For over a century, names, logos and slogans have been applied to products in the hope that they might become more recognisable. Such recognition is the first step towards brand loyalty, the key to a lifetime of sales.
Now, in the new millennium, branding is ubiquitous, not only smothering the consumer with the competing identities of millions of goods and services but also transcending to unpurchaseable entities such as people themselves. Paris Hilton is a brand in the same way as Coca-Cola or Rolls Royce, these names forever linked to a lifestyle ethos that eager aspirants can purchase by the slice.
Historically, product branding works exceptionally well in the fashion industry, where consumers can display their new garments for the world to see. Understanding this, fashion houses of the world have moved quickly to apply their own unique, lifestyle characteristics to a full range of accessories, experiencing great success in the area of fashion watches, for example.
"Fashion watches started off always as extensions of apparel brands," says John Papaioannou, director of Hagemeyer Lifestyle Brands, a watch supplier with a branded jewellery line called Police, an extension of the highly successful Police sunglass brand that also has watches, pens and leather goods in the product stable. "These companies saw the benefit in extending the brand into accessories - extending the reach, the footprint, the awareness and the distribution of an existing apparel brand."
Yet, despite the huge influx of fashion watch brands in recent years, the one luxury industry that could stand to benefit most from aspirational branding - jewellery - has also been the one slowest to embrace it.
According to Papaioannou, this is firstly because the size and fineness of jewellery makes it a difficult surface upon which to emblazon a logo, and secondly because jewellery suppliers have fewer variable characteristics with which to develop a collection's unique identity: "Branding is a lot harder to achieve on a piece of jewellery, the raw materials have little uniqueness, and it's only design that sets a piece apart."
Jeweller's Association of Australia (JAA) CEO Ian Hadassin, who previously ran Strand Jewellers in Sydney, agrees: "It's much more difficult to brand jewellery because you can't really put the brand name on the jewellery itself. So if you're selling engagement rings, it's really hard to stamp your style and marketing emphasis on it because the rings are not that much different to those of other manufacturers.
"The reason why watches are more successful in branding than jewellery is that there are a fewer number of watch companies and their models are easily discernable. They're easily comparable and have vastly different models numbers, prices and catalogues," Hadassin adds.
Such thinking hints at the global centralisation of watch marketing and the funds available to such firms - the one key factor behind the success of fashion watch brands, according to Craig Symons, owner of Sydney-based supplier Osjag: "Jewellery is always compared with watches, but the watch companies are generally much larger international outfits with huge advertising budgets, while the jewellery industry is essentially made up of very small players and much of the manufacturing is at a retail level."
Symons, who imports three German brands in Breuning, Blumer and Oliva, believes it is this manufacturing base that has made branding less necessary.
"Branding has never had the presence in jewellery because many jewellers have their own manufacturing operations," he says. "Therefore, they already know how to cost the product and sometimes struggle to see the added value in a brand name."
Such localised know-how has meant store branding has long been a dominant form of marketing in Australia over product branding. A prime example of this is Tiffany and Co., a retail chain that manufactures its own jewellery unavailable elsewhere. As such, any marketing of the product is actually marketing of the store itself.
While some smaller retailers have followed this path, the resources needed to build awareness of a store brand - such as the development of a house brand backed by a comprehensive advertising campaign - generally place it out of reach for the average independent jeweller.
Consequently, both the World Jewellery Federation (CIBJO) and the JAA believe branded jewellery to be the future of jewellery retail. According to Hadassin, those retailers who wish to establish a point of difference greater than that provided by un-branded (generic) jewellery can benefit greatly from the selection of a supplier brand - though there is no guarantee of success.
"Branding is becoming more popular. As CIBJO says, it is the way of the future," Hadassin says. "But it takes a lot of money to establish a brand and Australia's local manufacturers aren't really big enough to sustain such a large advertising budget. Consequently, there are a number of brands jewellers can import."
Hadassin is quick to add that it is not the place of industry organisations to dictate what stores do and that, ultimately, the choice remains in the hands of the retailer: "CIBJO encourages branding as long as it is within the group's code of ethics but it's not for CIBJO to determine the marketing policies of manufacturing companies or the inventory decisions of retailers."
And thus far, retailers have chosen to predominately stick with un-branded product, a choice that Hadassin believes is reflective of the conservatism of the Australian consumer when compared with those from Europe or America.
"The average consumer spends much less on jewellery than in Europe and the US," he says. "Europeans are brought up in a strong jewellery environment and they're buying for style and design firstly, and price secondly. We market our jewellery mostly on price so it's hard to get people to see the value that branding offers."
Papaioannou takes umbrage with this perception of a low-spending Australia, arguing that it creates an uphill battle for suppliers who are working to add branded product to the marketplace and, worse yet, is arguably not even true.
"There has been a long term belief that Aussies don't spend as big on luxury brands but the perception is often different to the reality," he says. "In my previous position with Tag Heuer, I would constantly hear from people that Tag wasn't as well-known in Australia as overseas. But Australia's market was Tag's highest per-capita in the world!"
Instead, there is an altogether different perception among suppliers that it is the retailers and not the consumers who need to be sold on the power of branding.
"I don't think the retailers are convinced of brand power unless they perceive it as being so popular to the consumer that they can't resist it," Symons says. "The only time a jeweller will be totally convinced of adding a brand is when he's certain that the public can identify with it. But many of the jewellery brands don't fit into that category. They're not nationally advertised to the consumer (mine aren't), so most people don't know them."
