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Advertising: When a Founder Is the Face of a Brand

That’s the dilemma Men’s Wearhouse is left with after dumping its founder and spokesman, George Zimmer, a decision announced Wednesday. Mr. Zimmer had starred in the suit retailer’s commercials for almost 30 years, guaranteeing men that “you’re going to like the way you look.”

On Thursday, a day after the company’s terse announcement, reaction on social media continued to be fast and furious, indicating that Mr. Zimmer had made the jump from business executive to cultural icon. “George Zimmer” was one of the top searches on Google on Wednesday, and news of the firing made the gossip sites TMZ and Gawker.

And the Men’s Wearhouse Facebook page had more than 200 comments criticizing the company for ousting Mr. Zimmer, with sentiments like “If George Zimmer isn’t coming back, neither am I!” and riffs on Mr. Zimmer’s signature ad closer like “You’re going to miss the way I shopped. I guarantee it.”

Men’s Wearhouse has not said whether it will continue running the television commercials featuring Mr. Zimmer; the company had recently been evaluating their effectiveness, Richard Jaffe, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, said.

Companies do face risks when they tie an executive’s personality to their businesses, advertising executives said. But it is a popular approach, with executives like Dave Thomas at Wendy’s, Frank Perdue at Perdue Farms and Martha Stewart becoming the face and voice of their companies.

The appeal of doing so is obvious, said Ellis Verdi, co-founder of the ad agency DeVito/Verdi, which has made ads for retailers like Kohl’s and Coldwater Creek. It’s relatively cheap, rather than hiring, say, celebrities like LeBron James or Taylor Swift, and it allows for flexibility — an executive can credibly promote a Presidents’ Day sale or talk about the brand’s origins.

Mr. Perdue, the former chief of Perdue Farms, was one of the first corporate executives to appear in ads for his company. His “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken” commercials are considered legends.

“It was the first time someone branded a commodity,” said Adam Hanft, a brand strategist. “Without that, there would be no Perdue as we know it today.”

That type of marketing can be highly successful until the executive ages, leaves, dies or gets into trouble.

When Mr. Perdue handed the company to his son, Jim, Perdue’s ad agency ran spots featuring both men before using Jim as the lone spokesman.

Other transitions have not been as smooth.

When Orville Redenbacher turned 88, he was bounced from his popcorn ads as the company tried to appeal to a younger, microwave-popcorn-eating demographic.

When the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Col. Harland Sanders, died, the company could not decide how to react. It tried ads with an actor impersonating the colonel, and a cartoon version of him, leaving consumers confused.

And after the Wendy’s founder and ad star, Mr. Thomas, died in 2002 after appearing in more than 800 commercials, Wendy’s immediately edited ads to remove him. But the company underestimated his bond with consumers, executives later said. Within five months, Wendy’s released new ads promising diners its food was still done “Dave’s way,” and sent posters featuring Mr. Thomas to its locations nationwide. Almost a decade after he died, Wendy’s started featuring the original Wendy — Mr. Thomas’s daughter Melinda Lou Morse, nicknamed Wendy, and by then 50 — in its ads.

A different situation confronted Macy’s when Martha Stewart was released from prison in 2005 as the department store chain considered considering carrying her housewares line. It conducted extensive research to gauge how consumers felt about Ms. Stewart post-prison, learning that her image had been tarnished but not her brand.

“Lots of people don’t like her, but they like her products and will happily buy them from Macy’s,” the company’s chief executive, Terry Lundgren, wrote in a 2006 e-mail, summing up research a public relations firm did for Macy’s. It began selling Martha Stewart goods in 2007.

Advertising executives say Men’s Wearhouse is in a particular bind because the ads featuring Mr. Zimmer have been remarkably effective.

“You have to ask yourself how many campaigns in this country last for 25 years,” Mr. Verdi said. “It’s part of our culture — you have comedians riffing on it, you have the tagline that people talk about all the time. So you have what on judgment what would probably be one of the most successful campaigns, in my opinion, in retailing history.”

Men’s Wearhouse spends less than competitors on ads — just $92.2 million in 2012, according to a regulatory filing, or 3.8 percent of sales. Macy’s spends 4.3 percent of its sales on advertising.

“He’s very closely associated with Men’s Wearhouse and the brand, and as a result I think there’s some downside to a company eliminating his persona too quickly,” Mr. Verdi said. (One customer on Facebook likened his removal to what would happen if a certain fast food chain dumped Ronald McDonald.)

