Here pictured in a restaurant near Jacksonville, Florida are cans of Tidewater Long Wearing Motor Oil. We thank Catesby Jones of Peace Frogs for the photo.

According to the Rachel Maddow Flickr page, the cans have appeared in other Cracker Barrel restaurants including the one in Midland, Texas.

The cans were made by Tidewater Oil Service in Mathews, Va. What’s interesting about the location is that Mathews is a terribly rural place, where you would never expect a brand of oil to be made.

I don’t know anything about the brand, except there was a national brand of oil called Tidewater Petroleum, that became part of Standard Oil. Tidewater Petroleum made Veedol oil and Flying A gas. Apparently, there was another Tidewater Oil, Tidewater Oil, Inc. of Mobjack, Virginia. That company was run under the direction of L.F. Phillips, Jr. and in 1994 became part of Philips Energy. Love to know more; please comment below.

The handsome can tells us a number of things about American business at the time, which I assume to be after World War II, but before 1970.

1. Regional businesses selling commodities thrived in a time not so long ago.
2. Environmental regulations, while improving our environment, have meant LESS opportunity in rural areas re: business. It’s all a trade-off, but the point needs to be made. I do not think such a canning operation could start up today in a rural area.
3. Earlier eras were quite visually sophisticated. With all our current emphasis on branding, the idea of clear, elegant packaging has been lost. Notice the strong typography and the unadorned use of color. It is very clear what the product is. Where are the packaging companies that help their small businesses deliver such a classic product?
4. Mathews, and many rural county seats across the nations, at one time had very diverse economies with many layers of business enterprises. This is gone. Using the parallel of an ecosystem, the “genetic diversity” of many rural economies has become a monoculture.

Love it if anyone had any history on Tidewater Motor Oil, or any other defunct oil brands, or “boutique” oils that only have regional appeal.

It’s archeology, and it’s a very under-used weapon in tourism and place-branding.

Most times, tourism officials are wrongly obsessed with building convention centers and hotels. They think they need to meet with advertising folks, and have they little time for odd people in worn clothes who dig up things.

Many people who are seemingly for “economic development” see archeology  as something that slows down large construction projects. That can be true in some cases, but the reality is that prudent developers always check first with a county planning department before they buy a property. It’s called due diligence, and making a few quick calls before you sign a deal is prudent, as you don’t want to be building a new hotel on an old native American burial place.

Newness Never Lasts

A focus on newness has most local tourism promoters thinking about the wrong things, and making friends with the wrong people. A new convention hall at a new hotel can only be “new” for about 6 months or so. By the third or fourth year, it’s old stuff. Yes, a nice convention hall is expected, but it does nothing to make your destination more interesting over the long term.

But sophisticated destinations understand something different. These destinations see a connection between history and culture, and will often promote digs as part of the tourism product. For instance, the PR agency Weill sends out regular press releases on finds in Israel. A new street? Send a release! Some Roman bit? Send another?

Here’s how Israel does it:

New York – February 18, 2010: Flagstones from a 1,500-year-old street were discovered this month during an excavation in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The ancient street follows the same course as the present-day David Street in the Old City and provides evidence supporting the Madaba Map–a 1,400-year-old mosaic map which depicted the Land of Israel in the Byzantine period and the entrance to Jerusalem from the west that led to a single, central thoroughfare on that side of the city.  The mosaic is believed to be from the largest bustling street during the Christian rule of Jerusalem.

“We discovered the flagstones, more than a meter long, paved the road at a depth of about 14 feet below street level,” says Dr. Ofer Sion, Excavation Director, Israel Antiquities Authority.

Now, you say. We don’t have artifacts of Biblical proportions in my little corner of the world. This Does Not Apply.

Not true. Even modest digs are interesting to the public. And realistically, most parts of the world have native cultures that are thousands of years old lying beneath.

Archaeology does something long-term for your destination. It builds interest in your place, and gives your region a narrative, sometimes thousands of years old. A few reasons why archaeology is so potent for tourism:

