The more everything becomes the same, the more ubiquitous branding begins to grate, the more everything looks like it belongs in a mall – the more Britian’s few surviving “caffs” represent a refuge.’

Heathcote was writing about those British cafes, simple diner-like eateries serving breakfast, lunch and tea. They are disappearing, squeezed out by rising rents and self-conscious chain retailers and eateries. Fake, contrived eateries that are far too clever than necessary, are squeezing out real places.

But his comment applies to all branding. These are the questions I wonder about:

• Is there too much branding?
• Must we all be so concerned with branding?
• Isn’t a good brand really the result of a moral, well-run company? Isn’t it better that hospitals focus on patients, and let the “branding” speak for itself? Do churches really need to “brand” themselves, or is it better that they focus on saving souls? Do we really need for banks to have visual identities, or do we want them to treat us properly when we make a deposit?
• Is the most recent mania for branding yet another management fad that we use to obscure coercion, duplicity and manipulation?

Here, the famous song with Hillside Singers in a late 1970s commercial for Coca-Cola. Below is the original.

And below is Lorri Hafer, who was the original lead, along with the Shaw Brothers, who performed the music. Interestingly, introducing the video is Herb Oscar Anderson, WABC morning man and father of Dynasty

Frankly, there are some old brands that probably should not return, for safety’s sake. From the era of Disco Duck, the Ktel Bottle Cutter. Not only did it involve glass and candles and sanding sharp edges, but you could do it with wine bottles!

That being said, the Ktel brand that produced this wacky product seems to be doing well, with a Ktel website that celebrates the history of the original “as seen on TV” mail order retailer.

So stop littering. Some of those empty bottles can be valuable. ….

Now another tumbler to add to your matched set!

Ktel bottle cutter makes a great hobby.

Didi Seven or Disco Duck, anyone? Does anyone know the history of this invention?

With all the discussion of whether the Amoco brand might come back in the States, we thought it would be good to remind folks that the brand was much larger than the U.S.

A bit of news. If you plug Amoco into Google, it seems that BP is now calling itself BP Amoco in a Google Adwords link. The ad as it appears:

BP Amoco
BPBusinessSolutions.com Take Control Of Your Business Fueling Expenses. Apply Now!

Inventive Eats: Incredible Food Innovations highlights how our breakfast cereals, sandwiches, dinner entrees, and more have been transformed by significant events, discoveries and inventions.  It features the important role many of the National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees have played in the array of appetizing innovations that have made the food we eat safer, healthier and more economical.

Visuals include:

• A full-size Mr. Peanut character costume from the 1960s, used for Planters marketing, and additional Mr. Peanut artifacts
• A 1950s fully stocked walk-in kitchen
• 19th century patent models, including models of a refrigerator, an egg beater, a flour sifter, and the original Mason jar
• Displays of other well-known trademark food characters, such as the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Green Giant
• A Tappan vintage microwave from 1955, the first for home use
• A 19th century patented beehive

The museum is the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum, United States Patent and Trademark Office, Madison Building, 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria.

