No More Rings: Wisk Facebook App Debuts

For those of us who grew up with the Wisk “Ring Around the Collar” commercials, Wisk is synonymous for getting rid of rings.

The brand’s new owners, Sun Products Corp. of Wilton, Conn., have launched a Facebook campaign to get a new generation interested in the brand, this time through Facebook.

The brand was formerly owned by Unilever, the European consumer brands company, and in July of 2008 Unilever sold brands that included All, Snuggle, Wisk and Surf for $1.45 billion. The deal, backed by Vestar Capital Partners, created a new company by merging the brands with private label Huish Detergents Inc. Wisk was first trademarked for use in 1955, and it was for years the leading liquid detergent.

Huish/Sun, which was before known for private label detergents and the off-brand Sun, now has a powerful group of legacy brands from the early days of Lever Brothers and Monsanto, which was the original maker of All. The move is part of a trend of large consumer products companies spinning off lesser brands to smaller companies or private capital. Vestar has been involved with reviving other cast-off brands including Remington, Prestone, Gold Toe and Birds Eye Foods.

The Facebook app WISK-IT (www.wisk-it.com/pr) allows users to search tagged, untagged and de-tagged photos of themselves in their friends’ Facebook albums and provides a direct and efficient way to request their exclusion from those albums. “As an expert in stain fighting, we have created the WISK-IT application to help people clean up stains on their digital reputations,” said Elisa Gurevich, WISK brand manager, in a press release.

The website is rather good, and leverages the company’s iconic “ring around the collar” campaign.

Do watch Neil DeFeo, the company CEO, talking about the brands and the big picture of the brands.

Author

  • Garland Pollard

    J. Garland Pollard IV is editor/publisher of BrandlandUSA. Since 2006, the website BrandlandUSA.com has chronicled the history and business of America’s great brands.

1 Comment

  1. Fascinating. Love your pieces about who now owns which brands, and the VC and specialist companies that buy old brands and relaunch them. I had noticed that ALL has a much-reduced shelf profile at stores like Target, but had no idea why.

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