1. It happens over time. Finds are never quite done. They keep unearthing things. Even small items tend to build interest in other things. The media never tires of finds. Yes, it’s exciting when gold trinkets and such are found, but the constant dribble of any  bit of modest news helps keep your destination in the press, both in local, state and international circles.
2. It touches all groups. What you find is always across demographics and races. Findings are almost always subversive.
3. The process itself generates economic activity. While no one would think a dig would be as big an employer as a factory, the dig is almost always a low-cost investment. The dig itself generates room visits, purchases and such. The other thing; digs almost always come before large road projects, etc., so they help promote what happens after the dig.
4. It lays a foundation for community support for culture and history. The people who care about culture and history are the people who support the sorts of amenities that make a destination interesting.
5. It attracts academic interest in an area. A dig is always of interest to areas larger than your immediate MSA. Very few digs are just interesting to a local community; they are written up in journals and such, and become part of the international academic community. This permanent attention lives on forever.
6. Youth are always interested in archaeology. The local youth can always be a part of the project through school curriculum. Almost all digs fit into some standards of learning; getting the youth of a community interested in its past ultimately gets them interested in the future.
7. It aligns your tourism office with the “right” local folks. The sorts of folks who show up at local historical society meetings and such are usually the old guard of a community. Many CVB and TDC officials move from place to place. They are often in a disconnect, and then wonder why they are undermined. But historical societies and the like are an easy way to connect with these folks who can either help you, or undermine you.
8. Historical writing and research precedes literature. Getting a destination mentioned in books and literature is important to building interest in a community. The only way writers know the interesting facts about a place is through research.
9. It helps with search engines. The information gleaned from any dig should be posted online. The information is never just about the dig, though; it always relates to the whole geographic area and its story. These keywords are valuable in building the online “story” of your destination.
10. The end is never in sight. The interest in one part of your destination helps build interest in other pieces of your destination.

J.G. Dill was once a great Virginia tobacco company, known worldwide for its Dill’s Best pipe tobacco. While as far as we know the tobacco brand Dill’s does not survive, Dill’s Premium Pipe Cleaners, known by their yellow and red package, do live on.

J.G. Dill, mostly a maker of pipe tobaccos, gradually lost favor as Americans largely quit smoking pipes. At some point it became a part of U.S. Tobacco; the packaging would read J.G. Dill (U.S. Tobacco Successor) or something similar. Gradually, the company brand disappeared.

The 1946 trademark application for Dill’s Best from U.S. Tobacco points to the first use of the Dill’s Best name in 1885, though other packages say 1848. Dill’s also made a nautical-feeling brand called Look Out cut plug, and had sister brands like the cigarette called Sano (an early low tar), as well as Tweed and Model. It is unclear when U.S. Tobacco (or J.G. Dill) started selling pipe cleaners.

For a time, the brand sponsored network television, including the live NBC show called Martin Kane, Private Eye. Veoh has an episode online with an intro showing the tobacco products, as well as numerous people smoking the brands (the camera cuts to the tobacco label, quite overhanded product placement, including regular visits to a tobacco shop). Click on the show title for the Veoh link:

Martin Kane, Private Eye, 1949-54

[Narrator] “Martin Kane, Private Eye…presented by Model…Dill’s Best…Old Briar Pipe Tobacco…and their new teammate…Sano cigarettes for full smoking pleasure, yet only one percent nicotine.” (Voice of William Gargan as Kane) “This is Martin Kane with a story about a dime-a-dance girl, a Broadway joint, a niece named Irma Field, and her uncle, a distinguished old gent named Brooks Field who currently has his Brooks Brothers parked in my guest chair.”

Dill’s was the creation of the Richmond brothers J.D. and Adolph Dill, who created Dill’s Best, according to The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Tradition by Robert Sobel. Yours truly happens to be fascinated by Dill’s, mostly because he lived in a Richmond, Virginia house build by Adolph, which is also spelled Addolph, and one of his favorite buildings in Richmond (indeed the world) is the Model Tobacco building.

Dill’s was one of the many family owned tobacco companies of the turn of the century; another was T.C. Williams, whose son, Adolph Dill Williams, was a generous benefactor to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. (History question: We’d love some reader help on the genealogy, please!)

While the pipe tobacco is gone, Dill’s pipe cleaners still survive, though younger users of pipe cleaners probably don’t even know what they were originally used for. Indeed they have been renamed in many craft stores, though most still know them as pipe cleaners. We wonder if there isn’t a bigger market at Michael’s than at the tobacco stores.

Dill’s Pipe Cleaners were later sold to Lane Limited, and the trademark was recently renewed by its new owners, International Pipes and Accessories, 1731 U.S. Highway 21 South, Sparta, SC, 28675.

Through the years, this sort of activity helped women in countless ways. By the end of the century, hundreds of thousands of women had sold goods at these exchanges, which turned people who might need charity into entrepreneurs. How wonderful and American. Frankly, we need a bit of this incubator spirit now.

The groups had another renaissance in the 1930s, an era when “nice” ladies took in boarders and made goods in order to keep their houses. Their organization is now the Federation of Woman’s Exchanges. There are many women’s exchanges still around on the East Coast, though one of the oldest in Manhattan closed in 2003. One of my favorite brands came from a Woman’s Exchange. It is Mrs. Fearnow Brunswick Stew. Mrs. Fearnow sold stew at the Richmond exchange, and turned it into a multi-million dollar business. The family eventually sold out, though the brand lives on.

