A fascinating article. It’s long. It’s in the NY TIMES Magazine. But, read it through. There are some bright people running this company:
The coffee brand? Perhaps you recall its advertising slogan: “Fill it to the rim — with Brim!” Those ads haven’t been shown in years, and Brim itself has been off retail shelves since the 1990s. Yet depending on how old you are, there’s a fair chance that there’s some echo of the Brim brand in your brain. That’s no surprise, given that from 1961 to around 1995, General Foods spent tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to get it there.
But General Foods disappeared into the conglomerate now known as Altria, which also acquired Kraft, maker of Maxwell House. With much smaller sales than that megabrand, Brim soon disappeared — except, perhaps, for a vague idea of Brim that lingered, and lingers even now, in the minds of millions of consumers.
What’s that worth? A small company in Chicago, called River West Brands, figures that it’s definitely worth something, and possibly quite a lot. The firm did its own research a year or so ago and claims that among people over the age of 25, Brim had 92 percent “aided national awareness.” What this means is that if you ask people anywhere in America if they have ever heard of Brim, about 9 out of 10 will say yes. If true, that’s potentially a big deal. Building that level of recognition for a new brand of coffee — or anything else — from scratch would involve an astronomical amount of money, a great deal of time, or both…
One is that for the most part the equity — the idea — is the only thing the company is interested in owning. River West acquires brands when the products themselves are dead, not merely ailing. Aside from Brim, the brands it acquired in the last few years include Underalls, Salon Selectives, Nuprin and the game maker Coleco, among others. “In most cases we’re dealing with a brand that only exists as intellectual property,” says Paul Earle, River West’s founder. “There’s no retail presence, no product, no distribution, no trucks, no plants. Nothing. All that exists is memory. We’re taking consumers’ memories and starting entire businesses.”The other interesting thing is that when Earle talks about consumer memory, he is factoring in something curious: the faultiness of consumer memory. There is opportunity, he says, not just in what we remember but also in what we misremember.
River West is a young company, and few of its ideas have been directly tested in the marketplace. The revival of Brim, for instance, has yet to crystallize into a plan with real manufacturing and distribution partners. But River West is starting to bring some familiar names back into the consumer realm. It is thanks to River West that you can buy Nuprin again at CVS. The firm has also played a role in the return of Eagle Snacks to some grocery-store aisles. In late January, Drugstore.com began accepting orders for Salon Selectives, which is also making its way into 10,000 stores, including every Rite Aid in America and grocery chains like Winn-Dixie and Pathmark. And by way of a deal with River West, Phantom, a Canadian hosiery manufacturer, is pushing a new version of Underalls to department-store and boutique clients in the U.S.
Unlike patent trolls, the folks at River West are taking a blast from the past and utilizing the persistence of memory to build anew. Proust would be proud.
You had me at Canadian hosiery.
I don’t know why I should have be the one to do this, but here’s a parallel idea I’ve had for a while: Bring back some of the classic black & white commercials from year’s past for some of the perpetual brands. It would create a sensation, especially amongst certain age groups. You’ll wonder where the yellow went, after he ate the whole thing…
RBG
[Comment deleted – Violation of Posting Guidelines. – ed.]
I remember Brim. I hated it. I wonder if they’ve taken into consideration those kinds of lingering memories?
Two more examples of negative, lingering memories: Bush and Clinton.
I don’t actually remember the product. (I wasn’t a decaf coffee drinker when it was on the shelves)
Being currently on the Decaf train, I might be persuaded to try it. Sad, huh?
I would rather drink from a toilet, then drink that crap. Mass produced American coffee is like mass produced American beer, all shit. I stick with the smaller brands, they at least taste like coffee.
You can look back at mistakes made at branding.
I wonder if Nissan would be a stronger player today if they never dumped the brand Datsun
Yeah, Edsel has much name recognition too.
What’s the point? They’re both failed products.
#4 & #6, do you really think that they won’t improve the quality/taste. The common coffee drinker’s taste palatte and food technology has improve dramatically over time.
In the 80’s, would you have been proud to own a toyota product?
Okay okay okay okay- am I going bananas? First it was Hydrox, now Brim. How much other stuff has disappeared from the shelves yet still resides in my neurons? I’m not that damn old either- I’m Gen X.
I found the poster of the Wacky Packs intriguing and a flashback. I still have two or three sets of them in my garage somewhere. Clearly, he’s using those as a road map for brands to acquire. The reason is obvious. If you understand the parody in a given sticker, the brand is sufficiently familiar to be worthy acquiring.
