[bandsdavis]

From all the reminiscing about old gas station commercials, I thought you might enjoy this story. In college (Univ of New Hampshire) I had a marketing professor named Don Marchner. Before retiring to academia, he was the Advertising Director for Shell Oil Co., and he's the guy who developed the ads for "Shell with Platformate". You may remember that the ads touted that platformate added significantly to your miles per gallon. Here's the kicker: at that time, EVERY brand gasoline being sold had platformate! But, Shell advertised it first, so if anyone else started to also talk about it, they would be considered second fiddles! And Shell never said that paltformate was exclusive to them, they just said they had it. A really brilliant advertising coup, I think, and a great lesson in business that you can make something unique to your busness in the customers eyes, even if it really isn't.

B.