Last week I started a series about my favorite brand resources.  Last Friday’s post reviewed 5 of my favorite brand books; today it’s brand blogs.

This is probably by far the hardest entry of the series, because there are so many great brand blogs — narrowing it down to 5 is a difficult task.  I decided to use some specific criteria to aid in my selection:

• the blog has to be primarily about brands/branding — there are some great blogs on related topics (marketing, business strategy, communications, social media, marketing to women, sustainability, etc.), but this list is focused on brand resources.
• it has to be a blog, not an aggregator of blogs or other content — I regularly consult several aggregators (like Alltop and FutureLab’s Marketing & Strategy Innovation), but I’m only including the actual source content in this list.
• the blog writer/owner is an individual (vs. a group/firm/agency) — I struggled with whether or not to apply this criterium, but since I know from personal experience what it takes to maintain a blog by oneself and thus I have a greater appreciation for those that are, I decided to include it.   Plus I needed to narrow down the plethora of choices and so this is one way to do it (I am considering doing a favorite brand blogs part 2 which would only include blogs by groups/firms/agencies — let me know if you’d be interested in this.)

Now onto the list:

1.  Tom Fishburne’s  blog — Tom, a “management cartoonist” and creator of Brand Camp cartoons, is also a Managing Director at method (the designed — in every sense of the word — home products company).  This blog captures the creativity and pragmatism of these different, yet complementary roles.

Most of Tom’s blogposts start with a cartoon that pokes fun at the stupid things we brand marketers say and do, and then provides insights and ideas on the same topic.  For example, a recent post featured a cartoon of the “view from marketing” and challenged marketers to combat the myopic, egotistical, and insular thinking which we all fall into at times.  I love the elegant way Tom uses humor to make his points.

2.  Brand Autopsy — by John Moore — Although this entire blog is really good, I consider it one of my favorites because of its “Would You Miss” series.  In the series, John poses the question:  Would You Miss X?, with X being a brand.  Readers are invited to post responses to the question, with prompts from John like, “Does X provide such a unique product and customer experience that we would be saddened if it didn’t exist?” and “Does X forge such unfailing emotional connections with its customers that they would fail to find another [insert category] that could forge just as strong an emotional bond?”

Brands in the series include Costco, Ace Hardware, and Dairy Queen.  I love the challenge of thinking through the role and value of the brand in question — and I always find the readers’ responses amusing.

3.  Brand Mix — by Martin J. Bishop — Martin describes his blog as “branding stories, ideas, thoughts and observations” and I enjoy this milieu of insights and information.  One feature of the blog which I really like is “SOTB” (Six of the Best.)  Every week, Martin writes a post which recaps 6 noteworthy news items, posts, articles, and events.

Each SOTB has a theme, like the recent “Authenticity” edition which featured brief notes and links to items such as the letter from Tony Hsieh, Zappos‘ CEO, to his employees announcing the Amazon deal, a NYT article about the high-tech swimsuits that seemed to fuel recent victories, and an NPR piece on Jay-Z‘s new campaign on authenticity.  Although usually by the time a SOTB is published I’ve seen at least a few of the items included in it, the post usually prompts me to think more critically about them relative to the SOTB theme.

4.  Brand Tags — by Noah Brier — While not technically a blog, this project is fascinating.  The way it works:  visitors to the site are shown the logo of a company and are asked them to type in the first word or phrase that popped into their head upon seeing the logo.  Then the results are displayed in a word cloud (most common responses in giant type size and less frequent ones in proportionately diminishing point sizes.)

At the time of this writing, over 1,000 brands are in the project — everything from Amazon to Aston Martin, M&Ms to Medieval Times, and Pixar to Priceline.  The results are far from scientific, but I bet they’re pretty close to what you’d learn in formal brand perception research — and they’re revealing in content and format.

