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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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McIlhenny's
Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire by Jeffrey
Rothfeder |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Hot If
you read Jeffrey Rothfeder’s book, McIlhenny's
Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire, you may never
shake one of those Tabasco bottles in the same way again. For me, I keep getting
an image of life on Avery Island as I taste the sauce. Unless you’re involved
in a multi-generational family business, there may not be many business
lessons to glean from this book. There are great stories about people and how
their personal decisions made a huge difference in outcomes. Here’s an
excerpt, pp. 114-5: Since obtaining its first trademark on
Tabasco, McIlhenny Co. has been single-minded about challenging every
individual or company—and there have been hundreds—that dared to adopt the
name for any type of product. For years, the company retained Julius
Lunsford, the high-powered Atlanta attorney credited with protecting
Coca-Cola's trademarks, to handle Tabasco cases. Merciless in his approach,
Lunsford relied on McIlhenny family members, who were on notice to be vigilant
for trademark breaches as they traveled, and a team of researchers to uncover
trespassers, each of whom received the same cold message: either discontinue
using the name Tabasco
and any of the other trademarks owned by McIlhenny—including one
for the shape of the pepper sauce bottle and another for the look and feel of
its distinctive diamond-shaped label—or face litigation. In Lunsford's
approach, no room for negotiation existed no matter what the circumstances.
Following Lunsford's death in 1999, his equally unforgiving son, J. Rodgers,
took over principal trademark duties for the McIlhennys. In
the years following McIlhenny's decision in the early twentieth century to
obtain and then enforce the Tabasco trademark at all costs, dozens of
companies chose an entirely different route, relinquishing control of some of
the most valuable brand names ever. They did this in part because they were
unable to envision the long-term legal implications under trademark rules of
their initial marketing strategies. A classic example is aspirin. Developed
by Bayer Co., aspirin was originally sold to the public through pharmacies,
which would package the pills and often market it to consumers as simply
Aspirin or sometimes add the name of the drugstore on the label as well. The
word Bayer never
appeared. Accordingly, around 1915, when Bayer opted to sell its own version
of aspirin and demanded that pharmacies and other drug companies stop using
the term, the courts ruled against Bayer. By permitting drugstores to freely
market their own aspirin products for so long, Bayer had conspired in making
the name generic, the court said. In
a large number of cases, companies forfeited prized trademarks because they
failed to anticipate the monopolistic effect their successful products would
have on the free market. For instance, Otis lost the trademark for the term escalator because
in the four decades or so that it took for the company's various patents on
moving stairs to expire, escalator
was the only term used for such equipment. As a result, the patent
office ruled in the 1950s that it would be impossible for a new moving stairs
manufacturer to compete with Otis if its product was called anything but
escalator. DuPont
faced a similar issue with nylon, which rapidly became so synonymous with
women's stockings that the chemical giant could not retain exclusive rights
to the name when other companies sued to enter the market. Mindful of this
outcome, some years later, when DuPont introduced Dacron, the chemical
company took pains to call it a polyester fiber. This gave competitors the
opportunity to sell their own brands of polyester to clothing manufacturers,
while DuPont held the sole claim to Dacron. It’s
been a long time since the 1869 founding of McIlhenny Company, and lots has
happened over these years. Rothfeder makes the story engaging and interesting
on the pages of McIlhenny’s
Gold. In the same way a little hot pepper sauce enlivens a meal, this
book brings out a history that few readers may have known until now. Give it
a taste. Steve
Hopkins, January 22, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/McIlhenny's Gold.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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