Fascinating article in the NYT Magazine yesterday about a Chicago company that revives old but they hope not forgotten brands like Brim, Salon Selectives, Eagle and Nuprin. After megacompanies merge, sometimes name brands get folded together. And that's where River West Brands comes in.
While [founder Paul Earle] recognizes that a given brand might not be able to survive in the portfolio of a multinational, different sorts of business models might work to sustain it. As surely as the ownership of brands has consolidated through one megamerger after another, the consumer market seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with an individualism-fueled demand for almost unlimited variety.
The whole story is interesting, but we especially like the part about "implanted memories."
The researchers found that subjects presented with a fake Disney World ad inviting them to "remember the characters of your youth: Mickey, Goofy . . ." were significantly more likely to say they recalled that as children they had met "a favorite TV character at a theme resort" than those who didn't see the ad. The fascinating thing was what happened when they repeated the experiment, tweaking the ads to include Bugs Bunny, who, of course, is not a Disney character at all. About 16 percent of subjects subsequently claimed that, as children, they shook hands with Bugs Bunny at a Disney theme park. Repeated fake-ad exposure apparently led to higher false-memory rates. In a separate study, Loftus asked subjects with Bugs in their memories what, exactly, they recalled about this incident; of these, 62 percent recounted shaking Bugs's hand, and more than a quarter specifically recalled him saying, "What's up, Doc?"
Crazy. [NYT]
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There are a number of companies that buy almost or totally dead brand names & sell the product.
They advertise on TV by buying a 30 second spot & squeezing three ten second ads into it.
the only things i remember about nuprin:
1. little yellow pills.
2. endorsed by jimmy connors.
really, what more do you need to know?
That doesn't surprise me at all. On numerous occasions, I've been telling my parents "remember when..." and they're like "yeah, that never happened." Over the years, my memory had become mixed with some other story I heard somewhere, or something I made up in my head, and after a few years, it became the truth.
No wonder old people can't keep shit straight. I'm 25 and going nuts.
The manipulative nature of marketing campaigns was skewered by stand-up comic I saw recently.
"I fucking hate marketing people," he said. "And I know what you sick bastards are saying: "Oh, this comic is very shrewd. He is appealing to that anti-marketing demographic.' "
You'll notice the Omnicom group at the bottom of the website. Omnicom is one of the major communications companies - along with WPP, IPG and Publicis - that purchase or create new companies all the time. Also notice the connection with Fleishman-Hillard Inc. - an Omnicom subsidary. It's all one big shell game and to pretend that this is some Chicago company is naive.
It was a PR coup for them to get this placed in the NYT, and you are only doing their PR people's work for them by posting it here.
Um, the MAIN thing to remember about Nuprin is that it was also featured in Wayne's World.
I remember Salon Selectives because it smelled like apples. But I remember random things (some of which, like Tower18 mentioned, never happened at all).