20 years ago, Gillette introduced a campaign that completely re-energized its brand and company.

It was "The Best A Man Can Get" and its zippy song, sung by the nation's top jingle-writer and singer Jake Holmes, talked about "looking sharp" and showed a succession of non-celebrity, clean-shaven men going to work, running in races, and hugging wives at the airport. Launched at a time when grunge was ascendant, it re-asserted Gillette not only as a corporate icon, but a clean-shaven one at that.

Sears Holdings (SHLD) announces earnings today; turns out their second-quarter loss is $94 million, or 79 cents a share, with revenue falling to $10.55 billion from $11.76 billion.

I could have guessed it going into their Westfield Sarasota Square store last weekend. On our visit, the clerks were friendly. The store maintenance and upkeep was good. The promotional banners were sharp, and well-designed. It felt upbeat. New brands like Cannon (CAJ) were livening up the approach, and the revivals of old Sears private brands like Toughskins were well displayed.

It's a fundamental of trademark law. To keep a trademark, you have to use it.

My old Virginia bank Virginia National Bank learned that lesson. It dropped the name VNB, and merged a number of times into what is now Bank of America (BAC). A few years ago, a new start-up bank decided it wanted the name Virginia National Bank and so it claimed it, no problems at all.

Mobil was once a brand that stood for absolute quality in all aspects of its operations, from its gas stations to PBS programming to guidebooks. Its graphic design, much of it by the noted firm Chermayeff & Geismar, is legendary. That work built upon the work of the late Eliot Noyes, one of the greats of corporate and industrial design.

So it was with great surprise that we read today that Mobil Travel Guide will now be Forbes Travel Guide. Smart move for Forbes, which gets a great franchise. But it's a big loss for Mobil, which loses free advertising.

I got a handsome newsletter from Google (GOOG) a few weeks ago.

It was a four-page 80-pound-paper stock mailing, printed just for me, in a crisp envelope, entitled Adwords Newsletter. It was to tell me about my recent ad campaign with Google. A report worthy of the old Price Waterhouse, it was as useful an explanation of Google advertising as could be devised in four pages. Typographically, it was very good.

From $40 in 1998 to $3.80 in 2009. That’s not good. Some see disappointment. But not everyone.

The news recently was that the Italian luxury shoe maker Tod’s had purchased shares in Saks (NYSE: SKS). Apparently Diego Della Valle, Tod’s Chairman (called the Italian Ralph Lauren), purchased 8.48 million shares, and he paid $30 million, the price of a few decent Palladian villas, for what is one of America’s iconic retailers.

There is but one grocery chain that inspires literature. It’s the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (NYSE: GAP), this year celebrating its 150th anniversary.

In John Updike’s Kennedy-era short story “A&P” a 19-year-old clerk identifies with three scantily clad girls who come into an A&P in a small town in Massachusetts, and offend the manager. A great line:

LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA - "Who owns the data?"

That was the big question for Facebook sales executive Tom Arrix on Feb. 23 while he was on stage at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Meeting in Orlando.

The new media landscape is a “vacuum that represents enormous opportunity.” So says Michael Mendenhall, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ).

Speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Meeting entitled “Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back,” on Monday, Mendenhall said the definition of who is a publisher has even changed as barriers to entry have been quashed. Mendenhall said:

On a radio interview a few weeks ago I heard Sherwood Schwartz, executive producer of Gilligan’s Island, say that he felt that it was entirely rational that the Professor, genius that he was, could never figure a way off the island, when all he had to do was nail some wood on the boat.

“That’s true of mankind,” said Schwartz. “They can do except what they cannot do.”

CUPERTINO - So wait, it's the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) disclosure of Steven Jobs' illness? Is this the same brilliant SEC that refused to regulate hedge funds, and could not even figure out that Bernard Madoff was not executing any trades. This after his credibility was challenged by Barron's in 2001. Is this the same SEC that watched over the complete dissolution and bankruptcy of all of Wall Street?

What is appalling is reading all the anonymous Wall Street speculation about Jobs, comment from people who should know better. Brad Simon, a "former federal prosecutor" told The Wall Street Journal that it "could be a big problem." Perhaps Simon was speculating about the reality of the issue, but the only right answer to a reporter's question on his health is: "We've known about this illness forever. Let's pray that he does well."

