BrandlandUSA

By Garland Pollard

Since the 1970s, the greatest magic marker for kids has been the Sanford Mr. Sketch. You know this one; its a set of a dozen or so markers, all water soluble, that smell like their colors. They are sold in sets of different sizes, including 4, 8, 12 and 16.

They have great cult appeal; on YouTube all sorts of folks have posted videos, including the favorite practice of Mr. Sketch users, painting the smelly moustache!

Urban legend says that they had to stop making them because the government didn’t want kids to be sniffing pens, but this is not true.

Taste wise, they sort out  like this, for instance:

Black/Licorice
Red/Cherry
Yellow/Lemon
Brown/Cinnamon

Of course, my favorite is the cinnamon, but they are all pretty good. However, there is some debate as to whether the quality is what it used to be, and the markers apparently don’t last as long as before. Currently part of Newell Rubbermaid, the Sanford brand has been ignored, and Mr. Sketch too. There is definitely alot more that could be made out of the brand; it just needs to be connected to Sanford, not Sharpie, which is all about being indelible.

Sanford as a brand has a long history. It was apparently founded in Massachusetts in 1857 by Frederick W. Redington and William H. Sanford, Jr. as the Sanford Manufacturing Company. It later moved to Illinois.

Question for BrandlandUSA readers..is the Mr. Sketch as great as it was? And if you were to give some advice to Newell Rubbermaid, what would you say?

Below, a vintage marker box from Flickr.

By Garland Pollard

LONDON – Funny how a small, old brand can captivate a current audience. Such is the appeal of Mason Pearson brushes. In many cases, brands such as Mason Pearson just disappear, with the company shutting down production and at best, farming out production to Asia, and at worst, shutting it all down altogether.

This did not happen with British brushmaker Mason Pearson, a favorite brand of preppies and style conscious folk in the U.S. and other Anglophone  countries.

Mason Pearson, who apparently worked at a company called British Steam Brush Works, was an inventor in what became known as Raper Pearson and Gill. In the late 19th century, Mason Pearson invented a machine to mechanize brush production

In 1885, he invented the rubber-cushion hairbrush. Today’s design is remarkably like the old, and have minor improvements, all in the same sizes of Large Extra, Small Extra, Popular and Junior.

By Garland Pollard

DEERFIELD, IL – Walgreens has a nifty new store brand for store-branded groceries. It’s called Nice, and it tries to take a snazzy approach to the basics, including coffee, rice and the like.

Notice it’s “TM” rather than “R” on the packages. Interesting choice of a very generic word for products.

Do you like Nice?

By Garland Pollard

The Dodge Dart will return next year; see www.dodge.com for pictures and information about the January 9, 2012 “reveal”. Based on an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, it is truly a sportscar, and bears no resemblance to the original.

Nevertheless, the return is good news. Because through the years, one niche that Chrysler excelled in was the market for small, economy cars. Mostly un-hip, Chrysler cars were never boring and because they were so unfashionable (but practical in price and maintenance cost), they had a sort of reverse snob appeal.

Chrysler small cars were always interesting, unlike GM and Ford, which had AWFUL early small cars like the Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega. The late 1970s-1980s Dodge Omni/Horizon was terribly practical, even though some of its features (such as corduroy fabric seats and fake exterior wood grain) were oddly compelling. Based on a French Simca model, the series lasted for a dozen years, from 1978-1990. It had American parts; even the radio was  standard-issue Chrysler (really hard to push channel buttons) and was the same that appeared in Chrysler’s larger cars. The Omni/Horizon was a copycat VW Rabbit; oddly the Fiat Ritmo (sold in the U.S. as the Fiat Strada) also channeled the VW Rabbit.

The Dodge Neon (1994-99) was another under-appreciated upstart. While it did not survive permanently as part of the Chrysler lineup, those who still drive the car today swear by it, even with the odd colors. In fact, there is even a dealer in northeastern North Carolina who makes a habit of selling used, rebuilt Neons to be used for knockabout cars.  (If anyone has the name, please leave it below in the comments section).

Chrysler had a long string of imports badged as Chryslers. In the early 1970s, they imported the Hillman Avenger and sold it as the Plymouth Cricket; its most unique feature for an early 197os car was a manual choke! Chrysler also imported Mitsubishis as the Dodge Colt and Plymouth Champ (and also the sporty Sapporo); they were miraculous cars because of their mileage, durability and cheap introductory price.

