Mark Ritson on branding: Want brand authenticity? Be authentic

We don't know the name of the first brand. What we do know is that up a grassy mountainside a few millennia ago, a big Norse farmer was getting a bit annoyed about having his cows stolen. In a fit of Viking desperation, he started to burn his initials into his cows to stop them being nicked. Brandr, the Norse word for fire, became our operative verb. An industry that would dominate marketing was born not from the desire to differentiate or connect with consumers, but from the simple need to mark ownership and origin.