I was interested in the thread regarding advertising products, and had another question: There are many brands that never seem to advertise their products-yet I see these same brands around, year after year. Examples:
-"“Old Parr” scotch whiskey-never seen an ad for it
-Peter Paul mounds candy bars
-Many tire brands (like Falken, Cooper)
-Lavoris mouthwash
-Kodak film
Is reluctance to advertise tied to a product in the decline phase of its life cycle?
Kodak might be in that situation…but many products seem to do fine without advertising.
All these brands advertise. They may not advertise in ways you see or recognize.
Tires - I’ve seen ads for both Falken and Cooper within the last year. However, tire companies do a lot more marketing through tire sellers like Tire Rack than in direct ads.
Mounds - pretty sure I’ve seen ads for them and their stablemates recently.
Kodak film, I don’t know. Film is damn near dead except in the hands of the dedicated chemical photography crowd, so unless you read chem-film-photo magazines you might not see any ads. No point in advertising to a general market any more.
There are a number of famous cases where products were so big and so entrenched the makers thought they could stop advertising. The result is usually disaster, because when, say Sapolio stopped advertising - because they had something like 90% of the furniture polish market - other small brands were quick to ramp up their ads, and in the vacuum, they were successful. Sapolio was once a household name… did you even recognize it?
That does not mean they have no marketing. They just do their “advertising” through grocery story chains and the like, and they’ve succeeded well enough with limited competition to have made a mark “never advertising.”
Of course, you have to be a pretty lazy cook to use a cornbread mix in the first place. It only has three ingredients. 
Their website has a link to their latest commercial. Anyway, sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don’t.
Good wine needs no bush.
Some of these brands do advertise; you just don’t see them. For example, I’ve seen ads for Falken and Cooper tires in the last year or so. If you want to see tire ads out the wazoo, read automotive magazines.
Brands may advertise in niche media, where they’ve determined that their likely buyers are seeing the ads, but there isn’t the tremendous amount of slop (i.e., people who will never buy the product but see the ads) that you get in mass media like television. Even if a brand does TV advertising, the proliferation of niche cable channels means that the vast majority of TV viewers may never see an ad for that product, because it only runs on certain cable channels.
Some brands are so small that they simply do not have a budget for advertising. A lot of smaller liquor brands probably qualify in that group. They may do other promotional activities instead (in-store displays, promotional events at nightclubs, etc.).
Further, there are many ways to promote a brand today that are not traditional advertising, and that includes social media, like Facebook and Twitter, as well as online advertising. For a small brand with a limited budget, those may make far more sense.
Some brands are long-established, and their owners may well just be milking them for their (relatively) steady sales. It’s probably not the best long-term strategy, as you may well slowly lose sales over time without some mechanism to bring in new users and / or fend off attempts by other brands to steal your user base, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t done.
And, yes, in a few cases, you have a brand or category that’s on the decline, and no amount of advertising is going to fend that off. Kodak film is a good example of that (though you might well still see ads for Kodak film in niche photography magazines or web sites).
Gas Station chains.
I was talking to a friend last month about how in the 60s, a considerable portion of the commercials were “Citgo zooms,” or "Put a Tiger in Your Tank (Exxon, although back then it was Esso, Enco, Humble) or "Shell’s extra mileage – with the cars going through paper barriers, “Mobile the detergent gasoline,” etc.
I know that there’s been consolidation (Exxon/Mobil) and an energy crisis or two or three, but why don’t Gas Station chains try to differentiate their brands anymore? And it makes a difference, because way back when, I’d try to only use Mobile, but now it’s just the best price.
Kodak used to advertise. Quite a lot, actually. It’s just been several years since film was relevant to the consumer market.
Not that it’s relevant to the current state of affairs, but I vaguely remember their ad jingle from the '70s, which rhymed “Lavoris” with “join the chorus.”
Are you sure this isn’t a Seinfeld episode?
Exxon/Mobil and BP definitely both still advertise. I just saw a BP commercial a few weeks ago.
Advertising is expensive. Consumer advertising is multiply expensive. Every firm has to make the decision on how best to use their money. Putting it into sales forces or trade publications or store displays or direct mailings or a million other schemes may be more cost effective.
BP’s “advertising” is just phony PR. They may not have been able to clean up the spill, after the explosion, but they sure can clean up their image.
I can’t recall Exxon/Mobil. 45 years ago, there were more gas station ads then for cars/vehicles. They even ran contests where you could win money (like McDonald’s Monopoly game), you got free drinking glasses, stoneware, giveaways… anything to win your brand loyalty.
Cheddar’s restaurant chain doesn’t advertise. The rely on word of mouth marketing from customers. They opened a restaurant here a little over a year ago. I had never heard of it so I looked it up. I found out why I had never heard of it.
First, kudos on the thread title.
Second, as SpoilerVirgin mentioned, Mounds/Almond Joy bars had a very well known commercial and jingle.
Targeted marketing means you may not see a lot of advertising.
Their products include baking/pancake mix, brownie mix, pie crust mix, and cake mix – in addition to corn bread mix and different muffin mix flavors. They compete with some of the most well known brands in their aisle – Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, and Duncan Hines.
Chelsea Milling Co (aka “Jiffy”) owns 58% of the baking-mix business and there is one simple reason: they are the cheapest, sometimes by a 60% margin. There two reasons their product is the cheapest. 1. they produce every part of their product inhouse: they make their own packaging, and mill their own wheat (and sell the bran they don’t need to Kellogg’s) and 2. they don’t advertise.
In particular, they would have an elaborate ad during the Oscars broadcast. And until a couple of years ago, they had their name on the theater used for the awards ceremony. As for Almond Joy and Mounds, I think the most recent campaign used the slogan “Unwrap paradise.” If you do a Google search, you can see recent ads.
Minecraft.