Thursday, February 29, 2024
Soda House Auditorium
Registration via Eventbrite

Want to know about the origins of the brands and trademarks that now fill our marketplaces and media? In her author talk on Thursday February 29, Jennifer Black will tell all, drawing from her new book, Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth Century America. She will explain that in the early nineteenth century, the American commercial marketplace was a chaotic, unregulated environment in which knock-offs and outright frauds thrived. Business evolved to meet these challenges. As early as the 1830s, printers, advertising agents, and manufacturers collaborated to devise new ways to advertise goods. At the same time, manufacturers took legal steps to safeguard their intellectual property, protecting their brands against counterfeit and fraud. By the end of the nineteenth century, these advertising and legal strategies came together to form the primary components of modern branding. Trademarks became the symbols that embodied these ideas—in print, in the law, and to the public. Branding Trust thus identifies and explains the visual rhetoric of trust and legitimacy that has come to reign over American capitalism.

Jennifer Black is associate professor of history at Misericordia University. She will be available to sign copies of her book.