But perhaps the most pioneering of Chrysler’s small cars were the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart; a commercial is seen below. Introduced in 1959-60 as the Valiant (the Dart and Valiant became essentially the same car) and produced until the arrival of the Dodge Aspen, it was a small car that acted big. An introductory speech on the car line is at the site Valiant.org. The originals were light, airy, roomy and a bit snazzy,  with seating for six.

The names Valiant and Dart were replaced in 1976 by the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Aspen, the former of which was a sort of Mercedes wanna-be and much more of a lunky mid-sized car. The originals had so much authenticity, derived from their simplicity, including Chrysler’s legendary Slant 6 engine, wonderfully described at the website Allpar. Allpar also has a brilliant history of the Dart on its site.

The famed Reliant K-car replaced the Plymouth Volare and Dodge Aspen, which were smaller, yet still held six passengers. The “A” platform survived until the late 1980s, when the line was updated as the downsized Chrysler LeBaron and Plymouth Fury. One of the more interesting variants was the wood grained Chrysler Town and Country, which later morphed into the minivan of the same name.

New Dart for 2013

Chrysler has released images of the new Dodge Dart; it will be based on an Alfa-Romeo. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but Dodge is making a mistake if it makes it too much of a racing car.

Certainly, it needs a sport version, but the genius of the original Dart/Valiant was that the same car could be  sold to a mom, a dad, a 70-year-old church widow AND then customized for the rural and suburban youth market. There was not only the Dart, but then there was a Dart Demon and Swinger (such a name!). Plymouth had the Duster and Scamp sport versions. At their top, they were selling nearly half a million cars a year for Chrysler.

The Dart/Valiant was replaced in 1976 by the Volare/Aspen, which was plagued by recalls, though long-term was pretty reliable.

Below, a reel of Plymouth Valiant commercials.

Below, an ad for the Plymouth Horizon. Don’t you just love the grille? So “big American car” yet a copy of the VW Rabbit.

Meanwhile, the Omni, which “Does it all”

The question becomes; is it too sporty? Does it deserve to have a less sporty version? Personally, I think so, but time will tell.

By Garland Pollard

A recent campaign by British Airways points up exactly what United, Delta and American are missing in their approach to airline branding. Namely, a sense of history and drama.

BA’s Brand Engagement Head Abi Comber, in an interview posted on YouTube, says the campaign is all about what BA stands for as a business.

The venerable airline has taken a bold move to brand itself as the world’s most experienced. Its new campaign centered around “To Fly, To Serve” shows a narrative of British Airways, and its predecessor companies such as BOAC, BEA and Imperial Airways. The film is directed by Frederic Planchon; the flight director is Simon O’Connell.

British Costume Drama

There is great CGI work on the film, including animations of a Concorde flying alongside a VC-10. Each plane has been filmed with costumed passengers and staff.

This campaign is running not only on Facebook and other social media channels, but it is on major news networks as well. The big push comes as American Airlines is rumored to be running short of cash, and Delta and JetBlue, USAirways and Southwest all have stock prices less than $10 a share.

BA is now part of IAG, which now includes Iberia. Each airline is to be branded separately as a nationalistic flag carrier, but then is part of a larger whole. The intent is to add other airlines to the group.

By Garland Pollard

In just about every restaurant kitchen, the decaffeinated coffee pot has an orange band. Ask a person under 30 why that band is colored orange, and they won’t know. They will know that it means decaf, but they won’t know why.

The reason, of course, it is orange is because orange is the packaging color of Sanka, the freeze-dried decaffeinated coffee. Sanka was invented in German at the turn of the century, and in Europe is known as Coffee HAG because of the original manufacturer. In the states, the company sold their invention as Sanka, French for Sans Caffeine. For most of the 20th century, it was ubiquitous in most American households.

The word Sanka was so much a part of the American pantheon that most Americans would ask for “Sanka please” when they went out to eat at a restaurant. Today, folks just ask for a decaf.

General Foods took over Sanka, and made it a household name in the U.S. They invested massively in advertising the product, including the sponsorship of top shows like CBS’ The Goldbergs, where protagonist Molly Goldberg spoke about Sanka through a window.

