Dead Brand Walking: The Podcast

🍦 Howard Johnson’s once owned the American road trip. Then America drove right past it.

With its unmistakable orange roofs, 28 flavors of ice cream, fried clams, roadside restaurants, and motor lodges, Howard Johnson’s grew from a Massachusetts soda fountain into the largest restaurant chain in America. For generations of families, seeing that orange roof meant one thing: food, ice cream, a clean place to sleep—and probably several more hours of Dad refusing to ask for directions.

So how did an American icon with roughly 1,000 restaurants go from dominating the highway to having its last restaurant close in 2022?

In this episode of Dead Brand Walking, we travel Under the Orange Roof to explore the rise and fall of Howard Johnson’s—from Howard Deering Johnson’s early ice cream business and pioneering franchise model to the glory days of HoJo’s restaurants and motor lodges, the rise of McDonald’s and fast food, changing American travel habits, corporate takeovers, Marriott, and the slow disappearance of one of the most recognizable brands in American history.

Along the way, we’ll answer the big question: How does a company that helped invent the modern American roadside restaurant eventually become obsolete?

And, more importantly, what can today’s businesses learn from Howard Johnson’s spectacularly long trip from 28 flavors to zero restaurants?

🎬 Want more Dead Brand Walking? Join us on Patreon for early access to new episodes, blooper reels, unedited one-take script read-throughs, personal commentary, behind-the-scenes extras, and more. New members can also get a shout-out in an upcoming episode.

If you remember eating at a Howard Johnson’s or staying at a HoJo motor lodge, tell me about it in the comments—and tell me roughly what year it was. Your story might be part of the history we're documenting here.

👍 Like the video, subscribe, and join us as we continue digging through the corporate graveyard to find the brands that dominated their industries…right up until they didn’t.

28 flavors. 1,000 restaurants. One enormous orange-roofed cautionary tale.

#HowardJohnsons #DeadBrandWalking #RestaurantHistory #BusinessHistory #Nostalgia

BlackBerry didn’t just dominate the smartphone market—it helped invent the smartphone addiction. Before iPhones, Android, and doomscrolling became socially acceptable ways to ignore your family, there was the BlackBerry: the tiny keyboard-powered status symbol so addictive we literally called it the CrackBerry.

At its peak, BlackBerry was everywhere: corporate boardrooms, Wall Street trading floors, government offices, celebrity pockets, and probably underneath the table during more than a few family dinners. Then the iPhone arrived, smartphones became software platforms, and one of the most powerful names in mobile technology discovered that being first doesn’t mean you get to stay first.

In this episode of Dead Brand Walking, we follow the rise and fall of BlackBerry—from Research In Motion and the BlackBerry 850 to BBM, its legendary QWERTY keyboard, the disastrous BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry 10, and the company's eventual retreat from smartphone hardware. Along the way, we’ll look at how Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android changed the rules, why BlackBerry underestimated the touchscreen revolution, and what businesses can learn from one of tech history’s greatest collapses.

Had a BlackBerry? Tell me in the comments what year you got it and which model you carried. Never had one? What was your first cell phone, and how old were you when you got it?

Want the stuff that didn’t survive the editing room? Blooper reels, uncut first script read-throughs, personal commentary, early access, and more are waiting on Patreon. Join the post-mortem crew and help shape future episodes:

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Subscribe to Dead Brand Walking for more corporate autopsies of the brands that once ruled the world… right up until they didn’t.

BlackBerry saw the mobile future before almost everyone. Unfortunately, it couldn’t keep a grip on it.

#BlackBerry #RiseAndFall #BusinessHistory #TechHistory #DeadBrandWalking

Pontiac didn’t just build cars—it built excitement. The GTO helped ignite the muscle-car wars, the Firebird and Trans Am became American icons, and for decades Pontiac was GM’s rebellious younger brother.

Then came badge engineering, corporate cost-cutting, questionable plastic cladding, the Fiero’s troubled launch and, of course… the Pontiac Aztek. Because apparently someone at GM looked at a minivan and said, “What if we made it angrier?”

In this episode of Dead Brand Walking, we trace the rise and fall of Pontiac—from its 1926 beginnings and the glory days of the GTO, Firebird and Trans Am to the decisions that slowly stripped away its identity and GM’s eventual decision to kill the brand in 2010.

How does one of America’s most legendary performance brands go from “We Build Excitement” to building absolutely nothing?

Buckle up, kids. We’re performing an automotive autopsy.

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Get access to blooper reels, raw first-read script videos, personal insights, early video access and more. Come be part of the post-mortem.

Pontiac may have run out of excitement—but its story is still firing on all cylinders.

