Driving along a favorite country road in Virginia last week, I saw an old Gulf pump, and an lighted OPEN sign that called me in. Someone had reopened the old Cumnor Store in the tiny King and Queen County, Virginia town of Cumnor. Life returns to paradise, I thought. CumnorMORE HERE
Only a few decades ago, one of the dominant features of the refrigerated meat section of the grocery store was hanging sandwich meat. If sausage and bacon were in pull-out packages on a shelf, the sandwich meat was often hanging on hooks; you could see what the meat looked like.MORE HERE
For the first time during a presidential race, consumer food safety is a top issue. This came about in an unlikely way, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the race. A central actor in this food realignment is Dr. Casey Means, a physician and writer whose best-selling book,MORE HERE
Bulova, among the earliest U.S. wristwatch makers, still has a presence at U.S. department stores. Unfortunately, it is no longer a U.S. brand as Citizen Watch Co. Ltd., a Japanese watchmaker, acquired the company in 2008. The brand is one of the surviving American watch brands, which included a pantheonMORE HERE
There is an odd transposition an advertising, namely the change in race roles in television commercials. The change came firmly about during race riots in the wake of George Floyd, but it had been brewing for some time. That advertisers use race as a part of their marketing has beenMORE HERE
As IBM runs ads this summer to burnish its Watson and AI brands during Wimbledon, it has fully walked away from and discarded the village of its birth, Endicott, New York. There is no place more associated with IBM than Endicott, which is situated near Binghamton. Last year, the companyMORE HERE
Many powerful brands lose their shelf space, and end up shuttered or at least diminished. But there is one category where many smaller brands have survived, and even thrived. Underarm deodorant and anti-perspirant. At a Florida Publix, the power of these brands is evidenced by the fact that even inMORE HERE
PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD – The House of Angostura, maker of Angostura Bitters, will celebrate its 200 year anniversary this year, in 2024. The brand dates from 1824, when it was created in Venezuela as a medicinal tincture by Dr. Johann Seigert, surgeon general in Simon Bolivar’s army. In theMORE HERE
Not too long ago, beers from Britain were in almost every single U.S. grocery store. Bass Ale was a staple of almost every supermarket in the 1990s. But go into a store today, and they are nowhere to be found. The craft brewing and IPA movement completely pushed these beersMORE HERE
For fans of the first Home Alone, brands that appear in the movie are part of the nostalgia. Each year, as we see the movie, we are transported back to the Reagan era. In spite of the three decades, however, the brands are fairly consistent. The brands help define theMORE HERE