The exchanges were serious business. Wallis Simpson, yes that famous Wallis Simpson, credited the Baltimore exchange with giving her daughter the “nicer things in life.”

In fact, today some websites like Etsy.com and even Ebay have the feel of the “exchange” as they enable people to earn extra spending money, and do it quietly and in a creative way. The other element important to the success of the woman’s exchange is that there is no social stigma to selling goods there. People of less means work with people with more connections and resources.

So, for instance Wallis Simpson’s mother would be OK selling goods to make her daughter at school have the right clothes. Because all the goods are different, there is no competition. In fact, the more women of means who sell a the stores, the more foot traffic there is, and the better chances everyone has to sell.

During flush times, these types of exchanges function as incubators for craft artists who are trying to figure out whether they can turn their business idea into a full-time artistic career.

We can think of a couple of great brands that started as spin-offs of women’s exchanges, not only Mrs. Fearnow’s but Sally Bell’s Bakery, also a Richmond institution. Sally Bell’s was started by Sarah (“Sallie”) Cabell Jones of Ashland and Elizabeth Lee Milton of Gloucester, who met at the Woman’s Exchange of Richmond and parlayed a love of cooking and a collection of recipes into a beloved Richmond institution.

There are products unique to the various exchanges. For instance, The Woman’s Exchange in St. Louis is known for its Peter Pan-collared strawberry dresses sold at their children’s boutique (seen here), as well as an old-style Tea Room. Baltimore’s exchange also has special items.

We would love to add to the list if readers know more. And if you are lucky enough to have a woman’s exchange in your city, go check it out. Or if you are a woman who has an entrepreneurial idea, start selling.

GOOCHLAND, VA – There aren’t too many drive-ins left, but some thrive. We can think specifically of Hull’s Drive In of Lexington, Virginia, where a community comes together summer nights to watch movies in their car. Hull’s almost closed, but the community rallied round, and saved the theater.

There are many cases like this around the country, even though many drive-ins have been lost to development and fashion. But just because many old drive ins have closed doesn’t mean that the format of drive in is no longer commercially viable. Not only do many drive ins do business as theaters, they have big concession revenue and often open up during the day as a swap meet.

Part of the problem has not been that folks don’t like to go to drive ins, but that many are run down, they don’t have up-to-date equipment, or the worst thing, they are in areas of town where their customers feel unsafe.

So we were so thrilled to learn that a NEW drive in would be built in Goochland County, Virginia. John & Kristina Heidel are opening the Goochland Drive In this August. Prices are reasonable; adults are $7; kids under 12 are $3. And a soft drink and popcorn combo for under $2. Sounds like happy days are here again in Richmond! What is smart for them is that they are located in a rural area that appreciates what they are trying to do, but are VERY close to growing upper middle class families that will support such a thing.

They’ve also put a local, environmental feel to the movie theater effort. (In the past, drive-ins were associated with things, not always nice.) Says Heidel on his site:

As residents of Goochland County, we appreciate the rural splendor and believe in the preservation of its character and lifestyle. We share our neighbors’ sentiments that our county is truly special and, likewise, wish to maintain its beauty and charm.

Drive-in theaters have been a part of rural America since the 1930′s. And in keeping with that tradition, we believe that a new drive-in theater would be a wonderful addition to the make-up of Goochland County. Through technological advancements over the years, the improved picture and sound of drive-in movies provide an outstanding experience — with little, if any, disturbance to the surrounding environment.

Look on their web page and check out their Facebook fan page.

Movie distributors and developers should take a look at this, and see if their concept works. Real estate is cheap now, and a drive in might be a good interim use for a stalled shopping center complex. Compared to an actual building, an outdoor theater is a very small investment, and with current environmental regulations, we bet most jurisdictions would demand that it NOT be paved, or paved with water-permeable surfaces, saving on cost.

SUFFOLK – The home of the founder of Mr. Peanut, Amadeo Obici, is in danger of destruction, and has been named to Preservation Virginia’s Most Endangered list, just released this week.

Obici was the founder of Planter’s Peanuts, and moved his company from Pennsylvania to Virginia to be closer to his supplies. In the process, he made Planter’s, and Mr. Peanut, into a national icon. The saddest thing about it is that the Obici family was extremely generous to the Suffolk/Hampton Roads area, and tearing down the house would be the greatest insult to their lives. It would be a nice gesture for Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT), the current owner of the brand, to step in, make a few telephone calls to the Preservation Virginia or the city of Suffolk, and see how they could make sure this doesn’t happen.