5.  If That Were My Brand — by Martin Lindstrom — This is a new blog which asks its readers, “Have you ever looked at a brand in the news and thought ‘if I were brand manager I’d do things very differently’? Well, now’s your chance. Every week we’ll be posting a real-life branding challenge and inviting you to give us your thoughts on what you’d do if that were your brand…”

I love this idea because the posts and responses are so provocative.  For example, one blogpost offered up Whole Foods after CEO John Mackey declared, “we sell a bunch of junk” — it spurred a slew of constructive criticism and ideas to reinvigorate and refocus the brand.  I’m going to be watching this blog to see whether or not it stays on point and how it evolves, but for now, I’m a fan.

Thank you to the writers/owners of these blogs.  You are a source of insight and inspiration to me!

PLEASE don’t be offended if your blog is not listed here — as I said earlier, it was really hard for me to limit the list to 5.  If I didn’t list your blog but I regularly comment on it or tweet about it or have included you in the blogroll on my blog, then you know I hold you and your blog in high esteem.  It’s truly a privilege to have access to so much great thinking and to learn from so many perspectives.

Thanks for reading!  Please let me know some of your favorite brand blogs — and then check back next Friday for the next post in the series – favorite brand articles.

related posts:

• brand disappointments — featuring guest posts by some of the above-named bloggers
• brand camp, give me s’more — about Tom Fishburne’s latest book
• favorite brand books

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!

Here’s another post on brand disappointments — this is a series in which I’ve asked brand experts to discuss brands that could have been really good, but have failed to live up to their potential. This week’s post is from John Moore, of Brand Autopsy fame.  John’s speaking and writing is always filled with provocative insights about brands, marketing, and management — I hope you enjoy his take on a brand disappointment.

A regular feature on the Brand Autopsy blog is the “Would You Miss” series. This is where a business is put on the examining table and readers respond if they would miss the brand if it were to go out of business.

The question is simple; however, the implications are anything but simple.

Businesses that would be missed if they ceased to exist have obviously formed an emotional connection with customers. Such emotional connections with businesses help fuel sales when the economy is good and conversely, help sustain the vitality of a business when the economy is bad.

Businesses that would not be missed have failed to make meaningful connections with people and are in danger of becoming irrelevant in the marketplace. (Not a good place to be in any economic climate.)

As marketers, it is our job to assist in forming emotional connections between businesses and customers. Forming those connections is easy in theory, but difficult in reality.

Nearly 20 brands, ranging from UPS to The Cheesecake Factory to Crate & Barrel to Pizza Hut, have been featured in the “Would You Miss” series. The comments have been brutal to these brands with people declaring they wouldn’t be missed at all.

Interestingly, just one brand included in this series has emphatically formed emotional connections with customers and would be dearly missed … DAIRY QUEEN.

The responses from readers were fascinating. Almost every commenter said they would dearly miss Dairy Queen if it were to no longer exist. Many comments touched upon wonderful childhood memories of visiting Dairy Queen for soft serve ice cream, Dilly Bars, and Blizzards. Other comments shared sentiments about the realness and heritage of a classic Dairy Queen experience.

Digging deeper into the comments you realize the untapped potential of the Dairy Queen brand. Readers talked about how they already miss Dairy Queen because recent rebranding efforts have squeezed out much of the endearing old-school essence of the brand.

I’m sure Dairy Queen’s internal customer research findings detail the brand gap between what their customers want and what the company is delivering.

In the comments section of the post, Denise summarizes the brand gap dilemma Dairy Queen faces by writing, “It’s too bad the company seems more interested in modernizing the brand vs. tapping into the rich emotional connection people have with [the] brand they grew up with.”

And Oran writes this, “For me DQ just gets lost in the noise. I see their new ads, but have yet to have a single one make me think twice about stopping in.”

Dairy Queen has passed the “Would You Miss” test. However, by refusing to fully embrace its old-school heritage, Dairy Queen is failing to live up to its full potential as a brand.

Thanks for great entry, John (and I’m not just saying that because you quoted me!)  You’ve made me think of other “old-school” brands that have lost their luster — like Corvette or A&W Rootbeer.

Check in next Monday for the next in the brand disappoinments series — I’ll post other stuff during the week.