But when Kraft obliterated the General Foods brand, many of the top General Foods products languished, including Sanka. You see, the former General Foods brands were tightly associated with the parent company, and when that relationship was confused, consumers stopped trusting it. In addition, because Kraft owned so many brands, its less prosperous brands did not get the advertising attention they deserved. One silly notion..that Sanka could be sold as decaf Maxwell House.

Some products, like Postum, completely disappeared. In the case of Sanka, it got confused with other Kraft brands. Oddly, it suffers now, in a health-conscious era when decaffeinated coffee is ubiquitous. In fact, it is so omnipresent that Folgers, long a competitor with Maxwell House, uses the green color to identify decaf (as did Taster’s Choice).

Currently, Sanka is sold as a sub-brand of Maxwell House. That is a mistake, as they were always very separate products.

By Garland Pollard

Like the United States Postal Service, Hallmark is trying to find its way in a new era.

But it has not been successful. It has in recent years laid off some longtime employees, and some stores are closing. The store closures are particularly troublesome because they are locally owned, and for generations have held together Main Streets and neighborhood shopping centers.

In thinking about what is wrong, I did not have a clear answer as to why the company is off-track. Thoughts:

• Fashion cannot be blamed. A card is still an essential thing for birthdays and Christmas and the like. Realistically, you don’t have to think with a greeting card; it does the thinking for you. Nor can I blame the struggles of Hallmark on the recession; after all the company has been through many. Indeed, you could argue that a card and an inexpensive gift should be more popular in lean times, as all can afford it.
• Gift cards rule: The ideal gift for a teen (or any child) is a gift card, and to give one of those, you need to put it in a card.
• I could not blame the struggles on Hallmark not being hip. Hallmark has tried to be hip of late, without being edgy. Nevertheless, Shoebox Greetings seem to be quite clever, and it does not confuse with the main Hallmark brand.
• The television arm of Hallmark seems rather vibrant. While I don’t recall seeing a memorable Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie recently, their cable channel is plenty watchable, and is doing wholesome, positive series like the western drama Love Begins and Time After Time, which stars Richard Thomas of The Waltons fame.

So what is wrong? I found the answer while looking at an old Hallmark book, first published in 1962.

It was the book Flowers of the Holy Land by Bertha Spafford Vester. Vester was not only an artist, but an amazing American expatriate in Palestine, a dynamo who built hospitals, set up food kitchens and even ran a school for Arabs. She was the daughter of Horatio Spafford, whose great tearful hymn, It is Well With My Soul, was written after Bertha’s sisters were all killed in the 1873 sinking of a ship in the Atlantic. (Christian singer Chris Rice does a spectacular version.)

The smallish book includes some three dozen watercolors of Holy Land flowers painted by Vester, as well as an introduction of Vester by Lowell Thomas and Norman Vincent Peale, the Tom Brokaw and Oprah of their era.

The typography is classic, tasteful and elegant, and the print reproductions are so good they might be the sort of pages that are torn out and sold by prints dealers for high prices.

Each flower has a description; the description of the Palestine Cornflower is perfect:

The Palestine cornflower is similar to the English and American cornflower, or bachelor’s button. Thistles and thorns are mentioned in Genesis as part of God’s punishment of Adam. They grow in such enormous numbers as to take possession of whole fields in the Holy Land.

I think of this book, and then I think of the Peanuts gifts and ornaments in a Hallmark store today. Not that there is anything wrong with Peanuts gifts, but they are definitely pop culture. The Spafford book, however, is a classic, and would be a fitting feature of any coffee table or library. But even with its highbrow appeal, it is also something ANYONE would give at Easter or Christmas or anytime, a true mass market item.

Sadly, I don’t recall seeing such products sold in a Hallmark store recently.

Certainly, retailers give their consumers what they want, and for years, consumers have wanted Peanuts ornaments. But for me, these days, I think Americans have higher aspirations, and tchotchkes don’t satisfy like they used to.

Putting a book together like Flowers of the Holy Land is not an easy enterprise, and requires imagination and many staff resources. But it can be done.

Reading Spafford’s description of the Pink Cistus (myrrh), I found the Genesis description she quoted also applied to Hallmark. The riches are there for the picking; it is up to Hallmark’s leadership and artists to make a new generation of products that does more than clutter up America’s already-too-hoarded houses.

Take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts and diamonds.

By Garland Pollard

MOLLUSK, Virginia – One of the most brilliant recent relaunches of a great American brand is the rebirth of Gulf. The company almost totally disappeared, the only remnant being the assorted consumer products branded with Gulf. Pictured here, a new Gulf station and pump in the tiny “town” of Mollusk, Virginia, located in Lancaster County on the scenic Northern Neck of Virginia.