• The new Big G Kids Cereals ads from General Mills are great. Animated Lucky Charms leprechaun are talkin’ nutrition next to the kids. Smart stuff. I’m so cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And the leprechaun and Cocoa bird are in the SAME commercial.
• Postum Update: A reader contacted BrandlandUSA. Their question? When would Kraft, which ended production of the drink Postum, decide to release the formula so its fans could know how to get it to drink? Monday, we contacted Kraft’s public relations team by their contact form on their site, and have heard nothing. Now that’s a social media strategy I hadn’t thought of!
• Stein Mart has just published their annual report. Sadly, they mention that while Stein Mart is trademarked and an asset, they don’t mention their ownership of the Peck & Peck brand, which with a bit of management and marketing could be as valuable as Abercrombie & Fitch. They say “management believes that our trademarks are important, but with the exception of Stein Mart, not critical to our marketing strategy. Peck & Peck was a brand as great as they come, but now it is a store brand of Stein Mart. Oh well. Another opportunity missed. However, the good news is that Stein Mart is taking good care of the brand, and at least keeping it alive. And when I ask clerks at the store, they mention how many people still trust the brand, decades after the venerable department store is gone.
• Shirley Plantation: We happened to see Virginia’s Shirley Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg in some recent ads, but we can’t remember what the ad was about. It wasn’t a tourism ad, as Shirley is privately owned. I think it was financial services; I know it wasn’t Virginia tourism Virginia is for Lovers ad. Love some help from readers. In seeing it, I realized that yes, the family visit to the house museum might become hip again.
• Mercury’s Future: There has been some question about the future of Mercury as part of Lincoln-Mercury. We just noticed a few prime time ads on Fox selling the Mariner and Milan, as we hadn’t seen them in awhile. While they could have been regional buys, they were not dealer ads, but branding. Then we took a look at the website, where it appears that Ford is definitely paying attention to making the lineup interesting. Yes, there are only four models in the lineup, but they are a great foil for dealers, who can lure drivers into the showroom with Lincoln and sell them a Mercury. By the way, it was the killing of the Plymouth brand that really helped to do in Chrysler. Oh, and the Grand Marquis is becoming  a VERY interesting car, and the longer it survives, the more interesting it gets.
• Lee’s Paint: We got to see Mount Prospect Paint in Chicago, where American Idol Lee Dewyze worked. He apparently was good at stain and paint matching, and his favorite color was tangelo. However, the editors at 19 missed showing that the store was a Benjamin Moore dealer.

Us folks of a certain age know Marfak from its appearance above the service bays on classic white porcelain clad Texaco stations, of which there were a significant number as late as the 1980s.

The classic Texaco station was designed by Walter Dorwin Teague, the great industrial designer. Teague took something supposedly dirty and messy, a service station, and turned it into the white, sparkling image of a hospital. Many stations remain, though most were reclad and have new identities. (Note to readers: please start a list of extant Teague stations after this article.) I also believe Marfak was on CalTex stations across the world.

My assumption is that the brand declined within Texaco because as automotive technology increased, less and less lubrication was needed. No other new use surfaced.

The Teague Texaco station design (seen below on an ad) was simple and could be configured a number of ways depending on the space available. In all versions, the outside was white, porcelain-clad metal, which defied rust and sparkled with only a quick wash. The inside of the station was completely visible to outsiders, with glass auto bays and a large glass window on the front.

I happened to have close experience with one station that still stands in Irvington, Virginia. It was right next to the Irvington Country Store, which my father ran. It had a number of characters who visited and resided there, including a certain Harcum (Mr. Harcum?), who exposed me to the Southern habit of putting Lance peanuts in 6 1/2 oz. bottles of Coke, which he drank seemingly on the hour. And he needed to drink plenty, as he seemed to use the wooden Coke carton holders as something to sit on out front of the station.

But back to Texaco and Marfak. The ability for drivers and passers by to see inside the station conveyed a strong message that Texaco dealers knew cars. It would be interesting to see if oil companies would go back to selling service, rather than Coke and cigarettes. It always struck me as silly that oil companies would see nothing weird in owning a convenience store brand, but would largely ignore the car repair market. Perhaps Marfak could be used again in this manner? ExpressLube is a brand that does the same services as Marfak; perhaps there are other needs for a repair brand.

The USPTO registration for Marfak said its first use was in April of 1924; Chevron Intellectual Property keeps the brand alive, still. In the trademark file is the use of the name with a product called Marfak Heavy Duty 2, which is a lithium soap grease. This is smart IP management for companies, namely keeping a sub-brand alive through using its name on a few products, which keeps the brand alive and associated with the company. If the brand is ever needed again, it is ready, protected and has some measure of brand value, even if minor.

To help remind consumers that Shake ‘N Bake is still around, this December Shake ‘N Bake is marketing to local consumers with ads in 17 Boston-area shopping malls. The ads are sort of cheeky, with call-outs such as “You’re looking good today. Is your chicken looking good tonight?” and “You look positively yummy. Your chicken, not so much,” the mirrored ads encourage shoppers to check out themselves – and the state of their chicken dinners.

The mall ads mark Shake ‘N Bake’s first advertising campaign in more than a decade.

