| Weekday Wisdom |
on branding |
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Branding · Brand building
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Well hello, marvellous Sebastian,
If you see a rabbit in a little blue jacket today, tip your hat, Beatrix Potter was born 160 years ago. This week we're looking at branding, because Beatrix Potter didn't just write Peter Rabbit. She turned him into the world's first licensed character, 25 years before Mickey Mouse, and quietly wrote the playbook brands still use.
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Know who's actually buying.
Six publishers rejected The Tale of Peter Rabbit. They wanted a big, expensive book with a big margin. Potter wanted one small enough for tiny hands and cheap enough for pocket money: “little rabbits cannot afford to spend 6 shillings on one book”. So in 1901 she printed 250 copies herself. Publisher Frederick Warne & Co saw them selling, changed its mind, and sold 20,000 in the first year at a shilling each.
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Patent the character, then guard it.
In 1903 Potter sewed a Peter Rabbit doll and registered it at the Patent Office, making Peter the oldest licensed character in history and the start of what is now a $390bn industry. Then came the board game, wallpaper, slippers and tea sets, every one approved by Potter, who insisted the doll be made in England. She grasped that a licence isn't money for nothing. It's your reputation, rented out.
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Act like you're a custodian, not an owner.
The rabbit royalties bought farms in the Lake District, where Potter became a prize-winning Herdwick sheep breeder. When she died she handed fourteen farms and 4,000 acres to the National Trust. England's most photographed landscape was, in effect, bought by a fictional rabbit with a poor attitude to trespassing. Peter is still earning 123 years on, because nobody in the chain cashed him in. Brands compound over decades, but the average consumer CMO lasts 3.5 years and is judged on that timeline. So the useful question isn't what you hit this year, it's whether your successor inherits something stronger or something spent.
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One key takeaway
A logo is something people recognise. A character is something people get attached to.
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How to use it day to day
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Design for the hands holding it. The publishers optimised for their margin, Potter for a five-year-old's grip. Cheap isn't the lesson (premium is often the smarter signal), knowing whose hands it lands in is. |
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Give your brand a character, not just a logo. System1 ran 300+ IPA Databank campaigns through the numbers: those built around a recurring character were 37% more likely to grow market share and 30% more likely to grow profit. |
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Say no like Beatrix. Every partnership, collab and line extension either builds your brand or spends it. Potter checked each one herself, and turned down the ones that cheapened Peter. |
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Two things you probably didn't know about Beatrix
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She was a serious mycologist. Her 1897 paper on germinating fungi spores had to be read to the Linnean Society by a man, as women weren't allowed. The Society apologised... in 1997. |
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Peter Rabbit began life in 1893 as an illustrated get-well letter to a sick five-year-old. It has since sold around 45 million copies. Arguably history's most profitable piece of correspondence. |
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Fancy going deeper?
Distinctiveness, memory and meaning are the whole of our Brand Building course, with Keith Weed, Josy Paul and Nils Leonard. It's our tenth birthday, so use code 4224 at checkout for a little something off.
Explore Brand Building
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Now go and guard your garden.
Big love,
Chris & the 42courses team x
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p.s. Name three brand characters you loved as a child. You can likely still picture all three and feel what each one stood for. That's the power of brand characters.
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| Weekday Wisdom is a Tuesday habit from 42courses, where 50,000+ people in 160+ countries learn from working practitioners. |
Bonus dad joke
Q: What do you call a line of rabbits walking backwards?
A: A receding hareline. |
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