Opportunity for the electronics retailer

So Circuit City (CCTYQ.PK) is gone, and it's Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) and Radio Shack (NYSE: RSH). How opportune for Radio Shack, whose stock seems to be in miracle zone, namely above $10 a share.

In August 2007, we wrote on BrandlandUSA some of our ideas for improving Radio Shack. They included bringing back some of its store brands like Archer, concentrating on the male electronics enthusiast and offering education for everyone in how to use new electronics, much as Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) offer Saturday "How to install tile" classes led by sales associates. The idea was to find out the sorts of things that spurred small sales and neighborhood store traffic, and differentiate Radio Shack from the big boxes.

Hilton Hotels Corp. announced Wednesday, January 21 that it would move its headquarters from Beverly Hills to the Washington D.C. area, either the Maryland or Virginia suburbs. As a former Virginian who would love to see Hilton in the Commonwealth, I still think it is a horrible idea for Hilton, as it will make the family of Hilton brands far less interesting.

Frankly, Hilton has brand mystique. It's not just the legacy of Conrad Hilton, who founded the company. It's the whole arc of the Hilton family story, with Conrad and wife Zsa Zsa Gabor, son Nicky being Elizabeth Taylor's first husband; and of course Paris and the most current Nicky, Nicky Hilton the "heiress, designer, and trendsetter" who, sadly, was unsuccessful at her own hotel brand, Nicky-O. The family name has been totally preserved by the reputation of William Barron Hilton, who led the Hilton company to further greatness and who appears to be even more brilliant at selling his company, at a premium and for cash, at the top of the market. And even though Paris and Nicky are tabloid fodder, they do function as a sort of ersatz advertising for the Hilton brand.

Except for the success of discounters like Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ), Dollar Tree (DLTR), Family Dollar Stores (FDO) and Dollar General (DG), it feels like 1932.

That being said, not all retailers will go the way of Circuit City and Linens-n-Things. So the question becomes what retailers can do to tread water through 2009? And when they do make it, what sorts of things are they doing in 2009 to create opportunity in 2010?

So Circuit City (CCTYQ.PK) is in trouble, and the press is reporting that the company has days to either be purchased, or liquidated. We can’t predict what will happen. All we know is that we went into the Sarasota store today, and there were customers.

That might show where the value lies. Busiest places?

SARASOTA - Here in this retiree mecca, you can get a pretty good indication of the health of America’s restaurants as you drive down our highway strip, Tamiami Trail. Of the chains along U.S. 41, a newly opened Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) is packed, and all the fast food restaurants are equally busy. Steak & Ale, Waffle House and Village Inn (the latter part of VICORP Restaurants Inc. and in Chapter 11) are all closed, though a franchised Bennigan’s still survives, even as its Plano, Texas parent company Metromedia Steakhouses is bankrupt. Starbucks (SBUX) is less busy than before, but healthy. Denny’s (DENN) is busy at breakfast, and seems to be trying hard, but it just feels tired. Sadly, The “Waffle House Do Wop” no longer plays at our closed Waffle House.

But the olives are still ripe at Olive Garden, one of the handful of restaurant concepts of Orlando-based Darden Restaurants Inc. (DRI). It’s risky researching the fundamentals of a consumer goods stock just on the experience you get as a customer, but you learn things first-hand that you could never find in an annual report. So I went in for lunch.

Remember Ed Rooney, in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? He drove a government issue K-car. During the 1980s, the Plymouth K-car was what the government bought when it needed something basic. If you were lucky, it had a $79 AM radio.

We heard a recent car ad; it was a regional buy for the Nissan (NSANY) Versa. The ad’s primary lure? The price. Less than $10,000 bucks, though we are sure taxes and other fees ratcheted up the price a bit. In a time when dollars are tight, you need to keep people coming into dealers and looking.

The West Virginia resort The Greenbrier is apparently losing $15 million a year for its parent company CSX (NYSE: CSX). The railroad is considering everything, according to the January 2, 2008 Wall Street Journal. Goldman Sachs is apparently coming up with options.

What to do? Well, I am not sure the folks at Goldman are the best ones to tell CSX CEO Michael Ward. He could find out what to do, as well as find some options, with two telephone calls; one to Bill Marriott and another to Stephen Bollenbach. You’ll learn the options faster, and time is NOT your friend. But you won’t sell it for a good price at this time; why not set up a joint venture with a hotel company that can run it?