



There is still time – but not much – for your brand to add its voice in a similar way. If you have a brand story you believe deserves telling, contact Ken Preston at 011 442 2366 or [email protected].