As 2009 draws to a close, I thought I’d take a quick look back at significant developments of the past year.  And what a year it’s been, hasn’t it?!

Last January, I don’t think any of us could have predicted how bad things would get (the economic downtown, collapse of the automotive industry, Adam Lambert’s American Music Awards performance – to name a few of the year’s downers) – nor what the bright spots would end up being (Twitter adoption, explosion of iPhone Apps, and Glee – some of my picks for highlights!)

A stroll through the past year’s brand as business bites ™ posts reveals some of 2009’s more memorable moments and movements:

January 5th – “no money, no problem”  I started the year with an optimistic outlook, calling the “brand as business” approach “the biggest opportunity for brands” because it transforms brand-building from a discrete, costly, and subjective activity into the most critical way of managing and growing a business.  Little did I know how many leaders would end up completely neglecting their brands for the year.

February 6th – “brand you?”  Thanks to the tanking economy, many people found themselves looking for work.  Pundits pounced on their misfortunes, promoting personal branding as a way for folks to package and sell themselves.  I became concerned that this development might trivialize brands in general, so I wrote this post to remind everyone that brand-building, whether for individuals or brands, depends on increasing the value you deliver and how you do it.

May 3rd – “5 brands we would miss: a series”  Kicking off Q2, 24/7 Wall ran an article outlining twelve brands that were likely to see their demise in the year’s downturn.  I started a blog series which highlighted a few brands from the list and explained on why I would miss them.  It’s interesting to note that only one of the five I wrote about (Saturn) ended up disappearing.

July 9th – “free to be free”  As introduced by Chris Anderson in his  book “Free,” the “free economy” took off this year and commerce will never be the same.  We’re witnesses to tectonic shifts in the way businesses make money and the innovation of brand new business models.  This post outlines my thoughts on how Free should and shouldn’t be used.

September 1st – “starbucks went changin’ — best blogpost revisited”  Starbucks made the headlines several times this year.  From starting the year off on shaky ground, to testing an unbranded re-brand (15th Avenue Coffee and Tea), to introducing VIA an instant coffee product, the venerable coffee chain sparked many a conversation.  Perhaps the most exciting for me came from this post in my best blogpost contest in which the winner stated, “Rather than trying to be all coffee shops to all people, it makes more sense for Starbucks to focus on the core of their brand, and then to make sure that they always do that well.”

October 22nd – “brand documentaries”   This post outlined an idea for a new brand tool (brand documentaries which would be used by all brand stakeholders to enhance their brand understanding) and sparked great feedback and new ideas on my blog and on Twitter – and the discussion even continues on today on LinkedIn.  And that’s what’s so remarkable.  It’s encouraging to see the widespread interest in new tools for use in today’s brand context as well as the willingness to collaborate and share ideas in order to create them.  And it’s amazing that we now have the social Web to facilitate this kind of collaboration and dialogue.

October 26th – “the business reset button”  Early signs of a recovery emerged in Q3 and as business leaders started returning their attention to growth, I returned to advocating for a new management strategy – one that’s more in tune with the changing market and optimizes the company’s core operating system in meeting demand.  I wrote a paper and introduced a new keynote presentation on “brand as business” ™ the ultimate business reset button.

November 30th – “ode to black friday”  Given the dismal results retailers posted for most of the year, many started this holiday season desperate for sales. I wrote this ditty to express my personal fatigue with their emphasis on deep discounts and deals.  We now know that business has come back at a moderate clip, but I remain concerned about the long-term damage caused by retailers’ over-reliance of sales and discounts.

And this is where we find ourselves now — on a slow and bumpy road to recovery, but a recovery nonetheless.  I hope this recap has shown that, although there was a lot in 2009 that we’d like to forget about or do over, there have been some glimmers of hope and new ways of working have emerged which will propel us forward.  As we close the books on the past year, let’s preserve the best and reinvent the rest.

Hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season!  (brand as business bites will resume on January 4th.)

Today we come to the end of the “5 Brands We Would Miss” series.  Throughout the week we’ve looked at some of the brands on 24/7 Wall’s list of “Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear,” exploring what we would miss if they went away. 

Monday covered Budget, Tuesday Saturn, Wednesday Crocs, and yesterday Palm.  I had a hard time deciding which of the remaining brands on 24/7 Wall’s list should make this last entry.  There’s Old Navy with its quirky brand personality and product assortment, Esquire magazine which fueled the metrosexual movement, and Chrysler a brand with such a rich history.  But in the end, I decided I would miss Eddie Bauer the most.

Yes, Eddie Bauer now seems like just a run-of-the-mill apparel brand with unexceptional stores and merchandise — but it wasn’t always this way.

