A couple of deaths recently. This is the first time I’ve written about deaths in my blog but what the heck. I couldn’t pass this up.

The first death is Curtis Alina and he is credited with popularizing Pez candy. The obituaries I saw reminded us that he didn’t invent the candy, that happened in Austria in the 1930’s. Curtis was tasked with marketing it in the U.S. The fact is, the candy is bland and mostly tasteless. It wasn’t until Curtis put cartoon heads on the dispenser that it took off and prospered. The dispensers became much more important than the candy and they are collector’s items to this day.

The second death of note is the creator of Gumby. Someone smarter than me will have to explain what Gumby is. He is made of rubber, has a pointed head and is green. The company calls it a doll but boys don’t play with dolls and it would scare a little girl. But we all had a Gumby figure in our toy box right next to the Slinky and the PlayDoh.

The guy that invented it was Art Clokey and he died recently without ever giving us a good sense of where the idea came from and what we were supposed to do with the thing. That doesn’t take away from the fact that Gumby was a pop cultural phenomenon and a best selling toy for many years.

I tell you about these two deaths because they remind me of an important branding ingredient. We try to find ways for our end users to remember us. We use mnemonic devices, logos, colors, tag lines, advertising to remind consumers of our unique product and their connection to it. We use signs and symbols as shortcuts to brand preference. In certain instances these devices become iconic.

Icons in the past include the Jolly Green Giant, Mr. Clean, the Trix Rabbit, Lee Iacocca, Keebler Elves, the Marlboro Man and Mickey Mouse. We don’t see many of these bigger-than-life characters anymore in modern marketing but they are a reminder not just of things past but of the way our minds can recall features and benefits that transcend a product. These images give us a mental nudge and help us make mental associations with important brand attributes.

Mickey Mouse is a rodent. A filthy, despicable little creature that sends men, women and children scurrying. Mice are carriers of all sorts of diseases and we go to great lengths to rid our homes and property of them. Yet Walt Disney turned this vermin into an icon and a global marketing machine.

If you can turn a rodent into an icon, you certainly ought to be able to come up with some clever way of linking your customer to your company brand attributes and value proposition. As we celebrate Gumby and Pokey, the Pez dispenser and icons everywhere, stop and tip your hat to Art Clokey and Curtis Alina who were master marketers who taught us the power of brand markers and they way they can link us to important product value propositions.

Tags: Branding | Marketing | Gumby | Icons | Pez