This is one in a series of posts about brands have failed to live up to their potential — from Jonathan Salem Baskin, author of Branding Only Works on Cattle, the “dim bulb” blog, and Ad Age/CMO Strategy column.  Jonathan has taught me a lot through his insightful analyses of brands and businesses — and he’s entertained me with his dry wit and occasional rant.  What I appreciate most is that, along with his critique Jonathan provides thought-starters for how to do things better — his post below is no exception.

I’ve asked Jonathan to share his thoughts on a brand disappointment  — he chose Facebook.

From Jonathan:

I know, I know.  You’re already thinking that the Facebook brand is a poster child for the social media movement.  Everybody and their brother (or third-cousin, or that dork from high school who needed to be avoided like the plague) has a page, and probably checks it at least somewhat regularly.  Also, founder Mark Zuckerberg is a famous brand, right?  Like a post-bust market proto-Steve Jobs, or something.

Only I say not really, and so what?

Functionally, Facebook is a glorified address book combined with a chatroom, allowing for incessant updates that create an experience of intrusion that is glowingly labeled ambient awareness.  It’s great, for sure: I post my daily Dim Bulb essays, created a page for my new book, and I occasionally comment on news from a friend (or get a funny little comment on mine).  I was particularly involved right after I first opened my account, trolling my address book and failing memory to reconnect with all of those names from my past that had otherwise slipped from my daily life.  Done.

Now, I’m sort of running out of things to do.

There seems to be a usage curve based on social media functionality, and I’d suggest that it’s the inverse of 1) total participation numbers, and 2) number of functions or add-ons.  It was fun the first or second time I was gifted or poked, but now I just ignore that stuff (and usually de-friend whatever numbnut bothered me).  I’m ambiently aware of the things people I barely know are doing, but for the life of me, I can’t see any reason why I should care.  Awareness is certainly not the same thing as recognition, let alone relevance.

I’m reminded of the fun I once had receiving and then forwarding jokes and funny video links via email.  It was a blast…and then it got old.  For that matter, I remember the thrill of downloading every song I could even think of via Napster.  Finally, I owned that Bay City Rollers song I’d remembered from high school, although I’d lived a productive and fulfilling life without ever hearing it again thereafter.  So I proceeded to continue ignoring it on my hard drive.

I worry the trend with such functionally-based technology tools is to skew heavily to the ambient part, and not so much on the awareness end.  The functional attributes of the Facebook brand could become a part of the background of my day, just ahead of the buzzing I hear from my fridge when I choose to hear it.  What makes the brand unique?  From an functional perspective, not much.

Conceptually, the Facebook brand is even more dicey.

It’s original brand proposition was that it was only open to college students, so it provided some protection from the vast wash of numbnuts who might otherwise want to look at your pictures, or chat with you.  But now it’s available to anyone, or to anything, as corporations can issue pages, run promotions, etc.  Lurkers are still somewhat stimied, but commerce isn’t.  Facebook’s owners are madly trying to figure out how to exploit…er, monetize…its members, just as some members are already working hard to exploit one another.

So is the Facebook brand about being safe, or transparent, or useful, or responsible, or what?  I’d suggest that there are no obvious or meaningful brand attributes that differentiate it, or that preclude it from slipping into the miasmic muddle of purposelessness that embraces MySpace, Second Life, and most other mainstream social networks.  It’s WOW without trolls, or Eve Online without spaceships.

It doesn’t have to be this way, however.

Facebook could adopt and promote specific behaviors that define its brand, and establish a framework for its user participation and future growth.  It’s not a marketing or branding challenge, per se, but rather a business strategy question: how to create, via real commitments and actions, a brand purpose that defied the general trend toward becoming generic (and losing out to the next tool embarking on the same path)?

Here are four starter ideas to illustrate what I mean:

Become a truly user-controlled referral community: Instead of selling commercial conversation to businesses, why not let users own it, a la eBay?  People could recommend things to one another, and receive credibility rankings (or some other accrued value).  Members could opt in or out of such activities.