Once one of the nation’s great oil companies, the brand since a merger with Chevron has mostly been in the Northeast, connected as a brand with the convenience store chain Cumberland Farms.

Chevron has been diligent in allowing the brand to live on. Indeed, while they almost killed it off, the use of the brand is an excellent example of how a brand can survive mergers and re-brandings, still adding value to a company’s portfolio, when a purchasing company decides that it is best not to obliterate an old brand, and instead milk it for all it is worth. In the last few years, the Gulf brand was even licensed to Old Navy.

But in January 12 of 2010, the company Gulf Oil Limited Partnership acquired all rights, title and interest to the “Gulf” brand in the U.S.  1986. Now, it’s beginning to be a company again. The Framingham, Massachusetts-based company has more than 2,500 branded gas stations, 12 proprietary oil terminals, and a network of more than 50 other supply terminals. They supply gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, jet fuel and kerosene through its Gulf Oil terminal network.  They also have a wholesale subsidiary, Great Island Energy, that sells unbranded Gulf gas to other stations. The company is led by an appropriately named fellow, Joseph H. Petrowski.

Gulf Family of Brands

Gulf had a number of spin-off brands that carried the name when the brand was diminished. These are:

• Gulf Lite, the charcoal lighter fuel, and
• Gulf Wax, the household paraffin used for canning.

Sadly, these brands do not use the iconic Gulf design, though the orange color and nomenclature has survived. It would be a good idea to re-unite these brands.

Gulf sold a wide variety of auto products, as did most of the other oil companies. Some brands did not survive that could have, including the Gulf Travel Card, which was accepted at Holiday Inn. Back in the day, oil company brands really did have personalities, each brand with different products, gifts, uniforms and styles.

Many of the Gulf products were simply plays on the Gulf name, including Good Gulf, Gulf Supreme and Gulftane. Some of the Gulf family of brands included:

• Gulfpride was the oil brand; as far as can be found, the oil is just simply named Gulf.
• Gulf Space Sprayer was the insect atomizer brand
• Gulf No Nox was a fuel brand
• Gulflex was the oil brand
• Klear Shield was the windshield wiper fluid

Anyone have any memories of Gulf stations and the various permutations of the Gulf brand? Love to hear them below.

By Garland Pollard

In recent years, there have been a number of retro product re-issues by the original company. But a brand doesn’t have to be from the original company to grab the latent brand equity from a classic product that has been discontinued.

One way to grab the brand equity from another brand (and company) is to introduce a previously popular product under a NEW brand name. This works particularly well with food brands, because even if a consumer would like to have the OLD brand, under the old logo, what they really want is the taste sensation, not the brand name. Ideally, you would have both, but you don’t have to.

You harken back to what was good, and the consumer responds.

This is evidenced by these Lemon Cookies, which are obviously copies of the tasty Lemon Coolers which were a product of the Sunshine Bakery. Sunshine merged with Keebler and left Lemon Coolers in the old cookie graveyard. For some reason or another, Sunshine discontinued them, even though they had a large fan base.

In the case of this tasty knock-off (here seen at Dollar General in Lively, Virginia), they have given it a generic name, yet made the tagline “Cooler than Ever.” This is smart, as it does not confuse the customer by tricking them into thinking the old product has returned. But the “cooler” on the front indicates they understand the nature of the product. The consumer instantly understands that the product is inspired by the original, and will likely taste authentic.

Keebler could always come back and reintroduce Lemon Coolers, but until then, fans can be happy with this version.

By Garland Pollard

There are so many great old soda brands that are no longer around. One of the more clever, graphic wise, is Like, which was a diet version of 7Up. Here, a bottle in the Morattico Waterfront Museum in Morattico, Virginia. The museum is the old Morattico Country Store, which also now includes exhibits of life on the Rappahannock River.

The drink Like was popular in the 1960s, but was discontinued when cyclamates were banned, making its slogan, “Diets Like Like” a bit obsolete.

Back in the day, soft drink companies had different brands for their diet drinks. For instance, Coca-Cola had Tab and RC had Diet Rite.

It later became Diet 7Up, and 7Up apparently brought back the brand Like as a cola drink.

Question: Was it a good tasting drink?