NEW YORK – Part of the whole point of branding is to teach that as a company, you want to get to the eternal, the brand that never changes, the brand that customers trust and suppliers fight to sell to, the brand you never need to advertise because it is soMORE HERE
Yangon, Myanmar – In every city, there are dozens of historic local brands that once defined a city, but have disappeared. The challenge is that often they were retail brands named after people or families, and a revival is, seemingly, a bit challenging. The store goes, the city changes, and anMORE HERE
As a social service agency or company or government mandated service, the only brand you need is really your business name, and a decent level of service. Of course you need something written on letterhead, and an address, but your “brand” is really about how you deal with people. AndMORE HERE
Perhaps one of the better paper brands was Boise Cascade. It, according to the Boise website, became a craft paper brand in 1958 in Wallula, Washington. Over the years, the brand grew, with plants across the country. It was tied together, with all sorts of other lumber businesses, into aMORE HERE
Our occasional ventures into oddlots, dollar stores and the like deliver quite special brand extensions and brand licensing. Our tops for today (and we admit we spotted this over Christmas at a Tuesday Morning) were an Izod branded leash and tennis ball set, and a Laura Ashley dog pen. Sorry AlligatorMORE HERE
In the last few weeks I have been making some brand-related observations while out in the mad world of brands. Here are some of the good and bad, and in between. It’s a new feature here called On the Shelves, a sort of Hodgepodge Lodge of brand notes. Quarters for Cigs.MORE HERE
I grew up Coca-Cola. My dorm master at Woodberry Forest School, Mr. Richard Glover, was Pepsi. He served Pepsi on Turner Hall, had Pepsi stock, and he loved Pepsi. In our many discussions of the relative merits of the brand that went on for seeming hours as I drank PepsiMORE HERE
Remember the great blizzards of 1966, 1993, and all those other Nor’easters? They made for the need for snowmobiles. Lots. But over the years, fuel prices, competition, and warm winters have put many snowmobile brands off the market. Some brands, like Arctic Cat, returned. The Arctic Cat company was once popular, went bankruptMORE HERE
Perhaps finally, during this Trump administration, the penultimate Reagan-era vehicle, the Jeep Grand Wagoneer, will return. The idea has been under discussion for some time. In the FCA 360 blog, the company said that Fiat Chrysler will invest roughly $1 billion investment to retool and modernize the south plant ofMORE HERE
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS – Ran across this ad in an old Life magazine, and it made me immediately think of how much the auto market today might never understand the motorcar brand Plymouth. Pictured here, a drawing of a Plymouth in front of The Greenbrier, the West Virginia resort. Plymouth, a ChryslerMORE HERE