17 Raid the archive for classics

17

RAID THE ARCHIVE FOR CLASSICS

Recycling is a great use of resources, and that includes ideas. Not everything works, of course. Some products fell out of favour because they weren’t good enough the fi rst time around. Some of our favourite childhood soft drinks will never be seen again because their sweeteners were banned as a health hazard.

If your company does have a history, it’s worth searching through the old fi les and storage boxes for ideas. In a 1950s magazine, I spotted an advertisement from the for the shampoo Pantene Pro-V. At the time, it was marketed as an anti-baldness vitamin shampoo for men. Obviously the ASA would never allow Pantene to claim that it can cure male-pattern baldness these days, so after a lapse of several decades the brand was reinvented as a vitamin shampoo for healthier hair.

The brand name still had value because it was a successful product in many people’s memories.

The idea Perhaps the best known reinvented UK brand is Tango, Britvic’s range of canned fi zzy drinks. Tango was fi rst brought out in 1950 by Corona, who were bought by the Beecham group in 1958. Beecham’s sold their fi zzy drinks to Britvic almost three decades later, by which time Tango, the orange fl avour in a range of drinks, was pretty much forgotten.

In 1991 in the UK Tango became famous when an advertisement – which most of us remember fondly for its humour – was criticised for promoting violence. As an actor took a sip of his orange Tango drink, an entirely orange almost naked overweight man rushed up to him and slapped him in the face, then ran away. The tagline “You know when you’ve been Tango’d!” started a cult following. Unfortunately, schoolchildren started to “Tango” each other at the playground, so the advertisement was removed from television and replaced immediately with one featuring the orange man planting a kiss on the drinker’s face.

However, the phrase had captured the public’s imagination and without the benefi t of docial media to connect with customers, Tango built up a relationship with theirs by fl ashing up phone numbers in their television ads. Fans had to record them on their VCRs, pause at exactly the right moment, and then dial the telephone number to get their free limited-edition cult Tango object.

Apple Tango was given a seductive character and even had its own calendar in the style of the famous Pirelli. But instead of supermodels, it featured cans of fi zzy drink. Blackcurrant Tango was launched in 1996 with an advertisement called St George, an immense production featuring Harrier jump jets, and ending with a challenge to France and the rest of Europe to come up with a better drink.

All these from a dusty old brand name sitting on the back of a shelf.

In practice • This is a job for people who love nothing more than to burrow into the darkest corners of the basement and dig out material that they fi nd fascinating (but others would be tempted to throw in a skip). Do not allow your de-clutterers is anywhere near this task as they will jettison valuable archives in the quest for tidiness. • Bring the most interesting fi nds to your next meeting, and use it to spark new ideas. • Check the reasons for the brand fell into disuse. If it was only from a lack of support and attention, then the brand could be a potential candidate for revival.