What a great place to serve Planter’s Cocktail Peanuts.

A bit about the nomination from the PreservationVirginia website:

The Obici House sits on the 18th hole at Sleepy Hole Golf Course over looking the Nansemond River. Currently the house is vacant and has been for a number of years. The house suffers from water damage, rot, and a crumbling foundation. Amedeo Obici, the founder of the Planters Peanut Company, moved his business from Pennsylvania to Suffolk, Virginia because this is where the best peanuts were grown. He made Suffolk the “peanut capital of the world.”

He was instrumental in introducing Mr. Peanut, one of the top five most recognizable icons in the world. The Obici Hose was constructed around 1924. As philanthropists, Mr. and Mrs. Obici supported the people of Suffolk. When Mrs. Obici, died, her husband commissioned Suffolk’s first hospital in her memory. He died before it was completed. The Obici House is a landmark to this family’s commitment to the Suffolk community. This house, recently a popular site for weddings and charity events, could potentially be torn down before the end of the year. The Obici House is on the National Register and would qualify for historic rehabilitation tax credits. Other communities have launched similar projects to re-use residential structures as community centers, club houses and other uses. We urge the City to redouble its efforts to find a sympathetic buyer to undertake the restoration and adaptation of this important link with so many aspects of Suffolk’s proud heritage.

Learn more about the house and the most endangered list at www.preservationvirginia.org.

But they do need to keep current. And they face the same issue that so many other generations old legacy brands face, namely how do they keep current while not losing the history that gives them credibility. They recently did it with a new seal; a simple round circle with APVA 1889 in the middle and the name Preservation Virginia around the outside.

Clear and direct. Classic. Straightforward.

They did not do this change over night. They slowly evolved their name from Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities to a simple Preservation Virginia. I still call them APVA and many folk still do, but that’s OK; they don’t call the brand police on me like so many big companies that are doing name changes. Instead, they keep their legal name APVA and then are d/b/a Preservation Virginia as shorthand. It is much the same approach that Proctor & Gamble had with its moon and stars logo. They never really gave it up, just took it off the products, and used it for corporate reasons (it seems to have completely diminished over the years though).

With Preservation Virginia as a name, it helps that they used the two words from APVA in their new name.There wasn’t really a change, just an evolution. Indeed for decades, their logo was the letters APVA over three ships in Jamestown. Not too bad, but it branded them as just Jamestown, when they are really the “National Trust” of Virginia.

Keeping the old name as the legal name is an excellent solution for non-profits. Things like URLs often change when organizations re-brand, and changing URLs is a big no-no for search engines. Also, if you change the legal name, there are all sorts of issues with legal fees, donor registries and gifts committees of charitable trusts, that all like to see things stay consistent. So it is better, if you absolutely think you need to rebrand, to evolve with d/b/a a nickname, and leave the past be. Actually, the best thing is not to change at all, if you can avoid it.

The answer is so simple, we wonder how many other non-profits don’t do it. We have a sense; there is a natural constituency for change, as many ad agencies make money off it. But even more than that, changing a name or doing a major brand change allows a non-profit leader the ability to think they are doing something, and yet doing very little. It’s navel gazing, and its stupid, though it is fun, we admit, to talk about logos.

The logo was done by a team including Andy Williams (formerly with Williams Whittle) Tina Calhoun (Preservation Virginia marketing director) and Adam Mead of The Creative System. They also used a class at Virginia Commonwealth University for some testing.

There are actually two parts to the new brand architecture, a main brand image, seen on their website, and the seal seen at the top of the page. The seal goes in brochures, signs and other promotional materials as a way of indicating “official Preservation Virginia” efforts.

We also see a future with the logo for any merchandise sold by the APVA, either souvenirs at places like Jamestown, or even reproductions of its furniture, fabric and colors. Since Colonial Willamsburg has really junked up their reproductions line, we hope APVA can step into the void.

See www.apva.org

This also dovetails into a recent post on the the status of a ballpark in Richmond, Va., and the prospect of building a new one in a historical area known for its flooding. The need for a new baseball field, or at least a serious renovation, in Virginia’s capital has its merits: The old venue began crumbling, with chunks of concrete falling from the structure, about a decade after it opened. The clubhouses are considered tiny, the seats very uncomfortable and the concourses are dank.

But there’s a civic tragedy in all this. When the place, known as The Diamond, opened for the 1985 season, it was considered the best minor-league park in the United States. It also captured an all-too-rare moment in the old Confederate capital of cooperation between the primarily black City of Richmond and the majority-white counties in the suburbs. Unfortunately, its sheen quickly dulled as the aesthetics of baseball changed. In 1988, the first proto-retro facility was built for the minor-league Buffalo Bisons and with the 1992 completion of the Baltimore’s Orioles Park at Camden Yards, the faux-antique park reached its full form, leaving The Diamond quickly obsolete as new stadia have sprouted across the United States ever since.