“The holidays are filled with hustle and bustle, leaving little time for everyday activities like getting the weeknight meal ready,” said Shake ‘N Bake Brand Manager Ellen Thompson, in a press release. “We wanted to catch consumers during the holiday season when they are putting their best faces forward for festive social engagements, and remind them how easy it can be to also dress up their dinner routine without extra time or effort.”

Somehow, the brand’s marketing did not translate to the jet era, and the trademark went defunct in 1966.

NEW YORK – Jake Holmes perhaps has had as much influence on American music as any other singer songwriter, but unless you are a devotee of early 1970s rock or advertising, you probably don’t know his name.

But you certainly know his music, which includes Amtrak’s “America’s Getting Into Training”, Pan Am’s “We Fly the World”, Dr. Pepper’s “Be a Pepper”, Lego’s “Zack, Lego Maniac” and countless others. (The YouTube video above has a reel of his work, from songs to some of his best known commercials.)

Holmes’ work is so omnipresent that you can’t get it out of your head; by design his commercials are full of “melody you can’t get rid of.” At worst, like Schaeffer’s “Hop, Hop, Sittin’ Pretty,” they cheer you up. At best, his work on the Army’s “Be All That You Can Be” helped to elevate great American institutions in an era of the great post-Vietnam invention, the all-volunteer Army.

He is much more than his commercials; he’s currently working on compiling world music with partner, Amanda Homi, and plays small clubs, where his humorous poetry and biting social satire make his performances something beyond just a folk-rock singer songwriter. Perhaps that has something to do with his eclectic influences, as he has worked with everyone from Harry Belafonte to Joan Rivers. (A great interview on his music is here.)

We sent him some questions and he was kind enough to indulge us.

BrandlandUSA: What was the first commercial you wrote? How did you get your first break?

Holmes: I was asked by a jingle house to write a spot for an anti-drug campaign, “What Do You Do When the Music Stops.” They liked what I wrote and gave me another job that I did with Carly Simon. I can’t remember the product but I remember Carly sang the “s” out of it. It snowballed from there.

BrandlandUSA: It seems rare that a jingle writer would write the music and then sing it. How did you end up doing both?

Holmes: I was asked to write and sing the new Chevrolet campaign which I did. I turned down the lead singing part because I thought it might jeopardize my recording career. I had a pretty active recording career at the time. I had a top 10 record “So Close” and so I stayed off the vocal contract. That year the singers made about $10,000 and I made $1,500 for writing. I realized then where the real money was, and I sang everything I possibly could from then on.

BrandlandUSA: You came of age in a generation that was anti-establishment and anti-war; yet “Be All You Can Be” arguably changed the perception of the Army, very much for the positive. My guess is that you either considered “Be All You Can Be” your rallying cry for a better army, or were you just able to separate your professional work from your politics?

Holmes: I didn’t do any army work until after Vietnam. After that I felt, like you say, that with an all volunteer army it behooved us to try to get the best and the brightest. In retrospect with recent events I think the Army turns out to be the one bright spot in this miasma of suspect conflicts.

BrandlandUSA: Do you get requests to sing your commercial work when you perform, or are you done with the commercial work when you record the commercial?

Holmes: Pretty much done. I’ll occasionally do a little medley of some of the hits.

BrandlandUSA: How quickly can you write a jingle? And do you write them in your head for products that you aren’t working on but see?

Holmes: I like to let an idea simmer and when I jump in to the actual writing it is usually three hours or so of actual writing. Sometimes I write anti jingle jingles in my head. Virgin Airlines “We Don’t Go Down on You” Was one of my never-used favorites.

BrandlandUSA: Commercials like Pan Am “Fly the World” and DeBeers Anniversary (I think those were your work) stick in my head and bring back specific moments in time in late 70s and early 80s. Do other people tell you this about other commercials when they find out what you do? Or did I watch way too much TV as a kid?

Holmes: You watch way too much TV.

BrandlandUSA: Your body of work, arguably, is known by as many people as any American songwriter or musical group, and the amount of airplay is as frequent as anyone in the business. Yet you are not a household name. Does it ever surprise you that your work, to borrow that phrase, might arguably be more famous than the Beatles?

Holmes: I think fame is over-rated. I would rather be respected by a hundred people than known by millions.

