There's something interesting going on in Seattle with Ivar's Seafood. The Seattle Times reported on Friday that the company is fishing out underwater billboards in the Puget Sound that were placed there by the brand's late founder--Ivar Haglund--in the mid-1950s. Apparently the company just recently found out about the existence of the "submarine billboards" by going through some of Ivar's personal possessions/artifacts. In the past month divers have brought up 3 billboards.
The company is promoting the findings on their website. And while it could be a hoax, apparently historians, etc. are calling the boards authentic.
Talk about a random idea... Funny. But how many brands could actually pull this off?
I mean, if this was a multinational corporation planting billboards in the sea, I bet people would be kind of upset. But Ivar's is a local seafood chain so being underwater is kind of endearing. And the company's founder apparently had a history of being lovably self-promoting...
So here we are, over 50
years later, writing about, talking about and thinking fondly of (see
most of the 'comments' tied to the story) a brand that has been serving a
community for a very long time. And interestingly, because Ivar's has
remained consistent over the years, the brand and tone of these 1955 boards still re-enforce the brand of 2009.
Keep Clam, as they say.