The point is missed if the takeaway is this article is about coffee.
The goal is to catapult a new product from existing mind share. As long as there is no overwhelming negative connotation attached (e.g.: Edsel), then the ‘brand’ gets past the initial reluctance of the recipient to be persuaded by a message since there is inherent familiarity.
I would posit this approach only works where the target buyer is older as it’s prerequisite the potential consumer be aware of the brand name. Essentially such a marketing tactic is a variation on what has been called “line extension” wherein a new product piggy backs on the recognition of an existing brand.
“Line extension” fails miserably unless there is an extraordinarily natural fit and even when such a marketing move succeeds, it can cannibalize sales of the original as well as create consumer confusion. Such a strategy essentially relies on buyer gullibility to purchase based on very little information.
A current political example is Hillary Clinton. She is a “line extension” of Bill Clinton — a.k.a. Hillary as the Clinton ‘brand’.
Unfortunately, all brand extension inherits both good and bad and when the attempt fails, the damage done to the original is often fatal in denigrated mind share. To whit: the name Clinton is no longer a positive Democratic brand in part because of Hillary’s failure to win but more because the meaning of “Clinton” has been altered from successful President to mud slinging candidate.
A even more massive failure was Coke and New Coke. Which is to say even when it appears one can take advantage of name recognition, the premise that the consumer will welcome the extension as the original can be detrimental to the original even while producing short term sales.
All of these advertising ploys fly in the face of Seth Godin’s point that interruption marketing is less cost effective then ever before and will continue to decline in ROI. I’m inclined to believe Godin is correct and relaunching a dead brand will only generate short term success unless the product or service is genuinely remarkable in its own way and that seems doubtful given the tactic used to generate sales is based on deception.
#11 – uh, you think there’s no ROI with sales generated by deception? Haven’t watched many commercials, have you.
How about: “WOW! – When you see it, you’ll say it.” “It” being Vista.
moss said:
“#11 – uh, you think there’s no ROI with sales generated by deception? Haven’t watched many commercials, have you.”
I’ve been watching, reading and listening to commercials for about 60 years. How about you? The benefit of time is you learn not to evaluate effectiveness in short term gain. “Mission Accomplished” is an excellent insight into the inability to see the big picture and only judge the flash factor of a campaign.
One can usually spot when marketing effectiveness fails because the ads cease. IE: When the investment in media no longer generates sufficient sales to offset expense and provide a profit. Companies rarely stop advertising if the approach is working but only an idiot continues spending when sales decline relative to the ad buy.
At a certain point, no amount of marketing can move a product or service that fails to deliver on its promise or for which there is extensive negative word of mouth. Vista sales are largely to buyers of new computers and there are no reliable estimates on the number who downgrade to XP. Perhaps you selected a poor example for your premise that ROI is inherent with advertising but I’m confident that facts remain as stated. At this point, the most effective messages re Vista are the MAC ads and they are certainly not being done to build market share for Microsoft.
I remember hearing about soemthing like this with laundry detergent. I’ve looked and apparently this is a pretty big business with groups buying brands like Pert shampoo http://www.innovativebrands.net/ and Ovaltine http://www.himmelgroup.com/
In the ad agency where I got my first job after college, they strongly believed that simple awareness was not to be confused with marketing and, especially, sales. My boss believed promoting “image” was a kind of fraud by the advertising business.
This flew in the face of the conventional wisdom I had just learned in my marketing courses but I became mostly convinced by my agency.
The “Brim” brand name certainly has value but probably not as much as these guys think.
If I saw “Brim” coffee somewhere, I might buy a can or cup. That’s certainly worth something. But I’m not going to by “Brim” glue or dental floss.
Great note about ressurecting old brands.
I would agree with posters above that mere recognition isn’t everything, but it’s sure a start. Oftentimes companies pay millions of dollars to acquire “secondary meaning” in their brand; this is built-in secondary meaning (with whatever baggage the brand brings with it).
Another interesting note is that these guys do actively purchase the “dead” brands from their former owners. U.S. trademark law recognizes that mark owners essentially have no ownership when the mark has been “abandoned.” So it may be that West River could simply register these brands, seek cancellation of any trademark registrations still around, and spend the licensing money on litigation. But it’s good to see that their business model is predicated on avoiding lawsuits and being proactive. The only question is, what exactly are they getting for their cash? (If I were an investor, I’d sure like to know.)