ADVERTISER NEWS

J.C. Penney Co. leads the annual list of 10 important

brands that the financial website 24/7 Wall St. predicts will

disappear during the coming 12 months. JCP, it says, is

in an extremely competitive environment with no reason

to believe that its prospects will improve. It also says

Volvo’s market share is too small to continue

competing in the U.S. luxury car market

and Mitsubishi is just too small a player to

continue in the U.S. auto market.

Before you write off any of these brands,

be advised that the scorecard for last year’s

predictions is mixed. Suzuki did leave the

U.S. auto market and Current TV was sold

to Al Jazeera to be replaced by Al Jazeera

America. MetroPCS merged with T-Mobile

and American Airlines is merging with

US Airways to emerge from Chapter 11.

Research in Motion did disappear as a brand, taking

the name of its main product, Blackberry. Talbots was

acquired by private equity, so the brand lives on. 24/7

Wall St. was simply wrong about Avon, the Oakland

Raiders, Pacific Sunwear and Salon disappearing from

the landscape by mid-2013.

As for the other death watch brands for the next

year: The Nook e-reader from Barns & Noble is seen

as being overwhelmed by Amazon’s Kindle and tablet

computers; Both Martha Stewart Living and Road &

Track are listed as suffering advertising declines from

which they cannot recover; Living Social is listed as a

weak competitor to Groupon, which has its own financial

troubles; Olympus is seeing its digital camera market

share shrink dramatically against giants Canon, Sony

and Nikon; Leap Wireless is a small player – and getting

smaller – in the consolidating wireless communications

sector; and 24/7 Wall St. predicts that the NBA will give

up on supporting the WNBA.