But now it’s over 20 years since the baseball began honoring its past with brick, steel and concrete. Mutterings have begun over the past six or seven years that the trend’s grown stale and flabby. Perhaps they’ll grow now that New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff criticized the movement as a “nostalgic funk” in his review of Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium.

The Baby Boomers, who drove the nostalgia park wave by romanticizing the steel-and-girder baseball fields of their youth, will start dying soon. Could Generation Jones and Generation X, who grew up with the rather featureless multipurpose stadia, tire of this trend-only to have the next generation want retro-retro parks? Would Richmond, yet again, be holding the bag as it ends an architectural style for a park in what is effectively the city’s funnel during high rains?

There’s much to commend about the faux-nostalgia park, even if it often destroys real history for an “experience.” But it must be reinvented and utilize other forms of classic architecture such as one of the Modernist movements or-why not?-some Richardsonian Romanesque features. Isotopes Park (see above) in Albuquerque utilizes some wonderfully funky mid-century features, and plans for a new ballpark in Tulsa emphasize the city’s history of Art Deco design. If Richmond and other cities embark on a steel and brick design, in 10 or 20 years, tastes will evolve.

And the taxpayers will suffer.

W. J. Stokes will be remembered for one thing, one saying that is now, sadly, missing from the top of the sign. The writing simply said:

W.J. Stokes. Don’t hate, communicate.

Sadly, I could not get the actual images of the slogan, but BrandlandUSA readers will have to take my word for it and look hard at the close up of the faded sign pictured here.

Anyone who drove through as a child would read the sign, which said, again and again:

W.J. Stokes, don’t hate, communicate.

In my youth I never went to W.J. Stokes, though I think my high school classmate Kellam did. I am sure some other white folks did. But no matter. We got the message. It was:

W.J. Stokes. Don’t hate, communicate.  

Why was this sign so powerful? It was evidence of how a local man could “brand” himself and his enterprise before we knew of ideas like branding. He used his name and a simple philosophy of business. Today’s branding is simply having a “good name.”

We all knew that W.J. Stokes was African-American, and any one who drove through Gloucester was able to hear about his message, and think about his restaurant. The message takes on a powerful connotation as we can only imagine how hard it was to present the place as un-threatening in its time. So the message was a message to the community. We gather here at night, in peace, and mean no trouble. We wonder how many times W. J. Stokes had to say “we mean no trouble” before he put “Don’t Hate Communicate” up on the sign.

Most Southern counties had a place like W.J. Stokes, a successful restaurant run by an African American, and built without handouts or SBA loans. Their owners were very often leaders in the community. Even white folks have a hard time starting a restaurant; I can only think of how hard it would be to run a restaurant in a Segregation-era Southern county. In Lancaster County, we had Crosby’s. Mr. Crosby sold fried chicken by the roadside. It was made unique because a juicy friend chicken breast was served in slices of white bread.

Now that’s branding. What a great message for today’s Gloucester County Economic Development office.

Folks like Stokes left us this message, and this wonderful roadside building. I hope Gloucester can somehow keep alive this little piece of its identity, if only to show the community that during and after the Segregation era, the black community was vibrant, peaceful and entrepreneurial.

If any readers can help us out with the story of Stokes, and the W.J. Stokes Tavern, please help! Virginia history waits.

NORFOLK - Radio stations are one of the more important regional brands that define a community. In a geographic region, and through the years, a radio station’s call letters become associated with a set of numbers, namely the station’s frequency. (A great discussion of the history of the Federal Communiations Commission and North American call signs is on Wikipedia.)

With radio, brand recognition comes from habit combined with the factors of frequency, band (AM, FM, LW, SW), formatting and call letters. Over and over again, a person turns on a radio, and tunes into a certain band and frequency. That frequency is connected in the listener’s memory to a certain set of entertainment, music, news, memories and ideas. That package is in turn connected to a slogan or format (Radio Free Europe, Today’s Hits, Bob FM, Hot Hits 103). So that’s why it is dangerous for a radio station to change its call letters, particularly if the station is a historic station. You lose the link.

If a radio station has call letters that are new, insipid or meaningless, then changing them to something better doesn’t hurt. And if a company has a big budget to advertise the change on television, companies can do it. But more often than not, a radio stations easily change their format and slogan but do not change the call letters. The reason? Call letters are not used as much in identifying radio stations anyway, and only on the hour, when stations traditionally identify themselves.