Initially, the ads featuring Mr. Zimmer in the mid-’80s were an attempt to make Men’s Wearhouse less tacky.

The company had been using “this short, baldheaded guy who would jump out from behind a rack of suits and do his spiel,” said Richie Goldman, an early partner, in an interview now on YouTube, adding, “We wondered why we had an image problem.”

“Finally one day George said, you know what? If we’re going to get ourselves out of this, we have to change our tone. Let me go on the air, and if people are not going to believe the president and C.E.O. of the company, who are they going to believe?” Mr. Goldman said.

He had planned to finish his first ad with “That’s the fact, Jack,” from the movie “Stripes,” but at the last minute, swapped it out with the more long-lived “I guarantee it.”

The company did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday, but in a recent regulatory filing, noted that “George Zimmer has been very important to the success of the company and is the primary advertising spokesman.”

“The extended loss of the services of Mr. Zimmer or other key personnel could have a material adverse effect on the securities markets’ view of our prospects and materially harm our business,” the company said.

The company has fiddled with the ads over the years. Sometimes Mr. Zimmer appeared on the selling floor or reclining on a patio. In other ads, he gave advice to employees and at one point, standing at a “Suits University” lectern, told men to don mock turtlenecks. (It was the ’90s.)

In 2010, the company experimented with a different tagline for Mr. Zimmer: “There’s a place men belong. That place is Men’s Wearhouse. I guarantee it.” But that didn’t stick, and the company quickly reverted to the original.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 22, 2013

An article on Friday about the risks faced by brands that tie an executive’s personality to their businesses erroneously included one company among those that spend more on advertising than Men’s Wearhouse, whose founder and promotional face, George Zimmer, was recently fired. Though Macy’s spends more, it is not known if Jos. A. Bank’s advertising costs exceed those of Men’s Wearhouse. (The 39 percent of revenue figure given for Jos. A. Bank represents the amount it spends on marketing and sales, a category that includes store payroll and other expenses; the company does not break out its advertising expenses.)

DealBook: Selling the Home Brand: A Look Inside an Elite JPMorgan Unit

Joshua Lott for The New York TimesJohnny Burris, a former private client adviser at JPMorgan Chase, says he was fired last year because he refused to push investors toward the bank’s in-house financial products.

Everything is scripted for the brokers in an elite group at JPMorgan Chase: the sales pitches; the personal voice mail message; even the preferred desk candy, Glitterati Fruit & Berry.

In a three-inch-thick training manual, the bank, the nation’s largest, details how to recruit clients, pitch products and, ultimately, close the deal — or, as JPMorgan puts it, “get to Yes!”

The manual is part of an intensive, weeklong training course. But it is only the beginning for JPMorgan’s army of top advisers, who are critical to the bank’s rapid expansion into wealth management, a fast-growing and highly profitable business. Interviews with more than 20 current and former JPMorgan brokers, as well as hours of recorded conversations between a former adviser and his bosses, portray a sales-driven culture that is unusually aggressive, even by Wall Street standards.

While financial advisers at other firms are typically free to offer a variety of investments, JPMorgan pressures brokers to sell the bank’s own products, according to the current and former employees. Several advisers who resisted said they were told to change their tactics or be pushed out.

“We were not able to do the right things for our clients,” said Brad Scott, a financial adviser who quit JPMorgan in April 2012 and now works at LPL Financial. Mr. Scott said that an executive told the brokers on a conference call, “You are not a money manager; you are an asset gatherer.”

JPMorgan disputes the characterization. It says it puts its clients’ needs first and devotes considerable resources to assembling high-quality investments, which include a mix of mutual funds managed by JPMorgan and by third-party firms.

The inner workings of the prestigious program, known as Chase Private Client, provide rare insights into JPMorgan’s wealth management business, which is central to the bank’s growth strategy.

Current and former brokers in the program contend that the bank, at times, prioritized profit to the detriment of its clients. While such criticism is not uncommon in the financial industry or other sales-driven businesses, the brokers say JPMorgan took an extreme approach.

To bolster sales, said the advisers, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution, JPMorgan largely pushes its own bank-branded investments, which include a mix of mutual funds. While the practice can be legal, competitors have moved away from such investments after facing perceived conflicts. The concern is that, driven by fees, banks will push their own products over lower-cost options with stronger returns.

Some JPMorgan brokers said that the bank did not allow them to disclose the performance of the investment portfolios they marketed until customers bought the products, so prospective clients did not have a clear understanding of what they were buying. JPMorgan says it does provide some performance information to potential clients, but the return figures do not take the fees into account.

