Motif's Revenge

Talking about luggage-making industry, you cannot avoid talking about Samsonite Corporation, the largest company in the industry and the only one that operates in the whole world. For all those years, the company keeps expanding its territory to every quarter of the world, just like it is said in its advertisement: "Life is a journey." The founder of the company, Mr. Jesse Shwayder named one of his initial cases "Samson", after the Biblical strongman. The company changed its name to Samsonite in 1966.
You can see travelers all over the world with suitcases and luggage with the Samsonite flowers on it. The so-called Samsonite flower is a four-peddle flower that represents the company. Samsonite may not as popular and famous as fashion bags, but their ads are also fascinating.To some degree, the success of Samsonite should own to its creative iconic advertising campaign. In the early half of the 1900s, Samsonite promoted its hard-shell rolling luggage by emphasizing its durability. Just like the brand name "Samson", the powerful one, the hard-shell rolling luggage of Samsonite are strong enough to have five adults stand on it, that mean the amount of pressure the luggage can stand is more than 1000 pounds. The "Strong Enough to Stand On" advertising campaign is a great success. But not as good as the later one: "Motif the Gorilla."Samsonite started the 1970's advertising campaign for American Tourister, a brand which Samsonite did not acquire until 1993.womens wallets The advertisements use the gorilla motif with the title "American Tourister: Tough luggage for a tough world."No one had expected that Motif the gorilla (actually a chimpanzee) could be a turning point of the company. In the American Tourister 1970 television ad, Motif pounds a bright-red American Tourister case, throws it around a cage, jumps on it, and finally drags it out the back door. It is meant to show that the Samsonite luggage is indestructible. And it is a huge success. It lasted 15 years, and is cited as an example of "branding". Unfortunately, only three years after Sansonite acquired American Tourister, the new chief executive official Nicolas decided to start a new operating strategy for the company, including a new icon. So the unfortunate Motif was kicked out of the company. When Nicolas explained his new plan to the Wall Street stock analysts, he proudly announced that he helped the company "finally gets rid of the monkey."But he didn't see the outcome of this decision. Motif's revenge came much faster than anyone could expect. Two years later, after fierce competitions with some fashion bag brands like LV, Nicolas was kicked out of the company just like what he did to Motif. Motif is invented back and set up as an important part of the new market strategy. After Motif starting yelling and pouching in the TV, the sales of Samsonite started increasing, too. The Samsonite company now realize the importance of its property after a lot of twists and turns.