Imagine that you developed and refined a destructive force that changed the world of warfare and that you made of fortune doing so. But you never really thought about the consequences of your actions until you read an obituary about yourself that was run instead of one for your recently passed brother.
You have been named the “Merchant of Death” and the world was happy that you died. Would you want to rebrand your image after this?
Alfred Nobel did, he was the inventor of dynamite. He developed a safer and more destruction way to handle nitroglycerin and retooled his factories into munitions factories. To make a fortune off this innovation.
So, after seeing his obituary after his brother’s death, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel’s will allocated 94% of his total assets, 31,225,000 Swedish kronor, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. This converted to £1,687,837 (GBP) at the time.
In 2012, the capital was worth around SEK 3.1 billion (US$472 million, EUR 337 million), which is almost twice the amount of the initial capital, taking inflation into account.
So now Alfred Nobel is known for his Peace Prizes and not the invention of dynamite. So the rebranding was effective.