Some advisers also worried that the in-house products lacked the usual safeguards from the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the private, nonprofit group that helps the clients of defunct brokerage firms. While the chances of JPMorgan failing are remote, several brokers said they wanted the added layer of protection, especially for retirees.

Other advisers, though, noted the advantages of the Chase Private Client program, citing the extensive expertise of the bank’s money managers and investment professionals. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with many different groups and managers over these past years,” said Anthony Caravetta, who has been an adviser at Chase Private Client since 2011, “and I have never once felt pressure to sell” JPMorgan products.

A JPMorgan spokeswoman, Kristin Lemkau, said the bank’s products were “well diversified and designed by expert asset managers.” She added that brokers had the option to sell third-party products if it made sense for clients.

Still, some brokers who deviated from the program said they faced repercussions.

Johnny Burris, a former financial adviser in Sun City West, a retirement community in Arizona, was called into a meeting with his managers in early July to discuss why he wasn’t selling the bank’s products, he said. Mr. Burris said he favored traditional mutual funds with strong records and the usual protections.

“At the end of the day, obviously, we always do what is most appropriate for the client,” said Andrew Held, one of Mr. Burris’s managers, according to a recording that Mr. Burris made of the conversation, which was reviewed by The New York Times. But he went on to tell Mr. Burris that it looked “a bit odd” that he hadn’t “done any JPMorgan business” in the last three months.

Late last year, Mr. Burris was fired from JPMorgan. The bank said he “was terminated for not complying with regulatory requirements and not following firm procedure.”

Mr. Burris says JPMorgan fired him because of his resistance to selling the bank’s products. He has since filed an arbitration claim against JPMorgan for wrongful dismissal.

Ms. Lemkau, the JPMorgan spokeswoman, defended the bank’s practices, noting that Mr. Burris secretly taped his colleagues. “We believe it is unethical and unfair for Mr. Burris to use these piecemeal conversations to make his case,” she said. Mr. Burris said he recorded the conversations because he was concerned about his career after being pressured to sell JPMorgan products.

Within JPMorgan, Chase Private Client is considered a prestigious perch. The program’s customers typically must have $250,000 in deposits or $500,000 in investments.

In recent years, the bank has poured millions of dollars into the program, which offers retirement advice and investment products through a vast network of retail branches. By the end of 2012, Chase Private Client had 1,218 locations, up from 262 a year earlier. Mr. Caravetta said Chase Private Client investments gave clients “the ability to leverage our intellectual capital.” That way, he said, “clients don’t have to play adviser lottery as they do with some other investment firms.”

As JPMorgan expands the program, it is cutting back in less profitable areas and those crimped by new regulations, like trading. On Tuesday, the company said it would eliminate 4,000 jobs in consumer banking through attrition, largely from the lower-level positions in the bank’s branches, rather than from its pool of financial advisers.

To staff Chase Private Client, JPMorgan often looks within its ranks. Brokers with top sales records are routinely approached, the current and former financial advisers said.

When Mr. Burris was asked to join the program, one of his managers, Philip Haigis, indicated that there were a few “glitches,” according to tapes of the conversation. He said that Mr. Burris was not selling enough in-house products.

The bank, Mr. Burris’s bosses explained, examines the amount of JPMorgan-branded portfolios of mutual funds that brokers sell. “If you look at our firm, 50 percent of all our sales go” to those investments, Mr. Haigis said. Furthermore, he said, such products draw less scrutiny from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which polices Wall Street.

“Chase makes investment recommendations based on what’s right for the client, not how heavily a product may be regulated, and managed products are subject to significant regulatory oversight,” said Ms. Lemkau, the JPMorgan spokeswoman.

Mr. Burris tried to explain to Mr. Haigis that his strategy achieved better returns.

“If you build all these individual portfolios, you also are the one that has to manage and tweak them and move them,” Mr. Haigis responded.

“That’s our job — that’s what we’re paid to do,” Mr. Burris said.

“Or you could be paid to let other people do it,” Mr. Haigis said.

JPMorgan would not make Mr. Haigis or Mr. Held, the other manager, available for comment.

Despite his bosses’ concerns, Mr. Burris was elevated to the elite program.

After joining the program, brokers attend training. The new recruits sit through sessions with titles like “Positioning JPMorgan Investments” and “Banking Product Overview.”