Provide platforms for multimedia: Go one step past YouTube and merge membership with art, thereby creating user-controlled channels for original music, video, and audio works.  Make Facebook the brand that excludes professional art; make it the tool for everyone else to use.

Give up management authority to the collective: Transform Facebook into one gigantic town hall, and give members the responsibility (not just the opportunity) to vote on activities, allowable tools, functional additions, etc.

Monetize membership, not eyeballs: Figure out ways to make members want to pay (or subscribe) to Facebook, instead of trying to exploit their visits.  Think public television…what would the brand have to deliver/stand for in order for it to be valuable to people?

Fundamentally, though, the business would have to function differently in order to claim and substantiate its branding.  There’s little evidence that such actions are likely.  It’s just too easy to quip about members and time spent on the site, and relegate the issue of finding a sustainable, long-term business proposition to some future inevitability.

But that future is not a guaranteed outcome; in fact, the evidence is that, without real brand behaviors, the Facebook brand proposition has already reached its peak (and perhaps passed it?).

Now is the time for it to put a stake in the virtual firmament, and make the brand stand for something(s) real, different, and meaningful.

Good stuff, Jonathan — thanks for your post.  I’m particularly intrigued by the membership monetization idea – I’ve often thought that the problem with sites like Facebook is that they’re free, thus falling squarely in the category of you get what you pay for.

Jonathan and I would love to hear your feedback — and next Monday:  John Moore offers his thoughts on another brand that has failed to live up to its potential — can’t wait!

What do Lindsay Lohan,

the universal remote,

and the Bush administration

have in common?

They are all examples of things that could have been great but have ended up not living up to their potential.

Many brands have also turned out to be phenomenal disappointments.  The list of brands that fall into the category of wasted potential is longer than the list of Lohan’s missteps — and the reasons behind brand disappointments are as confounding as why someone never developed a universal remote that people could actually use.

But, for this, the inaugural post in a series of brands that have failed to live up to their potential, I’ll offer up a single example — GNC.  Yep, the brand of those 1500-square foot strip mall stores that sell vitamins, supplements, and sport nutrition products.

It’s no secret that demand for products that support a healthy lifestyle has skyrocketed in recent years — global nutrition is now a $228 billion industry.  And GNC Corporation, the company behind the GNC brand, says it’s “dedicated to helping consumers Live Well.”

But, what does GNC stand for?  I mean, I know the letters stand for General Nutrition Center, but what does the brand stand for?  The company has over 4800 retail locations in the U.S. alone, and yet the brand doesn’t seem to offer anything differentiating or compelling.  The shopping experience is unmemorable, the little advertising and promotion they do is generic, and other than a private label product line that offers common products at a discount, their product assortment lacks uniqueness.

It seems drugstores and warehouse clubs have taken over the mainstream vitamin market and Whole Foods has become the outlet of choice for specialty health and wellness products.  Even grocery stores now carry more power bars and protein drink mixes than my local GNC.

This has left GNC without a reason for being.  And it’s such a shame because the company has the history, focus, and distribution to be a great brand.

I’ve invited brand experts to contribute their thoughts on other brands that have failed to live up to their potential.  In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from luminaries like:

Jonathan Salem-Baskin (author of Branding Only Works on Cattle, the “dim bulb” blog, and Ad Age column),

John Moore (former Whole Foods and Starbucks marketer and now of Brand Autopsy fame),

Tom Fishburne (Brand Camp cartoonist and UK Managing Director for method products),

and others.

I’m so looking forward to learning from — and commiserating with — these folks about brands that could be really great.  I’m sure there will be lessons for all of us to learn.  Please check back next Monday for the next in this series on brand disappointments (I’ll still post other stuff during the week.)

Last week, Whole Foods announced its dismal 4th quarter results — net income for the quarter fell 96% to $1.5M and comparable store sales (the key metric for retail business health) increased only 0.4% vs. an 8.2% increase in the prior year.  My colleague, John Moore, said it best when describing the results as “downright ugly.”

