We are launching our second yearly survey of top downtown Department stores. We will be re-compiling a list of the best stores across the nation, and will rate the top ten.
Read last year's story and then leave a comment after the story with ideas of ones we missed.Our List of Downtown Department Stores
Brand Research and Market Information
BrandlandUSA is published by writer and web editor Garland Pollard. Contact him about your brand research sleuthing atGarland Pollard or call at 703-745-8602. What's BrandlandUSA about? See our Frequently Asked Questions, check in with me at Linked in or join our new fan page on
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BrandlandUSA is syndicated on nearly a dozen web partners each day, including Newstex, which puts us on Lexis/Nexis. This increases our reach by thousands each week:
BrandlandUSA now appears on the BlogBurst syndication network, so you might be seeing our posts on the Reuters and Chicago Sun-Times websites. In addition, some of our posts appear on the site Seeking Alpha. Sacramento Bee mentioned us for our search for
Sea & Ski
Read our commentary in Richmond's Style Weekly on the future of (the late) Circuit City, and see us featured in the Toledo Blade. First, our editorial
Advice for Circuit City published in Richmond's Style Weekly. We are mentioned in a Toledo Blade Story on the future of a historic White Tower restaurant. Read Editor Garland Pollard's personal writing clips online at www.garlandpollard.com
Ad Contest: Phoenix Project from Savannah College of Art and Design
What happens when a group of students tries to revive a set of old brands? Take a look at Prof. Sean Trapani's branding theory class, as they come up with new options for old brands that include Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Climax Ginger Ale, F. W. Woolworth, RadioShack, Mr. Donut, Hai Karate, El Marko and International Harvester Scout. See:
Phoenix Project Contest Entries, as well as the
Phoenix Project Contest Winners
KANSAS CITY - Our reader Joe Vaughan gives us an update on the Airline History Museum in Kansas City.
He tells us that a group of retired TWA employees and airline history enthusiasts have developed a fascinating museum at Downtown Airport. The last of the Super Constellations (“Connies“)is thereandthey recently acquired the last airworthy TWA Lockheed L-1011.
The L-1011 was one of the last two in the U.S., and an angel named Paul Pristo donated the plane to the museum. The FAA came in and permitted it to travel on a special airworthiness certificate. Anyone who cares about American aviation needs to cheer the rescue, as it is a critical part of American aviation history, and now it has been preserved.
For those who have forgotten about the L-1011, it was a great plane, but it never found a wide market. Nevertheless, TWA was one of the major operators of the plane, along with Pan Am and Delta.
There is an interesting parallel going on in Scotland and Puerto Rico. The Diageo brands Captain Morgan and Johnnie Walker are both in the throes of being moved, and both are against the will of locals.
Captain Morgan is an interesting case; critics have pounced on the fact that it is being moved directly because of a clause hidden in the much-hated TARP bailout. The idea that the government is subsidizing Diageo has Puerto Ricans rightly outraged.
In a press release just issued, Puerto Ricans by the National Puerto Rican Coalition surveyed said it was “wrong” of the USVI to lure the British-owned producer of Captain Morgan rum from Puerto Rico to the USVI with a federal bailout of nearly $3 billion in U.S. tax subsidies. The USVI offered London-based Diageo — the largest spirits company in the world — 50 percent of all tax subsidies as opposed to 10 percent from Puerto Rico.
Meanwhile in Scotland, Diageo decided to move production of the Scotch from its historic birthplace of Kilmarnock to other locations. This outraged locals, who see it as a badge of local pride.
