Do you remember Lucky Whip or Meister Brau? What about Hot Pants? These names are no longer products of the past; as we tweeted a couple weeks ago, Brands USA Holdings held an auction for 150 vintage brand (and domain) names on Wednesday.
How much did the brand names go for? AdAge reports: anywhere from $2,000 to $45,000. The most notable brand names went for the highest buck. Shearson, a financial brand, sold to an anonymous bidder for $45,000, Meister Brau sold for $32,500, and the cling wrap brand name Handi-Wrap went for $30,000. For unknown and generalized brands, some of the names where bundled in packages that ran around $2,000.
The price of the names directly correlate to the value that the brand used to carry – and that value was crafted by strategic marketing and public relations working together. The winning bidders are banking that the brand value can be appealing to modern society. This raises the question: can you revive an old brand name?
American Public Media aired a story on the auction, and according to Rob Frankel, a branding consultant, there is more to a brand than just the name. “People need to remember what the brand was for, why they felt that it was worth paying for, why they did pay for it, how it solved the problems in their life,” he states. There is a lot of nostalgia and memories associated with the old brand names, but the important factor is that they can be modernized to appeal to today’s society as well.
I’m looking forward to seeing the application of the revived brands; there are a lot of directions the lucky winners can go. We may see the names being used as a purposeful vintage, with the logo put on t-shirts and other collectibles, or companies creating new products that fit the revived name. My fingers are crossed for a new line of Hot Pants: nothing says fashion more than nylon.