The brand saturation that exists in other industries i.e. all around the consumer, has forced suppliers to rethink the way they capture the retailer's attention with many now finding nationwide media advertising to be misdirected and out of reach.
"Above the line advertising in this country is ridiculously expensive," Papaioannou says, "I'm not so sure we're not enamoured by brands but we just get pulverised by costs."
Instead, better value can be had by redirecting resources into in-store point of sale and window display stands and brochures, says Symons: "Our display stands create a greater presence and feeling of quality and help jewellers to differentiate our product from competitors. Ultimately, this gives the jeweller the power to talk about how our stock (and their store) differs from other products. And it helps keep the value because there's no advertising budget built into the price."
Without national advertising support, brands must ensure they have design ingenuity and market intuitiveness to survive.
"It comes down to whether retailers feel it's commercial by design," Papaioannou adds. "The brand is not viewed as something that adds value - a cross is a cross - whereas watches make their names on specific designs that can be attributed to that brand."
It's interesting to consider that part of the reluctance by retailers to incorporate more branded product may be attributable to the reduced margins it generally provides over unbranded lines, as voiced by Jo Tory, director, Najo.
"I think there's a fear of branding in the local market," she says. "One reason for this could be that brands impinge upon a retailer's control over margins (as they have to maintain the same prices as other retailers with the same brand)."
Naturally, this brings a new challenge for suppliers: to forget the consumer (to some degree) and develop a following within the retail trade. After all, consumers are reliant upon retailers because they can only really purchase from the available inventory.
As discussed earlier, a way to gain retail brand awareness without costly advertising campaigns is to ensure that the brand is unique, offering something otherwise unavailable anywhere in the market.
In a 2006 survey of over 2500 members, US consultancy group the Jewelry Consumer Opinion Council (JCOC) found that uniqueness is integral to brand success: "The key to successful product branding is to design and deliver a unique product the consumer needs and prefers to other products available," reported Elizabeth Chatelain, president of MVI Marketing, founder of JCOC. "Manufacturers and retailers can help consumers come to understand what exactly branded jewellery is, and that the consumer has increased flexibility in choosing."
Tory emphatically agrees: "You can't just brand something without a standout element," Tory says. "Branding is about capturing the imagination of the public with something new, something that has a twist. Identifying a brand to a consistency of look and design is very important."
It's for this reason that some Australian suppliers prefer to source branded product internationally, circumventing the difficult, time-consuming and costly process of developing their own brands in favour of a global product.
"There's no question that working with an international brand, retailers place their stores at the cutting edge of design," Symons says. "International groups usually have the resources to create a lot of new models, and the technology to make it happen efficiently."
Branding also offers consistency and reliability, he continues, "My retailers know they're getting exactly what they order every time."
It's possible the push for brand uniqueness over brand advertising may be part of growing speculation that a shift away from branded product in some segments is occurring - a combination of the saturation of brand messages and negative consumer sentiment towards globalisation and "the corporation" - but any evidence of this is purely anecdotal.
In fact, branding is so profound, woven so thickly into the fabric of society that even Blackspot Shoes, the world's first self-proclaimed anti-brand designed to attack "mega-corporations" such as Nike, has itself become a sought-after worldwide commodity - not without a hint of irony.
According to Papaioannou, young people are moving towards un-branded product (such as fashion jewellery) simply because it's cheaper. "Kids want accessories that they can afford to buy in lots of combinations. This leads them to non-branded product. So the growth of un-branded accessories is catering to youth in a way branded products never could."
Papaioannou believes this will have little to no effect on industries less reliant upon youth consumers, such as fine jewellery. "The older, more-discerning consumer is less likely to change and there's so much product available that we'll probably see a move back to established brands in the upper market, strengthening the major labels across all retail."
The studies show he's right, with JCOC's survey finding an increased appreciation of the value of branding: "While (previously) consumers were willing to pay (a little) more for a brand, they were also deterred from purchasing branded designer jewellery because of high prices," Chatelain says, adding that in today's market, "consumers are (now) more willing to pay premium prices for branded products."
This growing appreciation of brands is beginning to flow through Australia, Tory says.
"Fundamentally, Australia is a very conservative market," she says. "Jewellery has been perceived as something to collect and the perception is about the value - how much gold, how big the pearls are - rather than focusing on a design that's attached to a branded name. I think it's changing now, jewellery is much more fashion-driven these days. This tells me the time for branded jewellery has arrived.
"There will always be that conservative element to our market," she continues, "but once we can prove something will work, retailers will take it on and they will love it, because we're making it easy for them with merchandising material, packaging and unique product."
When retailers stock brands, they must realise that the benefits go far beyond display stands, according to Robin Sobel, director of Protea Diamonds, whose latest diamond jewellery brand Temptation has just been released.
"For that extra money, retailers are getting confidence that the product is genuine. It's a quality assurance," he says. "We're trying to inject confidence back into the market, we do that by guaranteeing quality and confidence with a superior product."
It's unlikely the Australian jewellery trade will turn its back on a deep history of self-manufactured, un-branded product, but the emergence of cheaper production possibilities in Asia and India leaves little doubt that jewellery branding will increase significantly in the coming years as local suppliers push for ways to retain market share against a greater number of foreign competitors.
Inevitably, this will hand greater control to the retailer who can pick brands to add pulling-power to a store while still placing a heavy emphasis on higher-margin, unbranded product.
"Retailers know if there's an investment behind a brand, it will create some demand," Papaioannou says.
"We know our brands create traffic and bring people into their store, but we also know their space is dominated by un-branded (higher-margin) products. I can't imagine how retailers could run their stores without us."