Evel Knievel and Expanding The Brand

Continuing the Obsessing About Pinball Theme, here's an advert for the Bally company's 1977 Evel Knievel branded contraption, which looks like the height of shlocky 70s awesomeness, and is totally guaranteed to help you hook up with hot blonde chicks in denim shorts. You can land yourself one of these stone-cold babe-magnets right now on e-bay for $1250, which is really peanuts for a hunk of cool-ass kit that'll have you scoring with Farah Fawcett so often you won't even be worryin' 'bout your high-score no more.

Mr Knievel was a one-man merchandising machine, establishing the modern cross-format marketing blueprint of ruthless, exploitative, shameless, ubiquitous product endorsement - if Krusty the Clown's empire of junk ("I heartily endorse this event or product!") has a precedent, it is Knievel's. He practically invented expanding-the-brand, and he was very, very good at it. Crucially, he was able to replace words, or his own image, with a logo - the Evel Knievel italicised star-spangled '1'. This is true branding genius. How many sports stars have achieved this? A universally recognised symbol...Michael Jordan maybe? But even the Nike Jordan logo is silhouette of Jordan, so that doesn't really do business in the same way.

And still the brand sells. Even while I've been Googling Knievel this evening I've seen about a dozen different new & original '70s products (t-shirts, mugs, records etc etc) I really want, and that's beside the pinball machine, and despite the fact that I know he was basically kind of a macho blockhead, and wasn't really any sorta 'sportsman'...but he looked cool, and his merchandise looks cool, and really that's the point. You buy into an image, a concept, a look, rather than the man himself. Evel might have wanted to be remembered as a great daredevil, but his real pop cultural legacy has been Krusty Burgers.