Avon, American Airlines Put on Brand Deathwatch

Advertising Week kicked off in New York Monday morning with a "Memoriam for Advertising." Now Declan Stone may need to update his new Logo R.I.P. book sooner than expected.

If 24/7 Wall Street's soothsayers have an accurate crystal ball, it’s time to slather on some Avon products, pull on some Pacific Sunwear shades and an Oakland Raiders jersey while reading Salon.com’s story about American Airlines on your BlackBerry.

These are six of the 10 brands mentioned in 24/7 Wall Street’s new list of what 10 big name brands could disappear in 2013. The others? MetroPCS, Suzuki, Talbots, and Current TV. 24/7, ever so slightly tongue in cheek but in a wake-up call, too, believes these brands will either be bought out or go out of business before the big ball in Times Square drops at the end of 2013.

According to the website's prognosis, American Airlines is “inefficient.” BlackBerry-maker RIM has “lost its edge.” Pacific Sunwear “no longer has the capital to compete.” At MetroPCS, “investors have abandoned.”

All 10 of the companies suffered from at least one of the following:

• “rapid falloff in sales and steep losses”
• “disclosures by the parent of the brand that it might go out of business”
• “rapidly rising costs that are extremely unlikely to be recouped through higher prices”
• “companies that are sold”
• “companies that go into bankruptcy”
• “companies that have lost the great majority of their customers” and
• “operations with rapidly withering market share.”

Our condolences to the brand managers.

[Image via Declan Stone/Logo R.I.P.]