ABSTRACT
The practice of branding dates back to ancient times and has served a number of purposes including accounting for goods in large shipments and identifying product source for guild authorization and quality control D. Wengrow argues that symbolic branding occurred in the fifth and fourth centuries bce in Mesopotamia through the use of seals and standardized packaging. Merely developing brand names, symbols and other brand identifiers that are reasonably secure from unauthorized imitation does not by itself prove that products were marketed using those identifiers nor guarantee that brand-centric marketing will develop. Initially, brand identifiers typically were small, barely noticeable marks. Such small marks would be less useful as a focus of marketing promotion than more prominent marks. From the 1500s through the 1700s, marks in the English cloth and cutlery industries evolved from quality control guild marks to marks used to promote the products of individual merchants–what Schechter describes as changing from ‘liability’ to ‘asset’ marks.