The company was  founded by Eddie Bauer — a real person, actually a real outdoorsman–  in 1920 (that’s before REI, 1930′s; and Patagonia, 1950′s.)  He invented the down jacket which got patented in 1940.  Back then, Eddie Bauer was a true outdoor brand, outfitting the expedition in which Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest.

Then the company lost its way, as it was bought and sold a couple of times.  As Eddie Bauer CEO Neil Fiske explained, “Just as much as we’ve lost the identity of the Eddie Bauer brand, we’ve really lost the identity of the Eddie Bauer guy. The Eddie Bauer guy was an adventurer, he’s an outdoor guy, rugged, and over that period…the brand just became more and more women-focused and walked away from the men’s business, the gear business. It became a less interesting brand for men.”

The company is now back on track – with a new management team, new merchandising strategy, and a renewed focus on the brand’s heritage and credentials as an outdoor outfitter.  With such an authentic platform and with demographic/lifestyle trends working in its favor, I believe a relaunch of the brand would be a success.

But the brand may go out of business before year-end, as 24/7 Wall predicts — and we will miss out on what could be the revival of a great brand.  Am I right to be bullish about Eddie Bauer or just a sucker for a good brand story?  Please use the comments to let me know whether or not you’d miss the brand and why.

And while you’re at it, let me know whether or not you’d miss any of the other brands from the 24/7 Wall list (the ones in bold are the ones I’ve suggest we would miss the most.)

1. Budget
2. Borders
3. Crocs
4. Saturn
5. Esquire Magazine
6. Old Navy
7. Architectural Digest Magazine
8. Chrysler
9. Eddie Bauer
10. Palm
11. AIG
12. United Airlines (or US Air or American Airlines)

I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Thanks for participating the series!

For those of you just joining, my blog posts this week are a series of “5 Brands We Would Miss.”  The series explores what we would miss if some of the brands on 24/7 Wall’s list of “Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear” did indeed disappear. So far we’ve covered Budget, Saturn, and Crocs. Today’s post is devoted to Palm. 

And it’s a post based purely on my personal story — a story about an attraction that started hesitantly, grew to a deep passion, and then ended with a broken heart.  If it seems like I had a love affair with Palm,I suppose I’m guilty as charged.

You see, although according to 24/7 Wall, “Palm has been at death’s door for some time,“  up until 6 months ago I had been holding out for the brand to stage a comeback.  After all I have been a loyal Palm user for practically my whole professional career.

I remember back in the mid-90′s hesitantly giving up my Franklin Covey binder for a Palm PDA.  After a few months of awkward transition, I was a bonafide Palm convert — with the PDA I could do so much more than paper-based organizer and the user-interface became so natural to me.  I was such a Palm enthusiast, I actually bought one of those keyboards to attach to my PDA so that I could take notes more quickly with it

(as you can imagine, this did wonders for my image as a geek!)

When Palm introduced the Treo, I quickly acquired the device and it took my “digital lifestyle” to new heights as I maximized the integration of my PDA and cellphone.  Other brands’ smartphones just couldn’t compare with Palm’s intuitive interface, excellent reliability, and great design (back then RIM’s Blackberry devices seemed big and clunky, compared to the Treo’s sleek profile.)  Even after Apple introduced the iPhone, I stayed loyal to Palm since it had served me so well for so many years.

I admit I started to get jealous of all the functionality made possible by new versions of the Blackberry and iPhone, but I held out for Palm to introduce its own multimedia, app-rich device…I held out, that is, until my Treo suddenly decided to give up the ghost last November.  One day, it literally just stopped working — no explanation, no warning, nothin’!

Despite this mistreatment (undeserved, I must add), I had fully intended on purchasing another Palm device to replace it, but I just couldn’t justify doing so after I looked at competitive products.  Palm’s interface, previously so intuitive, suddenly seemed outdated; the product’s design was now the big and clunky one; and the lack of applications seemed limiting.  So with much regret, I decided to make a change.

Now I am as addicted to my Blackberry as I was to my Treo, maybe even more — and when I read stories about Palm’s new Pre, I feel a tinge of nostalgia and think of what might have been if the Pre had come along sooner.

Palm will always be my first love — it opened a whole new world to me and enabled me to live my life better.  And that’s why I would miss the brand.  Thanks for listening to my story — I feel like I’ve just been to therapy!

This is the third in a series of blog posts on “5 Brands We Would Miss.”  The series, based on 24/7 Wall’s list of “Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear,” is exploring what we would miss as a result of some of brands’ demise.  Today, it’s Crocs.

Yes, Crocs — those so-ugly-they’re-pretty shoes that were all the rage a couple of years ago.  24/7 Wall reports, “In the fourth quarter of 2008, Crocs lost $43 million after making $55 million in the same period the year before…Crocs won’t make it through the year.”