Q: Are the publishing rights owned by you, just as in traditional music publishing or do companies and agencies own it? 

Holmes: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For years clients didn’t care about the publishing. It was a miniscule part of what anybody made. Most of our money was in studio mark up costs and singing. These days every penny counts.

Q: What are you working on now, commercial or not, that you enjoy the most?

Holmes: I’m writing a musical about Boomers and making films and writing songs. Life is good.

In most areas, zoning and sign restrictions have become so severe that there are fewer and fewer ways to get the word out. Enter this contraption, which sells for about $500. There is no franchise fee; you just buy the thing and go out and sell some ads.

Sarasota, Florida entrepreneur and limo owner Bob Nickla of Boss Limousine got the concept together, built a prototype,  put up a website and started selling them on the internet at the website ipedalads.com. We heard about it, and thought of some uses other than as a mobile billboard company:

1. Pharmaceutical promotions: In many hospitals, pharma reps are banned from giving out gifts. It can easily be used in a medical campus to promote certain drugs.
2. Universities: Companies could take it to university settings to hand out freebies or promote books, food and the like.
3. Door-to-door delivery: With the addition of a carrying area in the trailer, it would be a perfect regular promotion for a restaurant, drugstore or pizza delivery service; restaurants would just buy one, and leave their banner up as they took food around.
4. Restaurant promotions: Restaurants and food shops can give away free samples and menus in busy pedestrian areas.
5. Malls: This would be an excellent addition for a mall; the mall management could license the I Pedal Ads to one person, who could then set up a schedule of promotions for tenants. For instance, the Macy’s chick who gives away perfume samples or the Asian eatery owner giving away chicken samples could travel up and down the mall, livening up the mall scene. Or alternately, the mall management could buy one for the mall, and allow store owners to use it for one hour each week, with prime shopping hours raffled off to tenants.
6. Theme Parks and Resorts: One issue when guests get to a destination is to get visitors to spend. How about a mobile promotion to hand out freebies and coupons for shops and restaurants in the park.
7. Visitor Bureaus and Chamber of Commerce: Very often, visitor bureau and chamber of commerce staff in a resort area sits behind a counter. Getting out on an I Pedal Ads with coupons, menus and visitor information just might be the ticket to selling tourists on staying an extra night, or just eating dinner out.

See Ipedalads.com

Pizza Hut has announced that its boxes and select locations will carry the name “The Hut,” and RadioShack plans to unveil new creative for “The Shack,” its shorter, catchier moniker.

These name shortenings are proof of what professional namers already know: names acquire meaning, they don’t create meaning. Once meaning is established, the brand name can be reduced to a shorthand version of itself, signaling its secure place in the realm of consumer awareness.

In the case of Pizza Hut and RadioShack, there’s also a more tactical motivation. As brands move away from their legacy offerings and expand product assortments, they outgrow their descriptive names. Today, Pizza Hut sells more than pizza, and RadioShack has more than radios on its shelves. The two brands are larger than their original products; their names stand for tangible and intangible experiences.

There’s also a familiarity expressed in a shorter name, akin to a nickname. The shorter handles inject the brands with a first-name-basis ease that everyone can participate in, but that ultimately acknowledges a loyal clientele. “The Hut” isn’t just any hut, it’s the hut. The only hut.

Name shortenings are nothing new. For decades, brands have abbreviated their names to reflect vernacular speech or to protect equity. In many cases, the brand adopted and claimed ownership of a nickname, a testament to the reverse influence consumers can have on brands. Here are a few notable examples.

Kentucky Fried Chicken: In 1990, the Commonwealth of Kentucky trademarked the name “Kentucky,” forcing businesses to pay a licensing fee to use it. KFC was able to sidestep the issue by changing its brand name to the commonly used nickname. The fast-food restaurant has recently expanded its brand nomenclature to include KGC (the “G” standing for “grilled”).

Jack In The Box: The brand’s new logo positions “Jack” as the primary name by demoting “In The Box” to a visually subordinate level. Whether “Jack” becomes the official name has yet to be seen.

Charles Schwab: Not a name change, but noteworthy nonetheless-the brokerage’s most recent ad campaign employs the headline “Ask Chuck,” conveying a trusted familiarity.

