Garland Pollard's  Instablog

There are fewer and fewer legacy electronics companies; great names like Sperry, Burroughs, Hallicrafters and such have either been merged into other companies or disappeared. Motorola is still around, though the company appears to be drifting.

One great name that has survived is Texas Instruments. TI has owned a good market in high-end calculators since the 1970s, and today still dominates secondary school math with its graphing machines. It still even sells low end models.

TI's educational division is only a small percentage of its larger electronics business. Overall, it is a company with net margins were over 18 percent. I don't follow electronics stocks, but I do pay attention to how companies use brands, and TI has got it right in the consistent branding department.

TI still has an American competitor, HP. Thankfully, Hewlett Packard is still in the education business, though its educational calculators seem far more popular with college and master's accounting and business students that TI's, which seem to have a following in secondary education.

But secondary education is a great place to be; kids who take higher level math do important things when they grow up. Consumer goods companies pay dearly to reach high schoolers, and TI gets to do it and make money on it. The company cements its personal connection to education with an annual Teachers Teaching with Technology (T3) Conference, this year to be held March 5-7 in Atlanta.

A few months ago, I found the above TI-1200 at a garage sale for a quarter, and sold it on eBay for around $20 bucks or so (the price originally was apparently $24.95) It dated from around 1975 (the calculator came in other versions including the Lady 1200 and the Spirit of 76). It was, and still is, a very satisfactory machine and I think I should have kept it. (They still sell a pink version of their graphic calculators for girls; it's just under $100. Now that's margins.)

We need more TI's that stick with their business. Today's Wall Street Journal has a piece on TI and the company's legal battles with the users who have figured out the code inside the calculators in order to unlock the power of the microchip within, all for fun. Electronic Frontier Foundation has helped the cause, too, asserting that people who buy calculators should be able to take them apart, literally and figuratively, as long as they aren't selling patented information. We agree with EFF, though we are sympathetic to TI.

We used to pull it apart, too. Underneath the TI-1200 faceplate there were extra buttons that were hidden, if I recall properly. In addition, we could turn the keyboard upside down and write SHELL OIL with the numbers, a trick that could only amuse an 11-year-old.

The branding exposure of TI's Educational Technology section is priceless; such exposure and goodwill could not be purchased at any reasonable price. Most great electronics companies used to all have educational subsidiaries; SRA, the reading laboratory, was a part of IBM.

It would be great to see more of that commitment at other companies. I am sure that at times, there have been some at TI who wanted to sell the education business, but I am glad they've stuck with it.

Disclosure: No positions

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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.

Mobil Travel Guides will be re-branded as Forbes Travel Guides effective October 1. (Mobil's four and five-star designations for hotels and restaurants will become Forbes in 2010.)

Frankly, I don't understand why Exxon Mobil (XOM) ditched the guidebook brand, which associates driving on the road with positive things like good food and clean hotel rooms. It has been around since 1958, and people trust it. They spun it off a few years ago, and were getting free publicity from it.

Why was it important that Mobil do the guide? It's not the reason they think, namely that people driving on the road will like to use Mobil and think "Hey, I need to check into a Ritz-Carlton."

No it's more subtle than that.

The association was valuable because it kept the name Mobil in front of rich, fancy folk who go to five star hotels and good restaurants. And remember, it is "fancy" people who buy and recommend stock purchases for others. It is "fancy" people who decide on environmental regulations. It is the "fancy" public television watching bureaucrats that make the government regulations. It was PR, and cheap PR at that. It even helped recruiting, burnishing the ExxonMobil name across the world.

The guide was about quality of life, and standards, and now that priceless goodwill has gone from the Mobil brand.

We can only assume the rationale for the sale. Some "clever" consultant comes in and says "WHAT ARE WE DOING MESSING AROUND WITH THIS.  Why are we worried about toilet cleanliness and soup temperatures. We're an energy company."

Yes, you are an energy company. But you are company of great brands too, and Mobil is one of the best brands. But brands that are one dimensional become boring. BORING. If it's all about gas, it's out of gas. (And by the way, gas companies SHOULD worry about toilet cleanliness, if they want to run filling stations.)

If this means that Exxon is further diminishing the Mobil brand at the expense of Exxon, that is a mistake. Both brands are great, but they mean different things. (Recently Mobil 1 has been emphasized as a racecar oil brand.)

ExxonMobil will do fine with or without the guide. But it is one more great business tradition, lost.