By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune

NORTH SALT LAKE - Nothing is more sacred to a successful company than its brand.
   So it is shocking to hear Joe Santosuosso, chief executive of luggage maker Zero Halliburton, joke, "Oh, spies and drug dealers," when describing the market for his aluminum attaché case.
    The gleaming, ribbed attaché has graced more than 200 films over the last quarter century. In those high-profile appearances, the Zero Halliburton is usually stuffed with eavesdropping equipment, sniper rifles, sacks of cocaine or stacks of $100 bills.

Ranulfo Perez works on painted components at Zero Halliburton in North Salt Lake on Friday. Zero makes the <I>de rigeur</I> attaché cases that have become a big hit in TV shows and movies over the last 25 years. (Jim Urquhart/The Salt Lake Tribune

Santosuosso doesn't have a problem with the attaché's noir brand image. The message in films is that important people trust the Zero Halliburton cases -starting at $250 for the traditional aluminum model, rising to $3,000 for the carbon composite gem - to protect precious, if sometimes illegal, possessions.
    "When you hold one of their cases, you are broadcasting that you want to be noticed, that you have a sense of style and that you have something worth protecting," says Gary Mezzatesta, president of the Burbank, Calif.-based Universal Product Placement agency.
    Zero Halliburton marketing director Brady Dangel defines the brand more succinctly: "It's sleek, it's sexy and it can withstand the fires of hell."
    That may be an exaggeration. But at least one of Zero Halliburton's real world placements is related to Armageddon. An aluminum attaché serves as "the football," holding the nuclear missile launch codes always in the company of the president.
    The latest product-placement coups for the Utah company are on the hit television show "Lost" and in the popular video game "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City."
    "We've had 25 years of product placement without paying for it," says Dangel. "It's a big deal for us. That's why our brand is so well-known" - especially considering Zero Halliburton does little advertising beyond its cases' appearances in films and television shows.
    The case-making company was founded in 1938 by Texas oilman Earle P. Halliburton. Visiting oil fields around the world took a terrible toll on his luggage, so Halliburton asked a team of aircraft engineers to come up with a durable case he wouldn't have to replace every six months.
    Although it has not been connected to his more famous oil and military   contracting company since the late 1940s - ownership of Zero Halliburton has changed hands a few times since then - the aircraft-grade aluminum attaché has remained constant, gaining only a strengthening rib or two over the decades.
    Still, there are slightly different varieties of Zero Halliburton cases, including a "retro" line hearkening back to 1930s models. Only a serious Zero Halliburton collector (yes, they're out there) could tell the difference between the attachés then, and now.
    "Notice the latches," says Dangel.
    Only about a third of the attachés made are available to the public. The rest are for medical, industrial and military uses.
    "We make all kinds of stuff on the industrial side," says David Sebens, vice president of sales and marketing. "A lot of containers - we don't even know what goes in them."

A couple of things they do know: hand-held missiles and state-of-the-art communication and electronic equipment. Many of these cases are not only water- and sand-tight, but can be shoved out of a helicopter.
    At its 300,000-square-foot factory off Redwood Road, Zero Halliburton employs nearly 300 workers who produce an average of 3,000 cases every day for the military/industrial customers, and another 250 a day on the consumer luggage side.
    Whenever Santosuosso, a Seattle resident who makes a weekly commute to Salt Lake City, encounters a traveler toting a Zero Halliburton case, he gives them his card. In return, he gets anecdotes worthy of a movie plot Texas businessman D. Pickel, for instance, stumbled on an airport escalator and found himself surfing downward on his Zero Halliburton.
    "I bounced from step to step and rode that bouncing ride all the way down the escalator. I was very shaken up, but unhurt," said Pickel, in a letter to Zero Halliburton. "Even my notebook computer was unhurt."
    The case was a gashed and dented mess, but his wife immediately ordered a new one.
    "We get pictures of cases and luggage that people have taken all over the world," says Santosuosso. "When these travelers get a scratch on their case, it's like a notch in their gun."
    Santosuosso's favorite story is a customer who misplaced his attaché at a Tel Aviv airport. When he inquired about it   at the airport's lost-and-found office, a security officer told him, "We have good news and bad news."
    "We blew it up," security said. "The good news is that everything inside is OK."
    Which brings us to an upcoming role for a Zero Halliburton attaché in a movie being filmed under the working title "Wrong Element."
    "Harrison Ford is actually going to hammer down on a bad guy with one of our cases," Dangel says.
    Product placement doesn't get any better.

The Zero Halliburton attaché case has had cameo appearances in more than 200 movies and television shows.

Film
   
    Spy Kids
    Austin Powers II
    Men In Black (I and II)
    Ocean's Eleven
    Charlie's Angels
    Toy Story 2
    Air Force One
    Independence Day
    True Lies
    Mission: Impossible

Television
   
    LOST (seen left)
    Alias
    CSI
    Law & Order
    24
    West Wing
    X-Files
    Famous real world
   missions carrying:

Apollo Mission moon rocks
    2002 U.S. Speedskating team's skates
    Academy Award Oscars
    President's nuclear attack codes
    Marlene Dietrich's unmentionables