External publicity lets media and police substitute for mafia firms’ own advertising

Evidence

The beginnings of a process of separation, however, can be observed in two instances. The first is among the five families of the New York mafia—the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, Colombo, and Lucchese families. These have become famous names, not quire fictitious but no longer entirely real either, which are preserved even though none of the families is now ruled by the founder after whom it was named in the 1930s, nor do they appear to be run by sons or relatives. While the families themselves have been unable to advertise effectively, the mass media and law enforcement agencies have unwittingly done the job for them. Publicity, no matter how horrific, has conferred on those names an almost mythical status. Just as the name Ferrari or Jaguar elicits an immediate response among lovers of sports cars, names such as Gambino and Bonanno evoke an equally immediate response, if of a somewhat different nature. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 171

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: A nice inversion of the advertising constraint: third parties (media, police) can endow brand separation that illegality forbids the firm itself. Relates to brand-reputation economics.
• SEED: Angle: how publicity itself became the mafia’s accidental marketing engine — law-enforcement PR as branding for organized crime.

Related

• Media publicity can separate mafia family names from living bosses as brands (similarity 0.90)
• Mafia sponsorship of saints functions as advertising for its protection firm (similarity 0.80)
• Mafia reputation functions as a shared trademark yielding collective benefits (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Illegal protection businesses depend on third-party media for their advertising #corroborates (0.95) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 375