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Today in Tedium: In 1986, about a decade removed from his icon-setting days as lead singer of the Sex Pistols, British punk architect John Lydon released an album with his follow-up band, Public Image, Ltd., that had an extremely high-concept name. In fact, it didn't technically have a name at all. If you bought the record on vinyl, it was called Album; if you bought it on CD, it was called Compact Disc. And so on. It was actually a parody of generic branding, mimicking the approach of a U.S. chain, Ralphs, at a time when the film Repo Man had drawn attention to how plain store branding had become. We're assuming that if Lydon had figured out a way to record an album on a box of baking soda, he would have called the album Baking Soda. (That said, he had already done this overly obvious naming joke better earlier in his career with the release of PiL's landmark second album, Metal Box, and, oh, the band's name.) Today, we're gonna talk about private labels, retail's gift to conformity. Sometimes, the song remains the same. — Ernie @ Tedium

(tales of a wandering youkai/Flickr)

Private labels: From high-market to low-market and back again

Walking into a Trader Joe's store in 2015 is a fascinating experience. You're not just buying cookie butter; you're buying into the idea that a single company is creative enough to be able to sell cookie butter under the same brand as its beer and cereal.

It makes them look like geniuses, because they were able to make the experience about them rather than all the products they sell. It seems brilliant, but in a lot of ways, they're not doing things much differently from Ralphs, besides maybe spending a lot more on graphic design.

Most retailers meet this approach somewhere in the middle. If you go into a Target, you'll see Mossimo and Converse One Star on the shelves. If you've ever bought a cheap TV from Best Buy, it's probably branded Insignia or Dynex. And legacy department stores like JC Penney and Sears have house brands so closely associated with certain lines of products that you'd never realize that they were house brands.

There's a good reason why retailers and grocery stores have so many private labels. It comes down to one thing: profit. If you can keep people coming back looking for a specific brand name that you create, you don't have to split the profit with someone else, creating a wholly vertical experience.

A good example of this in action is one of the earliest private-label companies, the luxury men's clothing manufacturer Brooks Brothers. The firm could create their own shirts, their own shoes, their own ties, and just about everything else, and because it was exclusive to their stores, they had both exclusivity and complete vertical control over the market. The result is that people who want Brooks Brothers products have to go to their store—and it's been that way since the company started in the early 19th century.

But, let's be honest; we don't think of snazzy menswear when we think of house products; we think of Ralphs. You can thank A&P for that.

The lawsuit that brought us generic food

See, back in the early 20th century, A&P got very upset when one of its vendors, Cream of Wheat, put its foot down and set a price for one of its products. So A&P sued the company, claiming monopolistic behavior. The court ruled in Cream of Wheat's favor, and argued that A&P itself was the firm acting unfairly and abusing its market power.

In light of this rebuke, A&P decided to … well, act unfairly and abuse its market power some more. As other food-makers were taking stock of the ruling and making their own demands, A&P created private-label products that could undercut the competition through wholesaling.

And that's how we got store brands.

Generic Brands Are Trying Harder These Days

You might be wondering to yourself: Why don't generic brands look like the products in Repo Man anymore? And the short answer is this: We care more about design these days, and as a result, manufacturers are tying harder.

The consulting firm Full Surge notes that much of this seems to be a concerted effort by retail firms to better products with a broader brand—and, as a result, emphasize that the product being sold is high-quality in nature and, furthermore, creates an emotional connection with the end user.

"Consumers tend to gravitate toward (and remain loyal to) brands because they feel an emotional connection to them," writes Full Surge Managing Partner Mitch Duckler. "This is no different for private label brands than for national manufacturer brands. It is important for private label brands to stand for something more than merely price/value—and even more than a product attribute—they need to provide an emotional benefit that consumers can relate to."

There's a reason why you feel taken aback by the clear white products in the Repo Man grocery-store scene. The products have simple design that is technically "good" design, but it feels too clinical. You don't feel anything when you look at a can of peaches that doesn't identify itself using anything but a line of text.

Grocery stores, by and large, have figured this out, and the result is that when you look to buy something these days, you're more likely to see a consistent, but pretty design that actually gives a flavor of the product you're about to use.

This is where the world should be going. Down with mystery meat branding.