Both situations, decided in the executive suite, make for a branding problem. Previously, these brands were not generally associated with controversy, especially controversy about jobs and politics. Problems created:
Captain Morgan is now a potentially tainted brand, not just with Puerto Ricans, who probably have enough rum anyway, but now with the American public. Captain Morgan has now been positioned by politics as TARP junkie, associated with politicians like Dirty Harry Reid. The American reaction against TARP is widespread, and now not just with folks on the left and right, but in American’s Commonwealths like Puerto Rico. Diageo is going to need to do some clever politics and backpedaling to fix. See the Bloomberg story Bailout Gives British Company $2.7 Billion Benefit. (An interesting mention in the story is Jay Rockefeller, who apparently interceded, along with the Secretary of the Interior. Rockefellers and Interior have a long association with the USVI because of the efforts of Laurance Rockefeller. While nothing sneaky about it, it shows how cultural issues and personal relationships within families and institutions endure to this day).
Johnnie Walker is now not associated with its birthplace hometown, which creates authenticity problems for the brand. Brands that have linked their history to their birthplace, such as Johnnie Walker, risk being diminished when the factory turns out just to be a commodity, not something unique. Even though the formula might be exactly the same, something important is lost. The company says this issue is settled, but for a long time forward, there will be animus in Kilmarnock. By the way, the folks in Kilmarnock, Virginia were enlisted in the cause of keeping Johnnie Walker in Kilmarnock, Scotland. These sorts of things are not quickly forgotten.
No one should infer by this criticism that these two things can do giant harm to the brand immediately. What it does do is open up the brands to competitors who might position their respective Scotch and Rum brands as more authentic than Johnnie Walker and Captain Morgan, who now don’t know where they live.
In addition, Puerto Rican boosters are urging a boycott of Diageo products. This is a major problem, as these issues don’t usually result in giant immediate sales drops, but instead fester and create long term ill will and headaches for brands.
Outside of the branding problem, this is a massive political issue for the United States, which has been trying to keep Puerto Rico as a colony. Of course we don’t call it a colony, but it is one. Here is the issue. Puerto Rico has been suffering with the effects of the Great Recession at a very high rate, and the Congress has shown it will side with Jay Rockefeller and the USVI over Puerto Rico.
REVERE, Mass. - So tonight we bought some Necco Wafers, one of the classic American candies. And we were shocked when we looked at it when we saw new packaging. Gone is the classic Necco that you see in the picture below. In its place is a jazzy package that looks like junk.
Furthermore, some of them taste different. Did they pay someone to do this? Is this a joke? April Fools is two months’ away!
The pink one tastes all wrong?
Where was the black? The yellow is sort of OK. What’s going on?
Please do not change things that are perfection. When you change things that are perfection, they are, by definition, no longer perfect. They are imperfect.
The packaging is bad, but it is not as much a worry as the packaging can be changed back. What is worrisome is the taste issue.
WBZ has a report on the taste and new recipe. Apparently they have gone all natural, after much research. Can we please stop with the all natural when it screws things up. Or introduce a new “natural” version but don’t screw up the old one? There is no reason why this has to be either/or.
Do other folks sense something is amiss? I will not be buying them any more.
The Adams brand is one of the greatest in gum, equal to Wrigley. For decades, they were part of Warner-Lambert, they then became part of Pfizer and were later sold to Cadbury, to form Cadbury Adams.
In the 1970s, they led gum, with brands like Dentyne, Trident, Bubblicious and standbys like Chicklets.
Their Chiclets brand is sold under the Adams banner, rather than the older name, American Chicle. It’s unfortunate the American Chicle brand has been lost.
The company has been sold to Kraft. We hope they are protective of the Adams brand and the legacy the company has preserved.
Here, a display of some of their older brands at Morton’s Gourmet Market in Sarasota. Adams sells a number of brands; these are three of the oldest ones, including Clove, Black Jack and Beemans. Beemans, with pepsin, was named for Ohio physician Dr. Edward Beeman. Black Jack has a licorice taste.
Here, the brands are sold as premium products, in a gourmet setting. This is a very good option for older brands that don’t have a mass appeal. Associating them in such a setting helps to reposition them to new users, and make them available to folks who have been using the product for generations.