How disappointing!  I would miss Crocs for 3 reasons:

1.  That such an “hideous” shoe (as it was deemed by critics like the ones who launched the ihatecrocs.com website) could become so popular defied logic and proved that age-old maxim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” still holds true.  Although I never took to the shoes myself, I was inspired by the brand’s boldness to declare “Ugly can be beautiful” in their ads.

2.  Crocs defied the typical trajectory of fashion brands, and in doing so challenged the way trends develop.  The brand first took off in the midwest and then, much to the chagrin of many fashionistas, spread to the coasts.  And the brand’s popularity lasted far longer than critics expected.  I consider Crocs a maverick brand.

3.  The brand has so much potential.  Crocs’ product values (lightweight, comfortable, fashionable, affordable price) combined with the company’s operational design (short manufacturing lead times enables them to quickly meet changing customer demand) makes the brand perfectly poised to capture and maintain consumer appeal.

How about you?  Are you sorry to see Crocs go, or are you sighing a “good riddance?”  Please comment.  Next up:  Palm.

Saturn is today’s entry in the blog series on “5 Brands We Would Miss.” I’m running the series by posting each day this week about a brand from 24/7 Wall’s list of “Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear.” I have been giving my thoughts on what we would miss as a result of the brand disappearing and inviting readers (you!) to comment as well.

Saturn was a no-brainer for inclusion in the series.  After all I and others (including Newsweek, Martin Bishop, LA Times, Greg Goebel)  have previously written about the sad state of the brand.  So, let me just recap the 3 main points that have been made about why Saturn was such great brand:

• a bold brand mission:  “to develop and produce an American-made small car that will be fully competitive with the best of the imports … [and] affirm that American ingenuity, American technology and American productivity can once again be the model and the inspiration for the rest of the world,” as described by Roger Smith at its launch.
• a revolutionary customer experience at the dealership: not just hassle-free, “haggle-free”
• products designed with their target in mind: the company knew what its Gen X target audience wanted in a car and it showed in their initial product designs

Although the company ended up abandoning these and other elements of “the Saturn way” and the brand has become only a shadow of its former self, Saturn will be missed nonetheless.  Agree?

Yesterday I explained that I’m devoting my blog posts this week to a series on “5 Brands We Would Miss.”  The series, prompted by 24/7 Wall’s list of “Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear,” is intended to explore what we would miss as a result of some of brands’ demise.  Today, it’s Budget.

24/7 Wall explains the problems Avis/Budget faces:  “As the travel industry continues to falter, problems at Avis/Budget are going to get worse…Avis/Budget will find it impossible to support the costs of maintaining two brands. The Budget brand will have to be eliminated.”

Some may argue that the Budget brand should have been eliminated when Avis’s owner Cendant first acquired it back in 2002 — but I will miss Budget as a consumer and as a brand strategist.

As a consumer, I have consistently received good, reliable customer experiences from Budget — particularly in comparison to its primary competitor, Dollar.  And I believe consumers have benefited from the healthy competition between Budget and Dollar.

As a brand strategist, I’ve found it interesting to observe the management of the two brands, Avis and Budget, by one company.  The company has tried to position Avis as a business travelers’ brand and Budget as the local market/leisure traveler brand.  Although the consolidation of back office functions must have created some efficiencies for the two brands, apparently other operational costs must not have been offset — after all, the selection of cars/trucks, services, locations, etc. all had to be different for the two brands.

But does this mean it is just too much to expect one (non-fast moving consumer goods) company to be able to support two brands with completely different positioning?  I suppose we won’t have the opportunity to find out if Budget is folded.

And that’s why I will miss it.  What do you think?  Are we really losing anything by the departure of the Budget brand?  Please let me know.  And look for tomorrow’s post on why we would miss Saturn.

24/7 Wall recently ran an article outlining “Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear.”  They examined 100 “large brands facing troubled futures” and compiled a list of 12 brands that they believe will not survive until the end of 2010.  While the piece outlined the reasons for the brands’ pending demise, I was more interested in what we might lose as a result of the brands’ disappearance.

The brands seemed to call for something like John Moore‘s popular blog series “Would You Miss…“  Occasionally, John names a business and invites readers to respond whether or not they would miss the brand if it were to go out of business — and why.  John was gracious enough to let me riff off his blog and do a series of my own on the imperiled brands identified 24/7 Wall.

So starting tomorrow and for the rest of this week, I’ll be selecting a brand from the list each day and writing a brief commentary on why I would miss it — I would love to hear your reactions to my selections and rationale, as well as your thoughts on which brands you would miss and why.  For now, here’s the 24/7 Wall’s list:

1. Avis/Budget
2. Borders
3. Crocs
4. Saturn
5. Esquire Magazine
6. Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic
7. Architectural Digest Magazine
8. Chrysler
9. Eddie Bauer
10. Palm
11. AIG
12. United Airlines, US Air, or American Airlines

First up:  Avis/Budget — look for the post tomorrow!