The news made me wonder how Whole Foods’ brand nemesis, Trader Joe’s, is doing in these tough times for retailers.  Since TJ’s is privately held, it’s difficult to find any information about their current performance.  But a BusinessWeek article last February reported TJ’s sales at an impressive $6.5 billion in last year and said the consulting firm TNS Retail Forward estimated the chain generates sales in the neighborhood of $1,300 per square foot, double the supermarket industry average.

And if my local TJ’s is any gauge, the company is weathering the economic storm just fine — the aisles are still packed with savvy shoppers pretty much any time/day I’m there and I haven’t seen the price increases that other retailers have tried to sneak in.  If anyone has any information on TJ’s business performance, I’d love to hear it.

For now I thought I’d use this post to submit what I believe has made TJ so successful that it appears to be recession-proof — and that is, of course, it’s brand. The company has carefully and consistently built its brand using 3 levers:

-  discriminating selection — like any specialty retailer, the value of the TJ brand is primarily its editing — that is, reducing the number of millions of choices in the world down to the ones that are right for its target market — in some cases, that means selecting the one offering that will meet the needs of most (you’ll find just one kind of laundry detergent at TJs); in others, that means providing a wide selection in a hot category to provide innovation and choice to its customers (they have 10+ kinds of hummus — including a chipotle variety which I highly recommend!)  TJ’s demonstrates its customer intimacy by getting its selection right.

-  superior private label — TJ’s has known all along what most retailers are just now figuring out — that is, private label is not just a way to provide lower priced products to customers — it’s a means for introducing products that are innovative, higher-quality, and most importantly, exclusive to the outlet.  The lower price is just the icing on the private-label-as-brand-builder cake.  Through these offerings, TJ has established the eco-friendly, wholesome/natural, and ethnic taste attributes of its brand.

-  “no-fluff” personality — from its quarterly Fearless Flyer published on newsprint to those hand-written shelf talkers to its zero-attitude products like Two-Buck Chuck (er, I mean, Charles Shaw wine), TJ’s no-frills, no-fluff brand personality comes through everything they do.  By operationalizing their brand attitude through their products, merchandising, employee uniforms, service approach (e.g., the way they conveniently pack 100 things into one shopping bag without mis-handling or squashing any of them), etc., TJ’s creates a distinct and compelling shopping experience.  Have you ever noticed that no other store looks or feels quite like a Trader Joe’s?  And don’t you feel a little smarter, a little more in-the-know when you shop there?

So, as a customer and a brand person, I’m a TJ’s brand fan — I suspect there might be a few million others out there as well.

Yesterday while attending Richmond Event’s Digital Symposium for a speaking engagement (see express vs. operationalize), I had the opportunity to hear some other great speakers.  This is the first of at least a couple of downloads from those other presentations.

First up, John Moore from Brand Autopsy — his talk, Thriving Outside the Marketing Matrix, contained great encouragement to companies to choose the “red pill” (as Neo in the Matrix movie did) and unleash the potential of social media.

Among his advice were 10 ideals for “how any business can embrace and enliven the consumer-driven online conversation that is happening today and tomorrow”:

1.  be everywhere customers expect us to be

2.  only confident brands should swallow the red pill — confident, meaning you believe you deliver better value so you shouldn’t be afraid to invite customers’ comments

3.  what happens online remains online (great soundbite:  Google never forgets)

4.  if you hide the truth, someone is going to find it

5.  social media helps smaller companies look bigger and bigger companies get smaller — John talked the “paradox of growth” — the smaller you are, the bigger you must look; the bigger you are, the smaller you must get — social media helps do both

6.  earned opinions trump bought impressions

7.  participating in the online conversation is a company’s best recruiting tool

8.  blog or be blogged

9.  blog stands for Better Listings On Google (I guess John borrowed this one from Rick Bruner)

10.  it’s about progress, not perfection

Some real gems, huh?!  I found his talk a great way to start off a day of learning about how to use new Internet technologies and what to use them for.