Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising, Notting Hill, London

Notting Hill is not known just for the movie which goes by its name.

It also offers an encyclopedic brand museum, which is absolutely fascinating and a must visit. Specially if, evolution of brands, interest you.

All through my travels across Europe, almost every other day I visited a museum as it is one of the easiest way to bring oneself upto date with the history of the place I was in. Some of these museums had some unique exhibits & almost every city that I had been to, did have a local flavor to their museum.

In the city of London, I came upon this unique museum dedicated totally to “BRANDS”.

Did you know that Vim is a brand that was launched in 1904?  And Harpic in 1924?  Did you know there was an Indian tonic water by the name Hunts?

One museum in London that I would recommend as a must visit for all the marketing & advertising professionals who visit London is the Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising in Notting Hill, London.

 

What started as a hobby of a 16 year old has now turned into something very remarkable. Robert Opie, who has authored many books on British consumerism, started collecting wrappers at an early age and what culminated out from this hobby now is history!!

 

 

I thought that I would be able to cover this comparatively small museum in 1 or 2 hours but instead I ended up being there for almost half a day! This museum is a one of its kind and has an interesting display of various brands showing them in their different stages of evolution.

A point of note – One gets emotionally attached to one’s favorite brand to the extent that the brand you use resonates with your identity!

Here are few pictures showing some of the brands through its evolution. Brands whose look and feel has definitely changed with times, but brands which all of us identify with…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, I can go on for more time since my photo bank is pretty exhaustive…and since I can’t share all the pics…I think I will stop now! 🙂

Branding and marketing has evolved over decades, and the packaging style reflects the mindset and lifestyle of the people in that particular time. If we close our eyes with a mental image of any of this product, we can actually imagine domestic life that would have used these products! Go ahead and try it 🙂 

A few pictures of branding exercises that were carried around World War II follows, in my next post!

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