More often than not, radio stations make mistakes in picking new call letters. In addition, they make a mistake by the current practice of de-emphasizing them, as the call letters give a station its official status and link to generations of listeners.

One major call letter mistake was WNBC, which had a long tradition at 660 AM in New York. When that station switched to an all-sports format, they wanted the call letters WFAN. I get the idea; but even still, a vital link to the past was lost. In Virginia, owners changed the call letters of WGH AM 1310 before they changed them back. This was a particularly silly error as not only was WGH well known in the community, but three-letter call signs are rare in radio, and coveted.

The recent trend of de-emphasizing call letters in favor of station nicknames is not smart. Why? Because while formats and station nicknames change, the call letters often stay the same. Listeners and advertisers understand that formats change, but call letters do not.

The situation is particularly annoying when the station has a VERY long history, and associations have been made in famous historic photographs that are in the public mind. We noticed it recently when we encountered an old photo referencing WNOR.

In Norfolk, Virginia the radio station WNOR is one of the older sets of call letters. For decades, the station broadcast at 1230 AM, and later added an FM station, also called WNOR. The geographic connection was obvious. But today, the AM station broadcasts a popular standards format at WJOI. The stations are owned by Saga Communications of Grosse Point Farms, Michigan. Thankfully, the company has kept WNOR as the FM station; FM99 is a well-known rock formatted FM there.

In the case of WNOR AM, the station’s legacy even goes to associations with John F. Kennedy; there is a famous photograph of him speaking in Norfolk during the presidential campaign of 1960. So it makes little sense to me that a popular standards station, no matter how well run, is better served with the call letters WJOI than WNOR. A station catering to oldsters ought to have an oldster name. WJOI would do well to take the approach of WABC AM 770 in New York, which has kept its call letters through changes in format, and runs an oldies music show on Saturday nights that shows off the old format of the station. (Weekends are a dead time for radio, so the effort helps brand the station while not cutting into any revenue. Read our post The Genius of WABC.)

Of course, in light of the tanking of the radio industry (Saga’s stock is way down), pointing out little marketing problems like call letter switches seems miniscule compared with larger industry problems. But to me, they are but a symptom of the whole industry’s problem, which is that they are  no longer connected to their geography and local markets. In the case of Saga, they seem to run a better radio station than most. But still, it was not the right decision, and thankfully, the FCC lets stations reverse if needed.

In the Norfolk market, I have one other bone to pick. Sinclair Communications’ WTAR, another legacy station, is no longer at 790 AM; it is at 850 AM. For most of history, 850 AM was the soul radio station WRAP. It is now WTAR. The rationale for this was explained to me once by a station manager, but I never really got it. These two stations provide good news talk programming; it would be so much more sensible if they got the call letters straight.

Amusing that Kaine is in the governor’s office now as his father-in-law, Gov. Linwood Holton, helped push the campaign through. Holton is the politician most associated with it, though it came from the Martin & Woltz agency.

The genius of the campaign was that it was racy for its time. Virginia Tourism’s Alisa Bailey says on their Youtube video that the slogan is “often misunderstood” and that it was initially for lovers of different things. That may well be true, but the reason why folks loved it was because it was modern, and not really about history. It hinted at free sex. Nah, it promised it. Yes, it was smart. But mostly, it indicated that if you came to Virginia, you could get some, and Virginia was in the 1960s thought of as being a state where you were least likely to get action.

I think I recall some bosom in the television commercials, but I could be confusing it with that 1970s Sheraton commercial with the hot woman coming out of the water in a tight shot of a tightly fitted wet bathing suit. On this page, one of the first print ads from the Adweek Adfreak blog.

A bit from the official history:

The idea came from a creative team headed by George Woltz of Martin & Woltz Inc., a Richmond-based advertising agency. According to Martin, a $100-a-week copywriter named Robin McLaughlin came up with an advertising concept that read, “Virginia is for history lovers.” For a beach-oriented ad, the headline would have read, “Virginia is for beach lovers,” for a mountains ad, “Virginia is for mountain lovers,” and so on.

Martin thought the approach might be too limiting. Woltz agreed, and the agency dropped the modifier and made it simply “Virginia is for Lovers.” The idea was that whatever people love most in a vacation, whatever they are most passionate about, Virginia was the ideal destination.

Virginia is for Lovers was considered bold and provocative, but it was also just plain smart from a marketing perspective. It planted a seed – a new image of a more exciting Virginia.

