Years ago Doug Major spent a day photographing technicians with Gordon Jump, the actor who played Maytag's lonely repairman, Ole-Lonely. Doug disliked what the character said about technicians but came away with deep respect for Jump's patience and generosity with the people who lined up to meet him. He uses that day to argue that Maytag, like IBM and Volkswagen, squandered a hard-won reputation by chasing the wrong things.
Never meet your heroes — unless you’re meeting an archetype.
Many years ago I spent a day with Gordon Jump, the man behind Ole-Lonely, the Maytag Repairman. What I saw told me everything about the power of a brand… and how easily a company can squander it.
Why was I conflicted about Ole-Lonely?
One of my interests is photography, and I was invited to play professional photographer for the day — snapping quick posed shots with Ole-Lonely. I was a bit conflicted.
I was more than a critic of the image. I thought it denigrated technicians.
But I was in a solid minority. Technicians lined up out the door to get their picture with him. One grandmother even brought her grandson, dressed to match.
What kind of man was Gordon Jump?
I didn’t change my mind about the image, but I gained a ton of respect for Gordon Jump.
He skipped lunch. He stayed in character for some people. But if someone asked about WKRP, he’d answer them — who he still talked to, who he’d lost touch with. He answered the same questions a hundred times like he was hearing them for the first time.
And once it was five and the line finally petered out, he still wanted to stay. His handlers were ushering him out, and he was inviting me to dinner while they shook their heads no behind him. I got it — he had to be exhausted, and he was off to the next city right away. Still, he had to be one of the greatest brand ambassadors of all time.
From what I can find, that wasn’t just catching him on a good day. Gordon Jump never won an Emmy. He never won an award for playing the Maytag Repairman.
But he won something rarer — the respect of every technician who ever met him.
Judging an actor by the characters they play is pure stupidity. But the tiny bit I knew about Gordon Jump was that he was Ole-Lonely. He retired, and shortly after that he passed away — before the end of Maytag came. I don’t know how emotionally invested he was in the company, but if anyone bled Maytag blue, it might have been Gordon Jump.
If so, it’s sad the direction the company took after establishing one of the most iconic campaigns ever.
How does a company lose a reputation it owns?
Here’s the thing: Maytag had the reputation for dependability absolutely sewn up. Just like Volkswagen’s “Think Small” campaign cemented the Beetle’s reputation far above its actual performance. IBM was the corporate titan of its era. And all of them squandered their reputations by chasing the wrong things.
Maytag did a one-eighty on their brand and chased market share instead of building on the middle-to-high-end appliance market they owned heart and soul. IBM ignored the personal computer they were literally building and doubled down on mainframes until they were sidelined. Volkswagen built a reputation on honesty and simplicity — and decades later destroyed it by cheating.
Maytag paid the ultimate price.
Maytag once had scruples. Real ones. But when they went public, the family’s values got diluted, and the new management didn’t understand the identity they were supposed to protect. That’s how a brand with a soul ends up acting like a stranger.
What should Maytag have done?
If Maytag had understood what Apple later proved — that a premium brand needs a premium environment — they could have owned the upscale appliance space. Instead, they let the brand drift into the commodity aisle.
Apple showed up and proved the value of protecting your identity. Sub-Zero refines it with its Living Kitchens. Miele has since picked up the playbook Maytag never used.
And Maytag? They had the head start. They had Ole-Lonely. They had the trust. They just didn’t build the world around it.
IBM built the future and didn’t realize it. Maytag built a brand people trusted in their homes and let it slide into the bargain aisle. Some companies just forget who they are.
What’s the lesson?
A brand isn’t a logo. It’s a promise. It’s the feeling people get when they bring your product into their home. It takes decades to earn… and one bad decision to lose.
Which brings me back to my day with Gordon Jump — the man who understood the brand better than the executives did.
This isn’t just a trip down memory lane. It’s a lesson in Clamshell Economics. Know who you are. Know what your reputation is. Know who your customer is and who has your back. Then evaluate the trends — and lean in the right direction. Protect what makes you different, because once you give that away, you don’t get it back.
Good advice for all of us, big and small business alike.