Though the food at Tavern on the Green was at best mediocre, the high menu prices, unique location and building, and [...]]]> Reuters reported yesterday that investors have offered Tavern on the Green bankruptcy trustees $1.3 million to buy the shuttered restaurant’s name. The investors want to market food items such as salad dressing under the brand.

Though the food at Tavern on the Green was at best mediocre, the high menu prices, unique location and building, and romantic lore imbue the name with real value. During a dispute between the restaurant’s owners and the City of New York in 2009, the Tavern on the Green trademark was appraised at $19 million.  Should the investors’ $1.3 million offer be accepted, will they be getting a bargain?

Tavern on the Green closed three years ago, the building has been renovated, its famous Crystal Room demolished, and its contents auctioned off. Last year, the structure reopened as a visitor’s center. Tavern on the Green’s fame as a restaurant and the value of its name will dim with the years. The $19 million value of the Tavern on the Green name will shrink to zero if nothing is done.

Investing in building the brand around grocery items will not only keep the brand alive, it may make it more valuable. Lawry’s licensed condiments are a bigger money maker than the steak restaurant that spawned them. Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s frozen pizzas make more money than his restaurant Spago. Should the investors be successful, their $1.3 million bargain will exponentially surpass the 2009 $19 million appraisal of the name’s brand value.

Disney is just the latest company to try to trademark a SEAL brand, reserving “SEAL Team 6,” for entertainment uses, toys (including snow globes!) and clothing.

The other Tier One counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force, has not attained the same [...]]]> Are the SEALs the best? They sure have the best brand–especially after the bin Laden raid.

Disney is just the latest company to try to trademark a SEAL brand, reserving “SEAL Team 6,” for entertainment uses, toys (including snow globes!) and clothing.

The other Tier One counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force, has not attained the same power as a brand. While there are some 30+ trademarks for Delta Foce, they are for things like vacuum cleaners, flash lights, waste effluent filters, and even a floor polish.

SEAL Team 6 is technically no longer in existence. The unit was renamed DEVGRU in 1987. It doesn’t quite have the same swagger; there are no trademarks of that name. And word has it that the unit has been renamed again–and the new name is classified. Makes it extra difficult to trademark it that way.

UPDATE:  The U.S. Navy has wasted no time in countering the Disney applications with competing claims. Disney quickly backed down–probably a safer course of action than trying to take on the SEALs.  More: The Mouse Surrenders

Consumers pretty much always hate change–witness the initial flack when the [...]]]> Gawker.com fans were in full rebellion. Some threatened to never visit the site again. The Twittering class hated Gawker’s redesign launched February 7th. On February 9th, that all changed. Gawker.com broke the story of the “classy” Congressman showing off his flabby torso and traffic boomed.

Consumers pretty much always hate change–witness the initial flack when the new Starbucks logo launched last month. For Gawker, the reaction to their new design was as hate-filled as it was predictable. From Twitter:

FruitMuffin The new gawker redesign is terrible! @Gizmodo and @Lifehacker, I’m sad to say it, but you just lost a reader, it’s too annoying to use.

Zombie_Rights Wow, ok. Who decided to let Satan himself redesign all the Gawker sites, anyway? I was wondering what the big deal was about, and yeesh

norahpdx gawker‘s site redesign makes my face hurt. what a disaster.

Wise companies use design for strategic purposes that may or may not initially please the masses. In Gawker’s case, their new design makes it possible to put their important stories first. The old design locked them into a a reverse chronological order, making an important story disappear off the home page as new material was posted after it. Strategically, the move made sense.

Consumers don’t always understand strategy–they are driven by familiarity. The wisdom of Gawker’s redesign hit two days after the new site look launched. The icky pictures of a congressman who imagines himself hot proved irresistible. Traffic was still up by 22% as of yesterday, the latest available Alexa stats as I write this post. And this hot story is on the Gawker front page (though a Tom Cruise/Scientology Slave article–with an equal creepy factor–has nudged it further down towards the bottom.) The new design makes it possible for Gawker to squeeze this story for all it is worth in terms of site traffic and time on site–and that makes strategic sense, whether you like the design or not. Likeability is a direct function of familiarity.

Design is important to brand, but in the end, product is more so. A great logo and great packaging can’t save a crappy product. In the case of Gawker,  supplying “gossip from Manhattan and the Beltway to Hollywood and the Valley,” is something they continue to do very well.

As for the Gawker redesign haters, they can chill a bit. The new design will grow on them. Most brand redesigns do.

It’s not unusual [...]]]> We’ve covered political brands and the subject of brands who are people or with value closely tied to a real person, but today, the web site Mediaite has broken the story of the trademarking of the name Sarah Palin. Pretty soon, that “R” next to her name won’t mean “Republican,” but “Registered Trademark.”

It’s not unusual for to trademark a name. Jennifer Lopez has done it, as has Paul Newman, Michael Jackson, and Martha Stewart–even Ronald Reagan. Still, trademarked names of politicians is rare. Barack Obama hasn’t done it yet. Neither has Nancy Pelosi.

That said, I suspect Sarah is in early on a new trend. Every brand should take every step to “own” their name. For people, owning your own trademark is an inexpensive way to protect your persona, whether you are a celebrity selling salad dressing or a politician turned opinion leader.  If you don’t trademark your name, someone else will.

