Today in Tedium: A few years ago, the wireless industry thought it could win a potentially lucrative game—that of the mobile wallet, which was just starting to get off the ground thanks to the smartphone. They had all the elements in place to pull it off, including support of most of the major wireless providers. But there was a problem—the name. Back in 2010, naming a technology product ISIS Wallet might have seemed like a novel idea, but by 2014, the name had become forever associated with a terrorist organization, and the idea had completely lost momentum as a result. Even a name change, to Softcard, could not resuscitate it—and now the basic idea is the domain of Apple and Google, rather than the mobile industry. In that vein, I’d like to spend a little time talking about a product that faced a similar branding crisis, and that name’s devastating effect. Tonight’s Tedium dives into the fate of Ayds—a candy that inherited the name of a public health crisis. — Ernie @ Tedium Editor's Note: Part of the reason I decided to do this story was because whenever I've seen this topic mentioned online, it's always seemed to be for the purpose of a dark joke, and that made me uncomfortable. For those curious, I played it straight here, because there are some deeper issues worth discussing about this topic—and not just limited to its name.

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1972 The year the Food and Drug Administration began evaluating over-the-counter drugs for reasons of safety and effectiveness. An FDA review of diet medications in 1979 found that phenylpropanolamine “may help people lose weight effectively,” a ruling that helped the appetite suppressant market explode in interest around this time; however, some medications were taken off the market because it was found that they contained too much phenylpropanolamine, which was considered a health risk. One drug that was banned for this reason was the diet pill Ayds AM/PM.

An advertisement for Ayds from the 1980s. The brand conundrum that proved Ayds’ downfall It was sheer happenstance that, in 1981, led medical officials at the Centers for Disease Control to give the name AIDS to the then-poorly-understood deadly immune system infection that was quickly spreading in the U.S. and beyond and was already in full-on crisis mode by the time officials came up with the name. Robert Alden, a CDC spokesperson, denied to the Philadelphia Daily News in 1983 that there was any intention of intentionally giving the disease a snappy name, that the name was chosen because “acquired immune deficiency syndrome” matched the primary medical symptoms of the disease. There probably wasn’t even much of a consideration of the side effects the name would have—and let’s face it, with a public health crisis of this nature, it probably was near the bottom of the list of considerations. People were dying, there was no cure, and the medical field was trying to act, fast. Nonetheless, the disease’s name wasn’t exactly ideal for the makers of a certain diet suppressant drug. It didn’t matter that Ayds was first to the name with only a slight difference in spelling, nor did it matter that the candy had been on the market for more than 40 years at the time and was near its market peak. Ayds was no longer a brand name that was fully in control of its owner. Even considering that, the owners of the brand at the time, Jeffrey Martin, put on a strong face, deciding not to initially rebrand despite the clear marketing challenge that was created. “The only calls we have gotten on this thing have been from reporters,” company spokesman William McGuire claimed to the Daily News. “Frankly, I think the public is a lot more discerning than you guys. I think the distinctive spelling of our product in print and television has prevented any unsavory connection between the product and the disease.” The company, however, faced headwinds that would soon prove difficult to ignore. While the company had been riding high in the late ‘70s on the back of the smoker-targeting whitening toothpaste Topol, many of its brands, including Ayds, had lost momentum in the market, and in fiscal 1986, its operating profit had fallen nearly 90 percent from its position in 1980. There were other factors at play for the company’s decline—the level of competition for over-the-counter drugs and other health and beauty aids had increased significantly—but it certainly didn’t help that it lost control of one of its most prominent brand names. Soon, the company would sell to Dep, a company best known for its namesake hair gel, for $75 million. Dep, of course, realized that Jeffrey Martin had allowed some significant branding problems to grow under its ownership, and the company was looking to make fixes, not only to Ayds, but to everything else. In 1987, The Los Angeles Times put the dichotomy between the two approaches as such: Seventeen months ago, the AIDS epidemic wasn't enough to convince the previous owner to change the name. Let the disease change its name, a Jeffrey Martin Inc. official said at the time. But today, the new owner acknowledges that it may be time to rethink the marketing strategy for Ayds, and yes, reconsider the name. If watching advertising for the diet-suppression pills makes it clear in 2018 that the name had to go, the L.A. Times article at least suggests it was a matter of healthy debate among branding experts of the era, who felt that the name was well-known, even if it had gained a negative association. It still had a base of users that hadn’t gone away, even with the branding problem—it was just struggling to bring in new ones. But by 1988, the decision became even more clear: Sales of Ayds had fallen by half, and Dep was already testing new brand names for the product according to a New York Times piece. Eventually, the company decided to change the name to “Diet Ayds”—allowing it to keep the hallmark of the old name while distancing it from the disease. But in the end, the decision wasn’t enough to save it. Diet suppressant candies, such as the MealEnders lozenges, are still sold today, but you won’t have any luck finding the product that originated this idea.

“I loathed [it]. I had romantic visions of artists’ garrets—though I didn’t fancy starving. Their main product was Ayds slimming biscuits, and I also remember lots of felt-tip drawings and pasteups of bloody raincoats. And in the evening I dodged from one dodgy rock band to another.” — David Bowie, discussing his time as a commercial artist in the 1960s in the 2011 biography David Bowie: Starman. Yes, before Bowie became a rock star, he was designing ads for Ayds in the UK.