Mr. Burris and Mr. Scott, the former JPMorgan adviser who now works at LPL Financial, said that during their training, they were discouraged from discussing the returns of the bank’s products and told that they should focus instead on the overall story. “Chase Private Client is part of a firm with a proud history,” the training manual said. The bank played “an important role in helping manage the credit crisis through the acquisition of Bear Stearns.”

Shortly after his training, Mr. Burris was again called into a meeting about his sales.

In June 2012, Mr. Held acknowledged that the “bank-managed products are not the be-all, end-all.” But, he said, they are the same product offered “to clients that have $50 million. So there’s a lot of thought, a lot of intellectual capital and a lot of value.”

He added, “You need to be presenting the private-bank, JPMorgan products and managed investment solutions.”

“I’m not questioning your sales numbers,” Mr. Held said, according to Mr. Burris’s recording. “What I’m saying to you is you’re not embracing the JPMorgan private-bank platform,” he said, later adding: “You’re not doing the presentation that you were trained to do in New York.”

Mr. Burris, who now works at Oppenheimer & Company, was fired four months later.

Hasbro Expands Transformers Brand Into New Media

The toy maker started the Transformers franchise with a Japanese partner in 1984. The concept — robots disguised as everyday objects — was originally aimed at 5-year-old boys. But as those boys have grown up and had children and even grandchildren, Hasbro has expanded the brand into other media and added new toy lines to appeal to everyone from toddlers to adults.

Take Rescue Bots, for example.

The main Transformers brand contains mature themes, with big robots battling for control of the planet. To engage children ages 3 to 7, Hasbro introduced Rescue Bots in 2011, featuring toy robots as first responders.

“The goal there is to take what you have and bring an age-relevant message, which is to get away from the battle and the fighting and focus on the heroic nature of Transformers,” said Jay Duke, global vice president for the Transformers brand at Hasbro.

That was enough to convince Ryan Yzquierdo, who has been a Transformers fan since he was 7, that Rescue Bots were a good way to introduce Transformers to his 3-year-old daughter.

“Each toy focused on a different motor skill, which was a big selling point for me and my wife,” said Mr. Yzquierdo, who started a Web site, Seibertron.com, devoted to Transformers in 2000.

When buying toys and games for their children, parents often look to favorites from their own childhood. Their nostalgia for beloved toys from their past helps create a bonding experience with their little ones.

Toy makers have long tried to build enduring brands that can be passed down to the next generation. Those intellectual properties are cheaper to develop because the toy companies do not have to pay a licensing fee to an outside partner. They also bring in added revenue through licensing fees paid by other companies, like makers of apparel and school accessories.

In Transformers, Hasbro has one of the most valuable brands among toy makers. In 2011, the year the third Transformers movie was released, Hasbro recorded $960 million in sales from products related to Transformers and Beyblade, a spinning top game, according to the company’s latest annual earnings report.

When it was developed in 1984, Transformers consisted of a toy line and an animated television series.

But in 2007, Hasbro began a new strategy to build the brand into a worldwide franchise that now includes live-action movies, video games, publishing and even theme park rides.

“There are not a lot of brands like that in the world that have that strong emotional resonance across generations,” said John A. Frascotti, global chief marketing officer at Hasbro.

For older boys, Hasbro has extended the brand into mobile apps, video games and comic books. For adults, the company has licensed an annual Transformers convention called BotCon and organizes events at conventions like Comic-Con International in San Diego.

But the growth of the Transformers franchise has had its pitfalls, too. When there is not a Transformers movie rumbling through theaters, the toy line stumbles. Hasbro reported net income of $130.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, a 6.3 percent decline from the previous year. Sales in its boys business fell 23 percent in the quarter from the same period in 2011, the year the last Transformers movie came out.

Analysts say it is important for Hasbro to keep the Transformers brand fresh in non-movie years.

“Hasbro focuses on these big, home-run movies. When they don’t have one, they get punished for it,” said Jaime M. Katz, an analyst at Morningstar.

Investors expect sales in the boys category to decline this year as well, but to rebound in 2014 when the next Transformers movie is released, said Felicia R. Hendrix, a Barclays analyst. “The real problem around this is that their boys’ line seems to be very movie-driven,” Ms. Hendrix said, adding that Hasbro should try to make the brand more evergreen.

Toward that end, the company showed previews of two new Transformers toy lines, Beast Hunters and Construct-Bots, last month at the annual Toy Fair in New York. The Beast Hunters theme, which features robots that morph into predatory animals, will encompass several areas, including television, toys and licensing, while Construct-Bots will allow boys to build their own Transformers.