I love game shows!  And not just The Price Is Right, but game shows period!  When I was a graduate student I actually appeared on one!  The Match Game PM Version and won 1,000 dollars!  I would have won more, if I had answered the $20,000 question correctly: “_______ alcohol” (fill in the blank).  I said “wood” and Brett Somers, along with everyone in the audience, including my mother, said “rubbing!”  Years later when I met Gene Rayburn at an event, I tested him with the same question!  Yes, he said “rubbing” too!!!

For every great brand, there are examples of brands that derailed!  And there is no better example than the game show scandals of the mid fifties!

In 1955, CBS started the game show trend with its big cash-prize TV show The $64,000 Question.  The show was such a success that many imitators followed and the most famous –and later infamous— was Twenty-One!  It drew an incredible 50 million viewers to its showdown between champion Herbert Stempel and Charles Van Doren –more than a third of all the people in the entire country!   Problem was it wasn’t real: Van Doren was being fed the answers!

The history’s been dramatized by Robert Redford’s movie Quiz Show because it was a huge scandal!  Van Doren (pictured above on the cover of Time Magazine) was considered a genius and loved by the public –all of this changed when he and the show were revealed to be a fraud (and they weren’t the only show cheating by the way)!  And the damage done to prime time game shows was profound!  They virtually disappeared until Trebek and Jeopardy! decades later!  In fact, when I was in the dressing room getting ready for my 15 minutes of fame, I was instructed not to speak with any of the guests, because merely speaking with them on any subject would disqualify me as a contestant!

The Marketing Doctor can’t resist this bit of history for one simple branding reason: it’s a terrific example of how if you aren’t true to your brand –no matter how successful you may be at first— you can do some long lasting damage to your growth!  People trusted that what they were watching in these shows was a real competition and when they found out it wasn’t –wow, talk about brand rejection!

And, remember, it’s always easier when you keep branding in mind!