Sphere of Influence : Unocal Reissues Its Little Orange Pop Icon
For some segments of the business community, the 1960s counterculture was a winning proposition. The music business cashed in on the British invasion and American folk rock movement. Fashion trends such as miniskirts and bell-bottoms propelled retail sales.
And then there was the chintzy little orange Union 76 Styrofoam ball that, for some reason, hundreds of thousands of young Southern California motorists turned into a pop culture icon by sticking them atop their automobile antennas in the late 1960s.
Well, the balls are back, bidding once again to become a traveling billboard for Unocal Corp., which could certainly use the help in a tough gasoline market. The company is trying, with some success, to tap into the nostalgia genes of the baby boomers who helped popularize them in the first place.
Sure, some boomers have lost their way.
“Put a 5-cent piece of plastic on this car? What are you, crazy?” an indignant Mercedes-Benz owner from Westwood asked a station attendant.
But Unocal dealers, who ran a free-gasoline promotion last month for selected people with orange balls on their antennas, had trouble keeping them in stock. Richard Hiltzik, a San Fernando Valley resident, had to station-hop to find one for his new Oldsmobile Cutlass.
“It’s great fun to have the ball back, and if someone wants to give me free gas, I’ll take it,” he says.
The promotion was in the grand tradition of gas station giveaways of Ram glasses, Dodger trinkets and the like. It ended March 31, but Unocal credits it with boosting sales 5% to 10% and said it may revive the promotion. The company has distributed about a million of the balls so far.
As Hollywood has learned, some sequels work and some don’t. Those who seek meaning in such matters are cautious about this one.
“The campaign is assured of some success, since the baby boomers are known for persistently reliving their teen years,” says David Stewart, a USC marketing professor. “But we’ll have to wait and see if the antenna ball becomes a sort of status symbol for the youth market the way it did the first time around.”
In 1967, Unocal, then Union Oil Co., rendered a mini-version of its corporate symbol in Styrofoam--a bright orange sphere marked “76” for the company’s Union 76 brand of gasoline. They were handed out to customers as an antenna ornament.
“When they first came out, I’d say the antenna balls increased activity in my station by about 50%,” recalls Ferdie Pitta, a Beverly Hills station manager for 28 years. “Even kids got them to put on their pencils at school.”
This time, however, mania would so far be too strong a word. Where is the VW Bug with 25 balls on its aerial? Why aren’t people making Hawaiian leis out of them like they used to?
Though one cutting-edge sort painted the ball black to match his Camaro, the most original behavior by ‘90s ball-bearers seems to be crowning their cellular phone antennas.
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In fact, it appears clear that economics rather than some whimsical passion for the orange balls got things rolling. Dealers randomly handed out about 1,800 scratcher cards, most of them good for $5 worth of gas and five good for a lifetime of fuel, to people whose cars sported the orange balls.
“A few months ago, we couldn’t give them away,” says Alvaro Vicente, a night attendant at a station in West Los Angeles. “Then the customers heard about free gas, and suddenly everybody wanted one.”
Not everybody. West Los Angeles resident Sharon Carey was miffed when an attendant “put that thing on my car without asking first.” It then broke, and a friend needed half an hour to get it off with a pair of pliers.
And Los Angeles resident Jeff Koontz, recalling his boyhood when vandals broke the antenna on his parents’ car in order to get one of the orange balls, declined to place one on his Toyota Pathfinder last week.
Hardly the spirit of 76.
“I know it sounds corny,” says Joseph Benjamin, a Santa Monica 76 dealer, “but it’s really a pride thing, seeing all those antenna balls in the street.”