America Online: The company officially changed its name to AOL in 2006, stating: “Our new corporate identity better reflects our expanded mission-to make everyone’s online experience better. Plus, consumers in the U.S. and around the world already know us by our initials.”

American Express: Amex, the abbreviated form of the name, is a company trademark.

Federal Express: Global market research revealed that “federal” connoted something bureaucratic and slow, and the full name was difficult to pronounce in certain foreign markets. In 1994, Fedex was adopted as the official brand name. The company’s new name also proved much easier to use in visual applications where space was limited.

Coca-Cola: The company behind the legendary drink registered the name Coke in 1945, but it has since become a genericized trademark.

As for The Hut and The Shack, time will tell what market reception of the shorter names will be. In the latter’s case, there’s clearly an intent to inject a youthful hipness into the brand. Advertising invites customers to “Crash the Party” at The Shack’s dedicated web page, where an urban palette and social media define a more progressive brand experience.

Is this a fresh new chapter for the dated electronics catchall? Does the literal meaning of “shack,” a crudely built structure, unwittingly reinforce the brand’s slipshod merchandising strategy? Like all brand names, new or modified, The Shack will acquire the meaning that consumers give it.

Editor’s Note: Tom Parrette is Director of Verbal Branding at Addis Creson, a Berkley, California-based strategic branding firm dedicated to creating positive change for clients and communities. Learn more about his work at www.addiscreson.com

I am reading about neuromarketing, the science of looking at brains and connecting it with consumer behavior, after seeing that 60 Minutes clip on computers reading brains (thanks to Jon Vanhala for sending it out). I wanted to find out more about neuromarketing to get a sense of how prevalent it is. I ended up stumbling onto Roger Dooley’s Neuromarketing Blog.

His thesis is this. We think differently about things when we hear stories about them. He says that if someone hands you an old brick, it’s an old brick. But if they tell you its from Mount Vernon then WHOA! Your brain does something different. It begins to think of more things, and the brick becomes special. That’s why brands work. You connect a word to a commodity, and it becomes special. That’s why I like brands with good stories, and why I believe that brands need to tell stories.

And that’s why stories and history about places help to sell a destination. History, frankly, is the only thing that can sell a destination. And it is the only thing that can sell a product. It doesn’t have to be a long history, as even a short good history will sell something. But the history has to be there.

Growing up in Virginia, that history is always around, in furniture, buildings, even the landscape. And as a Virginian (indeed any old school culture though), you are sort of trained to think of everything with a narrative.

But back to Roger Dooley:

When we choose a place for our business or to live, a sense of place and history is often neglected despite the considerable impact they can have on us emotionally. Whether it is as simple as a historic home or as elaborate as Chicago’s Tribune Tower, being in a location with a sense of history can profoundly affect our mood and that of the people with whom we interact.

Does your place of business have a story to tell? What about an object in it? And what about your customers – do they perceive your business as a manufactured environment, or one that comes with historic substance?

Coke, Brooks Brothers and the like are powerful brands because they have history behind them. London is a powerful city because of its history. That doesn’t mean that just because a brand or a place has history, it can’t screw itself up. But when Coke screwed up its marketing, it wasn’t the fault of the history. Ditto with New York; when the city was broke, it wasn’t the history’s fault. But to succeed, it needed the history to cement its place in the world.

When brands and cities pretend there is no history, they soon will get forgotten by it.

PHILADELPHIA - The edgy  ad agency Gyro Worldwide is now Quaker City Mercantile. They have a bold goal, namely to “recapture Philadelphia’s mighty industrial past and weave a new version of this greatness into its future.” The company will still do advertising, but will also begin making products, hence the”Mercantile” name.

In a press release, the agency said that the change from Gyro to QCM reflects changes in American popular culture. Says Gyro’s founder, Steve Grasse. “The go-go excesses of the millennium is over,” Grasse said.

Now that the limitless appetite of the American consumer has ruined the global economy, there is nothing left for Gyro to do. It is time to move forwards (and also backwards) to a new epoch, one of where America creates real wealth through simple living and hard work. The party was a blast, but now the party is over. The work, meanwhile, goes on.

