ABSTRACT
There are many ways of writing history because historians pursue their pet ideas and preferred sources of data, whether military, economic, biographic, or cultural. This chapter summarizes the ground gone over in some detail in the article with Wilson Bastos and then will focus particularly on the theory of the brand that is summed up in the aspiration to create an ideal brand pyramid (IBP), ideas discussed most fully in The Theory of the Brand. It traces the way the brand idea came to the fore and then proliferated in current theory and practice. The creation and the consumption of the idea of branding take two major forms or occurs at two main levels. Instrumental branding may be said to refer to most common understanding as a function of marketing. Grand branding is a higher level of branding because it refers to its more encompassing and prior meanings.