In Bailey’s YouTube interview, she mentions that they are really targeting Baby Boomers with the new campaign. Nothing wrong with nostalgia, but we do think that the state might be best to sell the state first to 20 year olds; as we have learned with Facebook, Boomers slavishly follow youth. And we are not ones to want so much sex in everything (and we hate “edgy”), but if you are going to do Virginia is for Lovers as a slogan, it needs to have some breast!

Another thing we don’t understand. We know that you have to bid out your advertising, but we wonder why Dave Martin’s Brandsync and/or his former agency The Martin Agency are not working on the campaign. It would be as if you hired out Mickey Mouse’s 50th anniversary to Warner Brothers.

Most people don’t remember that the state ditched the campaign in the 1980s, and then brought it back. I wish I could recall what the interim slogan was, but Virginia Is For Lovers was totally de-emphasized, only to be brought back with a new version of the song by Robbin Thompson.

Today, the slogan functions much like Maxwell House’s “Good to the Last Drop” where it is a master slogan with a secondary slogan attached to it. The new second slogan is “Live Passionately” and we don’t think of Virginia as a passionate brand; that’s like Venice or Paris.

We wish they would make the original commercials easily available online.

If you want a Virginia is for Lovers T-shirt, please don’t be too disappointed by the horrid looking Virginia is For Lovers licensed merchandise store. It’s an ugly website, wretched and uninteresting. Virginia Tourism did an RFP fairly recently on it, and I was hoping they would do better in licensing the brand. It looks more like an unlicensed site. And we wonder what good it is that the state of Virginia is charging $1 for bumperstickers? The old idea was that they gave them away like crazy, by the thousands, at visitor centers so kids would put them on the back of parents’ cars and do some free advertising. I know Virginia has a $2 billion deficit but they really ought to give them away.

Oh, and please do visit Virginia and their website Virginia.org. We have it on some good authority that you CAN actually get some action there.

RICHMOND — Original neon signs from two well-known Virginia retailers have been restored to original working condition and are on display at the Valentine Richmond History Center. The exterior sign from the former Mill End Shop in Richmond ‘s Carytown and a mid-century A&N Store sign join the History Center’s extensive neon sign collection.

Upon its closure in late 1996, the Mill End Shop, purveyor of custom drapery and upholstery, saw its vertical sign donated to the History Center, where it was mounted outside the museum’s south entrance in a state of disrepair. In 2008, the History Center commissioned a complete overhaul of the sign, including replacing broken neon and transformers, removing rust, and restoring its original bright blue color. The Talley Sign Company, which manufactured the sign in the late 1950s, oversaw the recent restoration and re-installation.

Richmond-based retailer A&N grew from a small, 19th century dry goods store to a prosperous wartime army surplus supplier to a sporting goods institution, owned and operated throughout by the Sternheimer family. By 2007, 48 A&N stores were in operation, 12 of them in the Richmond area. The Sternheimers closed the entire chain in January 2008 and donated a mid-century A&N sign to the History Center. Designed in 1930, the 24-foot wide neon sign hung at a Culpeper A&N.

After its service in Culpeper, this particular sign was restored and hung in the company’s Sandston headquarters. Both signs are best visible from the History Center parking lot off of 10th Street between Marshall and Clay Streets in historic Court End. They join an extensive collection of local and regional neon signage from the Richmond community past and present, including the former Mosque, WTVR, Buster Brown and Thalhimer’s.

The company was founded by Remmie Arnold, who ran for governor of Virginia, but lost. He won at the pen game, and for a time Remmie Arnold was one of the world’s largest pen manufacturers.

Petersburg was once the home of great brand names. Kool Cigarettes. Raleigh Cigarettes. Tareyton Cigarettes. Seward Steamer Trunks. the Rucker Rosenstock Department Store.

Most has gone. However, Seward/Mercury is still there. Seward deserves a post of its own, as it was once the Louis Vuitton of American trunks. And Titmus Optical is still a leader in that field.

But we think, and hope, that the Arnold pen sign is still up. If not, BrandlandUSA readers can stare longingly at this photo and think of olden days.

We had this photo in our files from 1990, taken by photographer, architect and sign documentarian Marco Crescentini, who grew up in the region and gave us the photo years ago.

Yes, the pen did light up. We don’t think it does any more.

These brands are often associated with families, either bearing the family name (Crowther Ford, Whay’s TV, Self Chrysler-Plymouth), or so associated with families that the two are synonymous. Pictured here, Morgan Oysters from Weems, one of many seafood brands associated with the Northern Neck. This can is an antique from Wye River Antiques.

Like so many places, the Northern Neck (and its towns Warsaw, Colonial Beach, Irvington, Reedville, Kilmarnock, White Stone, Callao and Lively) has lost many old companies and brands. For instance, local canneries and oyster houses had their own brands; there was even a cat food brand, Huff & Puff, made from the menhaden in Reedville by T.C. Slaughter Co. In the editor’s family, his grandfather operated Piney Island Seafood, an oyster brand, which had headquarters in Morattico.

