Brand Old

An intriguing article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine covered companies that are attempting to bring back “ghost brands”—products that you remember (at least if you’re over 30) but which have disappeared. It focuses on a Chicago company that has bought a number of such brands, including Underalls, Brim, and Salon Selectives.

The article’s comment boxes are filled, not surprisingly, with nostalgic remembrances of the ghost brands of one’s youth (e.g., Team Flakes cereal, “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific!” shampoo), a trivial yet harmless pursuit that even tough-minded bloggers are prey to from time to time.

I’ll leave it to branding experts to hash out when and why “retrobranding” works. What interests me is why people would buy a product that wasn’t made by the original company. Where’s the brand equity there?

Last week, General Electric announced that it was considering spinning off its very long-established appliance business. Would you buy a GE appliance, no matter how cool looking, if you knew it wasn’t actually made by GE? Would this matter to you?

With consumer products companies subcontracting more and more actual production (or parts of production) to factories in Mexico, China, and even sometimes elsewhere in the U.S., I suspect most consumers know—or, if they don’t know, wouldn’t care—that their purchases were made by someone other than, say, the original Westinghouse or Zenith.

I also suspect that there are some people who still listen to WCCO-AM primarily because Charlie Boone, Roger Erickson, and Steve Cannon used to work there. In other words, some brands (like CCO) function, for some people anyway, not as a product but as a cozy feeling.

On another note: Last week, I finally saw it. A man talking on his cell phone while using a urinal. It sounded like he was making a business call, too. That’s multitasking, brother! What did the person on the other end of the line think of those, uh, bell-like arpeggios in the background? “What? Where am I calling from?”

I suppose it could be worse. He could have been calling from the stall.