Pan Am is, once again, ready for takeoff.
The once-iconic airline, which recalls more elegant days when air travel required a tie, is the subject of a fall television show on ABC. Next month, the network debuts “Pan Am,” a drama about pilots and stewardesses working for the airline in 1963.
What many people don’t know, however, is that the company still operates. The brand may have disappeared for most of us about 20 years ago after it filed for bankruptcy. But in 1998, it was bought by Guilford Transportation Industries, and the Dover, N.H., company is now known as Pan Am Systems.
Pan Am today sells branded throwback luggage and other accessories, but is also in transportation, through its New England railways and cargo flights to Mexico.
This fall, however, it may become a subject of fascination on the small screen, making it one of the first brands in recent memory to be revived by a television show. The Sterling Cooper advertising agency of “Mad Men,” after all, is fictitious. Pan Am executives are even talking about starting up air passenger service between local hubs in Latin America.
Stacy Beck, director of marketing and corporate development for the brand, declined to comment to trade publication Advertising Age on the worth of the Pan Am brand or the licensing revenue the company would be getting from the ABC program. Still, licensing the brand means there are those who still equate it with a glamorous life.
“It’s almost the purest assessment of the value of a brand,” Carol Phillips, president of Brand Amplitude, told Ad Age. “The fact that someone is willing to pay for the brand suggests that it has life left in it.”
— Kayleen Schaefer
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FLIGHT SCHEDULE: A timeline for Pan Am's soaring highs and eventual crash
The once-iconic airline, which recalls more elegant days when air travel required a tie, is the subject of a fall television show on ABC. Next month, the network debuts “Pan Am,” a drama about pilots and stewardesses working for the airline in 1963.
What many people don’t know, however, is that the company still operates. The brand may have disappeared for most of us about 20 years ago after it filed for bankruptcy. But in 1998, it was bought by Guilford Transportation Industries, and the Dover, N.H., company is now known as Pan Am Systems.
Pan Am today sells branded throwback luggage and other accessories, but is also in transportation, through its New England railways and cargo flights to Mexico.
This fall, however, it may become a subject of fascination on the small screen, making it one of the first brands in recent memory to be revived by a television show. The Sterling Cooper advertising agency of “Mad Men,” after all, is fictitious. Pan Am executives are even talking about starting up air passenger service between local hubs in Latin America.
Stacy Beck, director of marketing and corporate development for the brand, declined to comment to trade publication Advertising Age on the worth of the Pan Am brand or the licensing revenue the company would be getting from the ABC program. Still, licensing the brand means there are those who still equate it with a glamorous life.
“It’s almost the purest assessment of the value of a brand,” Carol Phillips, president of Brand Amplitude, told Ad Age. “The fact that someone is willing to pay for the brand suggests that it has life left in it.”
— Kayleen Schaefer
RELATED ARTICLE
FLIGHT SCHEDULE: A timeline for Pan Am's soaring highs and eventual crash