#Pontiac #PontiacGTO #TransAm #MuscleCars #DeadBrandWalking

Pan Am didn’t just fly around the world—it helped invent the way we see the world.

For decades, Pan American World Airways was the gold standard of international air travel. The iconic blue globe, glamorous flight attendants, legendary Clipper aircraft, the Boeing 707, and eventually the mighty 747 made Pan Am one of the most recognizable brands on Earth.

Then the turbulence started.

✈️ Airline deregulation changed the rules.
⛽ Oil crises sent fuel costs soaring.
💰 The National Airlines acquisition drained resources.
🌎 Pan Am began selling its most valuable routes.
📉 And by December 1991, the “World’s Most Experienced Airline” had run out of runway.

In this episode of Dead Brand Walking, we trace Pan Am from its 1927 beginnings and Juan Trippe’s audacious vision through the glamorous Jet Age, the Boeing 747 revolution, the warning signs management couldn’t escape, and the decisions that ultimately helped bring down an American icon.

Along the way, we answer the big question: How does a company help create an entire industry—and still manage to lose its place in it?

Come for the Clipper. Stay for the corporate garage sale.

Every dead brand has a story. Let’s conduct the post-mortems together.

#PanAm #DeadBrandWalking #BusinessHistory #AviationHistory #AirlineHistory

Once upon a Friday night, before streaming, algorithms, and spending 45 minutes scrolling through Netflix only to watch something you’ve already seen, there was Blockbuster Video.

At its peak, Blockbuster had more than 9,000 stores worldwide, tens of millions of customers, and a blue-and-yellow sign that practically meant movie night. Then a tiny DVD-by-mail startup called Netflix came knocking with a reported $50 million acquisition proposal.

Blockbuster said no.

Whoops.

But the real story of Blockbuster’s rise and fall is much more complicated than one spectacularly bad meeting.

In this episode of Dead Brand Walking, we rewind to the beginning and explore how Blockbuster transformed the video rental industry, became a cultural phenomenon, made a fortune from those universally beloved late fees, underestimated Netflix and streaming, and ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 2010.

We’ll break down:

• 📼 How Blockbuster built a video-rental empire

• 💰 Why late fees became both a gold mine and a liability

• 📬 How Netflix attacked everything customers hated about renting movies

• 🤦 Why Blockbuster passed on the opportunity to buy Netflix

• 💻 How streaming turned thousands of valuable stores into expensive baggage

• 📉 Why Blockbuster's attempts to fight back came too late

• 🧠 Three business lessons every entrepreneur and company should learn from its collapse

Because Blockbuster didn't fail because people stopped loving movies.

It failed because people found an easier way to have movie night.

So grab some popcorn, ignore that VHS you've owed $47.50 on since 1998, and buckle up kids—this is the story of Blockbuster.

👍 Like the video if you remember wandering the New Release wall.

🔔 Subscribe to Dead Brand Walking for more stories about legendary companies that dominated their industries... right up until they didn't.

💬 COMMENT: What movie did you rent so many times from Blockbuster that you probably should've just bought it?

And if you want to help keep these corporate autopsies coming, support Dead Brand Walking on Patreon:

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Make it a Blockbuster Night—because sometimes even the biggest Blockbuster ends up a Dead Brand Walking.

#Blockbuster #Netflix #DeadBrandWalking #BusinessHistory #RiseAndFall

Kodak didn’t miss the digital photography revolution.

They invented it.

Yep. Long before smartphones turned all of us into unpaid food photographers, a Kodak engineer built the first self-contained digital camera in 1975. The problem? Kodak had a wildly profitable film empire—and the future threatened to develop it right out of existence.

In this episode of Dead Brand Walking, we rewind the incredible rise and spectacular fall of Kodak: from George Eastman making photography accessible to everyone, to the Brownie camera, Kodachrome, the legendary “Kodak Moment,” and a company that once dominated American photography.

Then came digital.

Kodak saw it coming. Kodak helped invent it. Kodak even became a major digital-camera seller.

And somehow…Kodak still ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2012.

So what happened?

We’ll follow Kodak through The Rise → The Golden Age → The Warning Signs → The Fatal Decision → The Collapse, and uncover three lessons every entrepreneur, executive, investor and business student should remember about disruption, innovation and the danger of protecting yesterday’s cash cow from tomorrow’s technology.

Because sometimes your biggest competitor isn’t another company.

It’s the future you’re afraid to build.

📸 Come for the nostalgia. Stay for the corporate self-destruction.

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You press the button. Kodak does the rest.
Well…until everybody stopped needing the button.

#DeadBrandWalking #Kodak #BusinessHistory #CorporateFailure #BrandHistory