They’ve launched Sailor Jerry, a rum brand, and acquired a major stake in Narragansett Brewery. Grasse has also purchased a 72-acre farm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire that he plans to use it as a lab for a “new culture of agrarian traditionalism.”

QCM will operate out of the old offices of Gyro Worldwide. It will offer clients the same array of branding, identity, promotion, and new product development services. But in addition to creating work for other companies, QCM will be developing its own line of artisanal products, many developed on Grasse’s farm. “I aspire to be a true Renaissance man,” Grasse says, “a pre-robber baron capitalist in the tradition of Franklin, Jefferson and Washington.”

See http://www.quakercitymercantile.com

Payne on New Ad Formats

I heard Payne speak this February at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting in Orlando; just this month his firm has come out with a new ad unit, the D30, that puts a commercial on web pages. Payne, who worked at Turner Broadcasting and Turner Sports, makes one of the more important points in the Internet advertising industry. Clicks are destructive.

“Despite all the possibilities,” said Payne, “we are still using clicks as a measure of value.”

Clicks are not only destructive of the brand, all they do is help advertisers to beat down the price of advertising. In addition, it causes content to go for the lowest common denominator. “We are telling advertisers,” he said, “the worse content, the more you should pay.”

He believes advertisers need to look to simplification of advertising formats to make it easier to buy. However, he asserts, simplification should not turn the ads into commodities. Instead, brand advertising might be helped by limiting the number of ads, or developing smarter ad pricing strategies that sell demographics, not eyeballs.

To solve the issue, he says that the industry needs to look backward to the beginning of television, and look at the “history of what works.” His model? Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, founder of the Today and Tonight shows on NBC. Weaver pushed forward the idea of the 30 and 60 second commercial, wresting television programming away from the ad agencies who brokered large blocks of time on the networks. His big question for the Internet advertising industry? “Where is our Pat Weaver when you need him?”

I found myself agreeing with him, not only because he mentioned Pat Weaver, who is my hero, but because he understood clicks. In print and in television, the “per inquiry” ad is the lowest form of advertising, and only reserved for remnant space. Part of the problem online is that because barriers to entry are so low, advertisers have had a wide variety of options. Not only is ad inventory theoretically infinite, the ease of placing it is easy too.

Back to the Soap Opera

Meanwhile, Yves Darbouze of pLot Multimedia has a slightly different, but complementary idea of the future of advertising on the internet. It needs to stop putting “ads” on the internet. Darbouze, who advised Obama’s campaign on social media, runs an interactive agency that plans, develops, hosts and maintains their own social networks and social media applications. The company then markets them to the brands.

I interviewed Darbouze this spring by phone. His idea is to look at what network television and radio did in its early days for models to see what companies should do. Companies are all talking social media, but they are faced with a series of fads (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter) and the knowledge that some of the social media efforts don’t have exact payoffs. His answer? To look backward to the early days of the networks when agencies created their own programs for advertisers like Proctor & Gamble. The idea? “To create new soap operas, maybe functionality.”

He says that brand advertising, while traditionally focused on advertisements, should instead focus online on being “people aggregators.” While brands are doing this, he says they are doing this within their own brands, and not stepping out into neutral territory. For instance, he mentions NikePlus. First, and strategically, he says he would have called it something not about Nike (Runners Plus?) in order to not alienate the Adidas, Puma and Converse crowd. Then, you would own potential customers that you don’t already have.

He’s got a point. For instance, before MySpace was the rage, he talked to Universal about a music concept called My People, where artists could promote themselves. But Universal was not ready to talk and sell directly to the consumer, and others had the same idea. “They could have built this site,” he said. “They had all of the artists.”

Major brand advertisers want to promote their brands, and rightfully so. But many online “hit” internet sites are really just commercials, and that’s not quite the right direction. They get a flood of hits, and then there is nothing to come back to.

Both agree on clicks. Darbouze cites his seven-year-old daughter, who likes to Tivo and is careful what she clicks on. Just putting some click-able ads is not going to work for that generation, says Darbouze. “It’s going to take you off the site,” she says to him.

Said Darbouze, “If there is a way to make the product be a part of the activity, you’ve won.”