The below list has a bias toward Lancaster County, which the author knows quite well. So so if you have additions to the list, please add them at the end of this post! We are sure there are some we have missed.

1. The Tides Inn. This resort hotel, operated by the Stephens family for decades before its sale, marketed an iconic image of the Northern Neck of Virginia through its regular advertisements in The New Yorker. Their slogan, Quiet Quality, was reflected in their resort, which had no televisions, a salt-water pool and the Chesapeake Club, a “bottle” club that guests would join to drink. Sadly, the Miss Ann has been sold, but you can still eat at the Chesapeake Club. Info at www.tidesinn.com
2. Northern Neck Ginger Ale. A cult favorite, and made locally. Started by the Carver family in Montross in 1926, it has gained fame in the mid-Atlantic as a cocktail party “status” symbol.
3. Stratford Hall. Can a plantation be a brand? Yes, if it is as gorgeous and historic as Stratford Hall, home of the Lee family. Not only do they offer tours, but they have a restaurant and a small inn where you can stay. The Plantation Dining Room dates from 1951. If you go, you must stay at the Astor Guest House, named for Lady Astor, a Virginia native who represented Stratford Hall in Great Britain as a director. There is also the Cheek cottage, named for Stratford’s longtime advocate, museum director Leslie Cheek. Cheek, whose father founded Maxwell House, designed, with architect Robert Welton Stewart, a modernistic visitor center given by Mrs. Eugene Stetson.
4. The Rappahannock Record. From its founding in 1916, The Record is an iconic piece of the identity of Lancaster, Northumberland and the other Northern Neck Counties. The Northern Neck News is also a longstanding newspaper in the western part of the Northern Neck in Warsaw. Info at www.rrecord.com
5. Lee’s. The favorite downtown restaurant in Kilmarnock. How about a hamburger at a seated restaurant, for less than two bucks! Yippee!
6. Tri-Star Supermarket. During the 1960s and 1970s, there were three popular grocery stores in Kilmarnock. There was Cockrell’s, which was downtown on Main Street, and then an A&P and a Safeway. When the A&P closed, three men bought it, and thus was born the Tri-Star. When the Safeway closed just across the street, they moved there. Known for great meats; somehow they have managed to compete with a new Wal-Mart. At last visit they were affiliated with Great Valu.
7. Chesapeake National Bank, now Chesapeake Bank. This bank was founded in 1900 as Lancaster National Bank, merging with a Lively bank called Chesapeake in 1968. They have been innovative through the years, even operating a Boat ‘n Bank houseboat that was a floating bank branch. www.chesbank.com
8. George Noblett. If you want an appliance, you really have to contact the Noblett’s. They sell natural gas, and are the preferred local appliance dealer. As the Northern Neck has gentrified and become all fancy, they have added brands like Wolf and Sub-Zero. Their slogan is “Be Warm, Keep Cool.” See www.noblett.com
9. The Dandelion. We had to put this dress shop on the list, and not just because two of my aunts started it! It started in a little Butler building in the town of White Stone, and then moved to Irvington where the three women founders, Bonnie Rumsey, Mary Louisa Pollard and Mary Lloyd Lay, took the bold risk and moved into an old church parsonage. It’s really a fashion boutique but “dress shop” sounds kinda archiac and fun.
10. Eubank’s. The downtown hardware of choice in Kilmarnock. Get a crab net there and you’ll have a non-cutesy “life is good” vacation experience.
11. Jim & Pat Carter Real Estate. When you drive into the Northern Neck across the Norris Bridge, you encounter a very white building with a very large sign that says THIS IS CARTER COUNTRY. This is the real estate office of Jim & Pat Carter, who put Northern Neck Real Estate on the map. Years of advertising in select publications have given them a leg up on newer agencies, but they have managed to survive, particularly with their niche in selling 18th century plantations, something the Northern Neck has plenty of.
12. Bank of Lancaster. They have been around since 1930, and still operate under the name.
13. Northern Neck State Bank. Founded in 1919, the bank’s board is a kind of Who’s Who of Richmond County and surrounds.
14. Bevans Oysters. And other assorted Oyster Brands. There are too many to mention, and many are worthy of preservation. Some are still around, like Bevans, which is near Kinsale.
15. While there are many in the region, the vineyard Ingleside, founded in 1980, pretty much led the way.

Do readers know of any other Northern Neck brands? Or can readers propose a list of brands for their own towns? Post a comment after this article.