Google Books Ngram Viewer and the language of marketing

The Google Books Ngram Viewer is a fun and insightful tool that shows how often words appear in a massive database of digitized books. It's not a perfect measure, but it's great for spotting trends and getting a sense of when terms gained popularity.Here’s an example with "advertising," "marketing," and "brand” from 1800-2022.

🤠 "Brand" is ahead in the early 1800s, but this was likely the literal kind of branding for agriculture and commodities (think cattle, not Coca-Cola)

"Advertising" emerged in the mid-1800s and early 1900s as the leader, coinciding with the growth of newspapers and national magazines.

"Marketing" barely existed before 1900, then started a meteoric rise around the 1920s. It surpassed "advertising" by the mid-1950s.

“Brand” has slow but steady traction until it explodes in the 1990s. This is when brand takes a more strategic role, and maps to what David Aaker discussed in our interview. It shows a transition from a focus on simply "advertising" products to a more comprehensive "marketing" function to the emergence of "brand" as a strategic asset.