A friend sent us this link of vintage airline commercials that was posted to the Facebook fan page of USAirways pilot Sully Sullenberger. We thought they were a great big fun time waster.
Armour is one of the great meat brands, not only in refrigerated meats but in canned stuff like Armour Treet. Armour Hot Dogs are in some ways better known than Oscar Meyer.
Armour & Co of Chicago was one of the nation’s greatest meat brands; though the company has been split and two many pieces have survived.
One food item I bet you didn’t know they still made was Armour Lard.
NEW YORK - It’s a really cool blogpost. Blue Fountain Media put together a comparison of bricks vs. clicks. It’s a list of storefronts on the web and how they compare to storefronts online. Dozens of brands on the list, and right next are shots of storefronts.
Says Zoe Holmes of Blue Fountain: “It shows how brand continuity can be strengthened (or fail) on the differences between a brick and mortar store and the company’s website.”
The ideas of branding and brand revival follow closely the ideas of historic preservation. There is outright restoration (making an exact copy), renovation (taking pieces of the old and redoing) and adaptive reuse. We heard another historic preservation analogy that fitted the branding process, in today’s New York Times. It was a story on preservationist Christopher Ohrstrom of The Plains, Virginia. Ohrstrom and his wife have rescued all manner of old buildings from Virginia on their farm, and rebuilt them.
The main house is old, but new details fit with the old:
Floors are covered with boldly patterned ingrain carpeting, the wall-to-wall of the 1800’s, and archaic push-button light switches give the impression that Lee Hall was last rewired around 1900. It’s an artifice that conforms to Mr. Ohrstrom’s belief that alterations to an old house should follow what he called ”a plausible chronology.”
So how does a “plausible chronology” fit with branding?
When you have an old brand, what is done with the brand today needs to fit with what the brand was. That doesn’t mean you need to follow the old slavishly. It just means that you need to have precedent. And when there is not a precedent, the consumer gets confused, and the brand identity and idea gets muddled.
So when you redesign a package, or think about a spin off, the spin off needs to relate to what has gone before. Like a law court, you need precedent. And if you decide to take the law into your own hands and do some civil disobedience, you better be sure that a jury will side with you, or you are prepared to take the consequences because you have a longer term view than the next few months.
One of the BrandlandUSA readers asks to bring back Pacquin Hand Cream. It was one of the nation’s best known hand creams, for generations made by the Connecticut company Pacquin-Lester, later known as Leeming-Pacquin.
Leeming, of course, made Hai Karate, so it was sort of a wacky-hip company.
Currently, the trademark is owned by Johnson & Johnson, though not in production.
The brand was first used in commerce in or around 1921, according to the US Patent and Trademark office. In 1950, they came out with a Pacquin’s lotion.
In 1980, Pacquin with Aloe was registered by Pacquin-Lester Company Partnership composed of Joseph W. LesterJR. and Daniel B. Lester, trustees of a trust knownas Fund B, and Leroy Franz Jr. as the trustee of the Mary Louise Lester Clark Trust Partnership, 36 Carriage DR., Avon, Conn.
Until 2006, it was owned by Pfizer, then sold to Johnson & Johnson. They apparently quit production; a large number of folks on Askville are concerned about it.
He was the hot tomato of the 1970s brunch, Snap E Tom. But when did this tomato juice mascot disappear from grocery shelves?
Snap E was a product of the Pioneer Ortega Chili Company, and later Heublein, from what I can find. Made with chile peppers, onions and tomatoes, it was a Bloody Mary mix that advertised itself as Bloody Thomas.
According to Kathy Strong’s Southern California Off the Beaten Path, Ortega of Ventura, California was founded by Emilio Ortega. Ortega was headquartered in the historic Ortega Adobe, a structure at 215 East Main Street. Ortega invented a fire roasting process for chili peppers and developed chili, salsa and Snap-E-Tom.
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BrandlandUSA is published by writer and web editor Garland Pollard. Contact him about your brand research sleuthing at
