There is a discussion that often happens among marketing people: How are great brands built?
“Blade Runner” is my all-time favorite movie. Now and then, I go back and watch all the versions of the original 1982 release. Harrison Ford’s performance as the detective Rick Deckard consolidated his career as a first-rate actor. A sequel, released in 2017, took place 30 years later and starred Harrison Ford once again.
Every time I watch the movie, I pick up something different: the dialogue, the imagery, and the characters. Last time, I paid close attention to the brands.
There are many and they are everywhere, big and small, in-your-face or concealed. Brands are shown in huge digital billboards and on small bottle labels. There are more than a dozen brands appearing in the 1982 Blade Runner (which takes place in the unbelievably distant future of 2019). I chose four to talk about, Coca-Cola, Pan Am, Sony, and TDK.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
First, those who watched the original movie in 1982 needed to make a leap of faith and believe that these big four companies would still be around 30 years later. Why wouldn’t they? They were all market leaders in their respective industries, spending top dollars on advertising and R&D. Somehow, within these three-odd decades, each brand found a different destiny.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
If you are a millennial or belong to Gen Z, you may not know some of these brands, so a refresher is in order.
The Coca-Cola tale
In 1982 Coca-Cola was doing alright. Its tagline “Coke Is It!” was one of the catchiest ever, and that summer Diet Coke was launched becoming another huge success. A few years later came the New Coke fiasco; despite that Coca-Cola held its position as the most valuable brand in the world. What’s the New Coke? That’s another long tale (told in another article in the future)... Coca-Cola is currently the 7th most valuable global brand.
The Pan Am tale
Pan Am was an airline. A humongous one. Born in 1927, it started operating with single-engine planes and reached its apex in the 1960s by introducing the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet. This sent per capita flight costs to all-time lows. In 1989, its passenger traffic was almost 30 billion passenger miles. Pan Am thought it was too big to fail, but in 1991, it went bankrupt. The official story is that the oil crisis in 1973 and the Gulf War two decades later did it. The brand name still carried cachet, and a resurrection was attempted six times since it folded. It now has a cult-like following throughout the web, selling merchandise and vintage items.
The Sony tale
For many years Sony had one technological breakthrough after another, creating and launching in 1980 the first portable music player, the Walkman. It played cassette tapes (see “The TDK tale”) and inaugurated the age of portable stereo headphones. Another tech milestone was the Betamax (a big cassette that played movies, not music).
This was a company with an ambitious research program and competent marketing but somehow became a follower in the electronics segment. Unable to continue cranking out exciting new tech, Sony searched for greener pastures elsewhere, diversifying in the entertainment business: movies, music, and gaming. A spoiler: in the Blade Runner sequel, in Los Angeles 2049, Sony still advertises on enormous digital billboards, as they did in 2019.
The TDK tale
TDK is another Japanese company, founded in 1935. Its star product was the compact cassette tape, launched in 1966. A cassette stored music – you could buy pre-recorded cassettes or blank cassettes and record your friends’ LPs in it (an illegal copywrite infringement ignored by everyone). The cassette was the very first portable music medium, thus its huge success. For the first time, you could reliably listen to a full music album in your car.
TDK became a synonym for the cassette tape but in the mid-80s compact discs (CDs) killed it, and TDK discontinued the production in 1997. TDK is often remembered for one of the most iconic print ads ever, the “blown-away guy.” This ad is actually for Maxell’s cassettes, TDK’s rival. This is a great example of how powerful brand recall is. The competition (Maxell) makes an amazing advertisement and the brand that comes to mind is the first brand that comes to the customers mind (TDK).
Source: medium.com
TDK tried to stay afloat by diversifying into other recordable media. It didn’t work, and in 2007 was bought by Imation, which gave up on the brand altogether in 2015.
The TDK Corporation lives on as a B2B business manufacturing capacitors, inductors, and ferrites to power supplies, factory automation systems, and anechoic chambers.” Interesting stuff indeed.
What do these tales teach us about brands? Here´s what happened
The destinies of these four brands were tied to decisions in R&D, innovation, technology, and marketing. Let’s imagine that these four companies can be spread along a “technological spectrum” from the most R&D-intensive (Sony) to the least (Pan Am), with TDK and Coca-Cola falling somewhere in the middle. Some may find it strange that I put an airline as not R&D intensive, but remember that Pan Am purchased, not developed new technology. Airlines are pure service.
Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola is carbonated water and flavor, plus sugar or sweetener (and the secret formula!!!). Not much tech there, unless you consider Orange-Cherry-Vanilla Caffeine-free Diet Coke a breakthrough. But that’s positive, in the sense that you have something tangible (the liquid, the bottle, the can), a service (thirst-quenching or whatever), and the brand image, that has been well taken care of. Coke has remained extremely tuned to consumer trends and is not blindly in love with its black carbonated liquid: they are not ashamed to sell bottled water.
Pan Am: at the lowest end of the R&D spectrum, service-based brands are the hardest to keep alive (the same is true for retailers). Where is America-on-Line? Arthur Andersen? Lehman Brothers? Blockbusters? Yahoo!? Service is something intangible and disappears into thin air. So did Pan Am.
The evolution of a logo: Pan Am through the years
Source: 1000logos.net
Sony: it is also challenging for brands at the high end of the technology spectrum to remain market leaders. Some decades ago, Sony’s innovation spark was gone, and the brand was surpassed by the likes of Apple, currently the most valuable brand in the world, worth US$ 500 billion. In the year 2000, the brand was the 18th most valuable in the world. Currently, it is 37th. Compare it to Samsung, number 43 in 2000 and now the number five, valued at US$ 100 billion (the brand Sony is worth US$ 20 billion). Luckily, Mr. Akio Morita, Sony´s legendary CEO, is not alive to witness such shame.
Source: Interbrand – Best Global Brands 2024
TDK: it suffered from the classic marketing myopia and fell in love with the physical product, not customers’ needs and wants. Innovation efforts were targeted at improving sound quality with exotic tape materials, but what consumers wanted were other features: to locate a song easily, not have to untangle the media, and fit an entire album on it. End of the story for the brand.
What the future holds
Let´s imagine that about thirty years from now, a new Blade Runner sequel will come out, taking place in 2079. Which brands would be appearing in this movie? Can we be sure Coca-Cola will be present like it was in 1982 and 2017? How about Apple, Google, Netflix, Sony, Samsung? What about Tesla? Will they still be around? One can only wonder.
