Farewell to the Wienermobile

The difficult task of re-branding.

You may have missed the news from earlier this year, but the iconic Oscar Mayer “Wienermobile” (there are actually six of them right now) has been recast as the “Frankmobile.” Oscar Mayer indicates that the name change is intended to highlight a new recipe for its all-beef franks. And, the belief is that the name change will not be permanent. Still, have we learned nothing from the “New Coke” debacle? You don’t mess with recognizable brands, even if we’re talking about a vehicle cleverly disguised as a wiener.

Now, as a native Chicagoan, I know a little something about wieners. First and foremost, no self-respecting Chicagoan refers to them as wieners - you might call your little brother a “wiener,” but the Chicago-style hot dog is known as just that: a hot dog.

And, for the uninitiated, a true Chicago-style hot dog includes the following key characteristics: a Vienna Beef all-beef hot dog, nestled in a poppy seed bun, dressed with yellow mustard, white onions, freakishly neon-green-colored pickle relish, tomatoes, sport peppers, a kosher dill pickle, and, the ingredient which to my mind establishes its position in the pantheon of exceptional culinary delights (spoken sotto voce, and with true reverence): a liberal dash of celery salt. Hungry yet?

You’ll notice immediately what is missing from this list of ingredients: ketchup. I cannot stress strongly enough the complete and total ban of ketchup from a Chicago-style hot dog - I’ve witnessed diners nearly coming to blows over this very issue - it is absolutely non-negotiable.

But, enough with the dining advice.

Oscar Mayer’s recent branding pivot is but the latest chapter in a series of wrongheaded brand positioning strategies executed by a number of organizations over the years.

Kentucky Fried Chicken, founded by Colonel Harland Sanders in the 1930’s, decided in 1991 that “fried” was a negative attribute for a dining establishment to be saddled with, and truncated its name to KFC. Nutritional guidelines at that time simply didn’t exist in the 1930’s, when taste was paramount. Who among us cannot recall fondly the bucket of chicken dusted with “11 herbs and spices,” which we were able to bring home to feed the entire family? I don’t know, “KFC” is a snappy acronym, but “Kentucky Fried Chicken” provides us with three significant clues to what we’re buying: a sense of place; the type of manufacturing process; and the raw material utilized - that’s true transparency.

You know what's better than a bucket of fried chicken?  A bucket of Rule of Three!  Simply click the button here to subscribe now to Rule of Three - it's free!  

Another chicken purveyor, Boston Chicken, was founded in the mid-1980’s, and featured rotisserie chicken (not fried, mind you). Ten years after it launched, it added turkey, meatloaf and ham products to the mix, spurring a name change to Boston Market (because they were more than just chicken, you know). Now, when I think about Boston cuisine, I immediately jump to chicken, don’t you? I mean, right after I envision a table spread with baked beans, clam chowder, lobster mac ‘n cheese, lobster rolls, Yankee pot roast, a pot brimming with clambake elements, and Boston cream pie.

Also joining the truncation parade, Weight Watchers collapsed its corporate name in 2018, anointing itself “WW,” in an attempt to distance itself from an association with dieting. Wait, what? Isn’t the aim of the organization to foster dieting? Seems wrongheaded to me.

In the early days of the internet, a search engine was branded as “BackRub.” You might recognize that search engine by its current name: “Google.” BackRub? Man, that’s just creepy, even for the internet.

Although I’m more of a Diet Coke fan, some of those people near and dear to me are fans of Pepsi-Cola products. I wonder if they would be as devoted to the product, if it continued to be known by its original brand name: “Brad’s Drink.” You might imagine that the guy who founded the company was named Brad, right? Actually, the gentleman’s name was Caleb Bradham. I presume he conducted extensive market research, and determined that “Caleb’s Drink” simply didn’t resonate with consumers.

Phil Knight and his partner ran a company which distributed running shoes in the 1960’s, which they dubbed, “Blue Ribbon Sports.” That theme of winning, which is exemplified by the term “blue ribbon,” informed the choice of the company’s new name as it moved into manufacturing and distributing their own brand of shoes, in the 1970’s: Nike, named for the Greek goddess associated with victory. You might be familiar with ribbon colors for second and third place (red, and white, respectively), but, according to trophies2go.com, different colored ribbons are recognized for a grand total of ten places, including yellow for fourth place, green for fifth place, and so on, concluding with light blue for tenth place.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not displaying my light blue ribbon that I earned for coming in tenth in the Regional Pickleball Championships. And, what’s with adopting brown for 8th place, and an even less-impressive light brown for 9th place? I suppose that’s why Phil Knight and his partner didn’t brand their original company, “Brown Ribbon Sports,” or “Even Less-Impressive Light Brown Ribbon Sports,” or, God forbid, “Light Blue Ribbon Sports.”