What is interesting about the Sarah Palin trademark application is what it reveals about Palin’s future plans. The left seems fixated on Palin’s political future, but it seems Palin is more focused on “information about political elections” and “providing a website featuring information about political issues”-in other words, a pundit brand, and the other for “educational and entertainment services … providing motivational speaking services in the field of politics, culture, business and values”–could more reality television be in Sarah’s future?

More on brands and real people:
Steve Jobs and Apple’s Future Brand Value
Michael Vick’s Potential as a Brand: Lessons from Martha Stewart and Tiger Woods
When a Brand is a Person

Sara Lee is doing it right. The company is keeping its core food business under the [...]]]> Since Motley Fool has named 2011 “The Year of the Spin-Off,”  we have covered a number of companies who have made a confusing mess of their brands.  Corporate spin-offs have led to brand spin-outs for companies like Marathon and Motorola.

Sara Lee is doing it right. The company is keeping its core food business under the Sara Lee name, and is spinning off beverages into a new, yet unnamed company–presumably NOT Sara Lee Beverages. Sara Lee is moving forward mindful of the considerations behind wise brand decisions for successful spin-offs:

1. What drives brand value now and into the future? Which part of the business is most tied to the brand reputation and how does the brand fit with the strategic plans of the parent company and the spin-offs? When AT&T broke up, the brand value was mostly related to the consumer side of the business. The B2B spin-off adopted a new brand, Lucent.

2. What will be the source for future growth? Rebranding can be expensive when you consider things like new signs, repainting vehicles, new uniform, not to mention redoing all marketing communications. These costs should be offset by future profit and volume potential.

3. Brand role should impact spin-off naming decisions. Fortune Brands–another big spin-off this year, is a name closely tied to the liquor business. The golf and home improvement spin-offs need new names.

4. Corporate culture and company structure should not be ignored. The Hanes business had always been run independently, even after it was acquired by Sara Lee in 1979. When it was spun off in 2006, it was easy to leave the old Hanes name and structure in place. Spinning off the beverages business is not so easy. The beverage business was built by disparate acquisition of companies from Holland to San Francisco. This business didn’t have a pre-existing overarching brand or integrated structure.

With these considerations in mind, executives can make wise brand decisions that maximize the value of the parent company and each individual spin-off. Companies can split, but brands cannot.:

More on spin-off branding:

Breaking up Motorola
Marathon brand confusion

The once great General Foods brand has been dropped from the last product Maxwell House Coffee (will that brand survive the decade?)  Once one of the biggest brands in the grocery store, General Foods died slowly through acquisition. The generic nature of the name (confused with General Mills from time [...]]]> Another brand slips into the past.

The once great General Foods brand has been dropped from the last product Maxwell House Coffee (will that brand survive the decade?)  Once one of the biggest brands in the grocery store, General Foods died slowly through acquisition. The generic nature of the name (confused with General Mills from time to time0, it is no wonder that Kraft won the name competition in the merger.  Ad Age is reporting that fewer than 40% of people have any awareness of the General Foods Brand.

More on parent company names and product names, plus naming issues in mergers and acquisitions:

What is Brand Architecture
Approaches to Brand Architecture
Brand Architecture and Business Strategy
Merger Name Options
Spin-Off Naming

Steve Jobs [...]]]> How much of the Apple brand equity is Steve Jobs? Is the brand at risk with Jobs’ new medical leave? When a major brand is closely tied to a single person (think of Yves St. Laurent, Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump), brand value can rise and fall on the fortunes and failures of that person.

Steve Jobs is an iconic figure in technology and culture. When he holds up a gadget at any event, everyone oohs and aahs. Yes, the Apple brand is about cool design, but it is also about the guy that invented computing as we know it in a garage in Cuppertino. Jobs’ spectacular successes and instructive failures have given him status and credibility that can’t be matched. Apple without Steve Jobs has the potential to remain a cool company, but it could just as easily fall to the low profitability, declining sales and sinking stock price of the John Sculley era.

MarketWatch talks of the “Jobs Premium” in the share price of Apple stock. Apple shares fell 50% in 2008 when it was rumored Jobs’ pancreatic cancer had returned. They suffered a similar fall in January 2009 when he took a leave of absence for a liver transplant. On the immediate heels of his latest announcement of another medical leave, share value dropped 6.45% and has been shaky since.

What can Apple do? I certainly hope that Steve Jobs comes back from medical leave fit and healthy. Yet Apple, like any valuable brand, must face the fact that we all face the same unavoidable end some time. Here are three options:

1. Institutionalize the legacy of the person. Coco Chanel has been dead for decades, but her personal brand has become iconic and her spirit still infuses Chanel. Calving Klein is attempting to make the same transformation in his own company, while he is still alive to enjoy it. Orville Redenbacher has become a character, much like Colonel Sanders.
2. Find a successor. Frank Purdue found another tough man behind a tender chicken, in the person of his equally winsome son. Perry Ellis was succeeded by superstar Marc Jacobs.
3. Diversify.  Build on a strong personal legacy by adding additional attributes. Martha Stewart is less and less about Martha and more and more about design. She no longer appears on the cover of every issue and additional designers, like Kevin Sharkey, are sharing some of the spotlight. Condé Nast Publications continued and even thrived after the death of founder and driving force Condé Montrose Nast by focusing on high-end, glossy publications that set the standard for their categories.

More on brands tied to people–Celebrity Endorsers