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?

This post concludes the series on brands that have wasted their potential.  In the past few weeks, we covered:

• GNC — “It’s such a shame because the company has the history, focus, and distribution to be a great brand.“
• Facebook — “There are no obvious or meaningful brand attributes that differentiate it.“
  
• Dairy Queen — “Recent rebranding efforts have squeezed out much of the endearing old-school essence of the brand.”
  
• Vonage — “It’s the classic “boy meets brand, brand over-promises, brand under-delivers, boy tells everyone he knows to avoid brand” cautionary tale.“, and
• Saturn — “In 1994 people bought Saturn for what it stood for. Today it is just another make to be judged on quality and price alone.”

Thanks to my guest contributors who provided provocative insights about how brands that could have been really good ended up failing to live up to their potential.  Their analyses contain great lessons for all brands who may be squandering strong equity or missing opportunities.

And hope for these brands, and others, is not lost — in fact, the following concluding remarks describe how all brands can maximize their potential.  These comments are from Scott Goodson — founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog (the agency behind iconic campaigns such as Coke, Old Navy, Heineken, and the current effort for True North).  The success of his agency speaks to what a talented guy Scott is (and I’m not just saying that because he has been so great to me for so long.)

Scott says, “I would say that any brands that are simply broadcasting to the consumer are not taking advantage of their full potential.  The new battleground is the profusion of media and how to tame and control it, and use it to your advantage to ensure your amazing content actually gets seen by the consumer.  Cultural Movement + Tools = Full Potential.

“I know this is new thinking in the new marketing world that has totally transformed everything, difficult to believe even, but the way things have worked in the past is not way how they can or will work in the future.  The 60 years of advertising that have gone before are not the systems of the future, marketing is today transformed.

“Brands that are taking advantage of their full potential are brands that spark cultural movements, not brands caught in the past.  Today brands can identify an idea on the rise in culture, they can crystallize, lead, curate and sponsor a movement.  Once you have a movement you can do anything in a fragmenting media world.“

Thanks for the inspiration, Scott.  I hope this has been an interesting series for everyone and you have learned as much as I have.

Saturn joins the ranks of formerly esteemed brands like Vonage and Dairy Queen in this series on brands that have failed to live up to their potential.  While practically every domestic automotive brand seems to have fallen short of consumer and/or investor expectations lately, I picked Saturn because the brand clearly had (has?) so much potential and so the stakes seem higher.

Remember back in 1985 when Saturn first launched?  The company was positioned as not just a different kind of car — but “a different kind of car company.”  Company officials explained their singular focus on the people who buy and drive cars.  They instituted a “no haggle” policy at their dealerships; their advertisements expressed the uniqueness of their brand platform.  The company even entered into a groundbreaking agreement with their union workers.

The Saturn cars themselves won all sorts of awards and, more importantly, fanatically loyal customers.  In 1992 Saturn achieved the top rank of new car sales, the first time a domestic brand topped the list.  In 1995 Saturn was ranked #1 in J.D. Powers’ Sales Satisfaction Index Study, a position it would hold for 4 consecutive years.  As testimony to the equity the brand enjoyed, Saturn “homecomings” became legend.

Then Saturn’s parent, General Motors, started to falter.  They cut investment in Saturn,  creating a downward spiral of limited new models and limited marketing spending — so much so that the division was integrated back into GM, despite the leaders’ original promise to operate it separately in an attempt to nurture the brand and shield its operations from the rest of the company.  (Read more of Saturn’s history here.)

After a series of failed new model launches and incongruous brand positionings, G.M. announced last December that it was “exploring alternatives” for Saturn — basically they are looking to sell it or relegate it to a much smaller role in G.M.’s lineup.

Recently an interesting possibility developed:  Saturn dealers are making a move to spin off as an independent distribution arm of the company so that they can sell other automotive brands.  While this may give the impression the dealers have given up on Saturn, it actually might save the brand.  As Martin Bishop, Landor‘s brand strategist and author of a great blog, explains, “It’s the dealership experience that has always been the true differentiator for Saturn…So to create a new business that focuses on the dealerships and allows them to source cars from different manufacturers makes a lot of sense. It plays to the real strength of the brand’s equity.”

Who knows what the future holds for Saturn.  As someone who believes in the power of brands, I certainly hope the company can turnaround the current situation and reclaim its leadership position.  But in the words of a fellow blogger Nigel Hollis (Chief Global Analyst with Millward Brown, the market research company), “In 1994 people bought Saturn for what it stood for. Today it is just another make to be judged on quality and price alone.”

That’s why Saturn is this week’s brand disappointment.