Speaking of ribbons, they are also widely used to demonstrate awareness of many things, including diseases and social issues. The use of pink ribbons in support of breast cancer awareness is well known. And, thanks to Tony Orlando and Dawn, we know that a yellow ribbon can signify support for U.S. military troops. A red ribbon is also recognized in the fight against HIV/AIDS. But other applications of colored ribbons are less well-known.

A sampling of Rule of Three’s exhaustive research on this topic (goodgoodgood.com) reveals that blue ribbons are used to acknowledge fifty-eight different diseases and social causes, ranging from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome to West Nile Virus; I don’t even know what Ankylosing Spondylitis is, and I suspect Phil Knight doesn’t either, but, there it is, in the blue ribbon category.

At the other end of the spectrum, orchid (not at the other end of the color wheel, because orchid is a color not too far removed from blue) stands up for only one disease: testicular cancer. I’m not sure what to make of that.

Another popular product, this one a men’s magazine, was originally intended to be branded, “Stag Party,” by its founder, Hugh Hefner. After receiving a cease-and-desist letter from a men’s magazine called “Stag,” Hefner pivoted to “Playboy,” and its iconic bunny logo. I think Hefner made the right call on this one - bunnies are much cuter than deer. Although, there were going to be photos of naked women in the magazine, regardless of the nameplate, so. . .

In the case where an individual is the product, re-branding efforts have also been mounted. As an example, the musician, Prince, determined in 1993 to change his stage name to the unpronounceable symbol pictured below - go ahead, I dare you, just try to pronounce it - it can’t be done. That’s why he forever after became known as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” - hardly an upgrade, in my opinion.

Another musician has evolved during his career, which began in the mid-1970’s as Johnny Cougar, shifting to John Cougar Mellencamp in the early 1980’s, and eventually settling into his real name, John Mellencamp, beginning in the early 1990’s. I fully expect his next phase to morph into a career headlined simply by “John” - he appears to be shedding names with each decade.

Hollywood has a longstanding tradition of recasting actors with names intended to be more easily-digested by the American movie-going public. These actors include: Kirk Douglas (Issur Danielovitch - is that really a name?); Meg Ryan (Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra - this sounds as if her parents simply assigned every popular girl’s name they could think of to their daughter, without regard to how it might appear on a monogrammed sweater); Audrey Hepburn (Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston - at least she kept one of the names); Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Baker - Elton John, whose given name was Reginald Kenneth Dwight, helped to remind us of this name change with one of his popular songs); Martin Sheen (Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez - perhaps changed because of the acronym implied here: “RAGE”); John Wayne (Marion Morrison - Wayne participated in a lot of onscreen fights, but I imagine he would have endured a lot more offscreen fights had he retained his own name); and Judy Garland (Frances Ethel Gumm - Garland’s parents appear to have adopted a different tactic than Meg Ryan’s parents: that of assigning all the unpopular names they could think of to their daughter - monogrammed sweaters be damned!).

Finally, a very recent example of a brand name pivot: the artist formerly known as “Twitter” being recast as “X.” The fairly new owner of this company, Elon Musk, has long been a fan of the letter “X” - a cash-payments business he founded years ago was called “X.com” (until if merged with PayPal), and his space exploration company, “SpaceX,” surfaces in space from time to time; perhaps the Sesame Street episode sponsored by the letter “X” was the only one his parents allowed him to watch.

If only I had held on to the small plastic whistle, in the shape of an Oscar Mayer wiener, that I had as a youngster, I could play you the Oscar Mayer theme song, as exit music to this column.

Is the Oscar Mayer theme song now stuck in your head?  You're welcome!  One way to cleanse that ditty from your consciousness is to replace it with other annoying stuff, brought to you each week by Rule of Three.  Simply click the button here to subscribe now to Rule of Three - it's free!