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

So far we’ve covered GNC, Facebook, and Dairy Queen in our chronicles of brands which have failed to live up to their potential — today Tom Fishburne calls out a brand disappointment based on his own personal nightmare with Vonage, the VOIP provider.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of following Tom, let me introduce you to this astute marketer with an uncanny sense of humor — he’s the guy behind the Brand Camp cartoons, which he writes/draws in addition to his “real job” as managing director of method products.  (Last fall I posted about Tom’s new book.)  In response to his post, perhaps we’ll hear from others about the ways Vonage has failed to live up to its potential.

This close to Valentine’s day, I feel compelled to share a brand love story gone awry.  It’s the classic “boy meets brand, brand over-promises, brand under-delivers, boy tells everyone he knows to avoid brand” cautionary tale.  In short, it’s the story of a “one night brand”.  Far too often, brands put all of their investment and focus on the up-front advertising and forget that the relationship doesn’t end at the point of purchase.

When I first heard about Vonage, the VoIP Internet phone service, it was love at first site.   The proposition was brilliant.  For a flat monthly fee, I could make international calls over an internet line.  Not only that, I could plug in my Vonage box anywhere in the world, and instantly make and receive calls.  I was in the process of moving from California to England, and I found this incredible.  Friends and family could call my Bay Area number, and my phone would ring in my London flat.  Sure, I’d have to put up with telemarketer calls at three in the morning, but this was a small price to pay for such an amazing service.

I was ready to become a Vonage groupie and tell the world.  I willingly plunked down my credit card number and signed up.  For me, the brand relationship was just beginning.  For Vonage, I quickly discovered, the deed was consummated and I was soon left out in the cold.

The proverbial morning after, I discovered just how cold.  The trouble started when the box simply didn’t work once we arrived in England.  No dial tone whatsoever.  We had to borrow a pay-as-you-go mobile phone to ring customer support.  A half an hour on hold (paying 50p a minute) resulted in a conversation with an apathetic agent armed only with a script that basically advised us to turn off the box and turn it back on.  The following month twisted and turned like a Kafka novel.  Call center agents progressively blamed our phone, hung up on us, claimed they couldn’t find our account, refused to connect us with anyone technical, blamed the cord, and blamed our internet connection.

Finally, a knowledgeable technical engineer agreed that it sounded like a technical error with the Vonage box.  But, he was only allowed to send a replacement to America.  So, we had a friend back home receive the box, ship it overseas to us, only to discover that the new box wasn’t the right voltage (after we plugged it in and it started smoking).

The next call center agent suggested that I sign up for a British account, cancel my American account, and then they could send me a new Vonage box.  In desperation, I agreed.  The next day, I called to check on the status and learned that I was being charged a hefty cancellation fee.  “But I’m only doing this to finally make my Vonage service actually work.”  The call center manager coldly replied, “but, you’re cancelling your service.  We don’t care why.”

I started searching online and discovered dozens of blog posts from jilted consumers like me.  The Better Business Bureau recorded 3,687 official complaints in one year.  We’ve all been there.  We’ve all been “Vonaged”.  We’ve all fallen in love with brands that flubbed the relationship the morning after.

A week later, I received a letter in the post from Vonage.  Hoping it was an apology from somebody important, I opened it.  It was a direct mail marketing brochure.  Like a lot of brands, Vonage placed its investment in outbound marketing.  I’m sure that it factors into detailed financial calculations on its “customer acquisition cost”.  But, it mystifies me that brands frequent over-invest in outbound marketing and under-invest in simple consumer service.  Consumers that could have been brand advocates become brand detractors instead.

Contrast this whole experience with that of an English smoothie brand called innocent.  In the early days, they had a “banana phone” (literally, a phone shaped like a banana)

in the middle of their office that would ring with consumer calls.  Anyone in the company could answer the phone.  Staff would literally fight over the privilege of answering the phone when it rang to talk to a consumer.  How refreshing would it be if every brand had a “banana phone” that was actually answered by someone who cared or truly worked with the brand?  How more likely would you be to spread positive stories about the brand if they did?

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.)

BusinessWeek’s analysis of “How HP Got Its Wow! Back” reports on a business metric the Company uses that gives me an idea about measuring marketing productivity.

Apparently the new-ish head of the technology company’s PC division, Todd Bradley, has orchestrated a turnaround for the business, increasing market share 4.3 ppts and producing profit margins of 5.5% (which is huge for PCs.)  One of the tactics Bradley has used is a metric called “R&D productivity.”  The article explains:  It measures R&D spending as a percentage of gross margin for each product line. A standard desktop computer with low margins may get one or two innovative features, while a high-end laptop with fat margins would get enough flash to make it stand out. To determine the appropriate R&D level, HP does three-year projections of expected gross margins.

This metric is credited with helping the division strike the right balance between innovation and price, with the success of HP’s new TouchSmart PC (the first touchscreen, all-in-one desktop) as an example.

So, my idea is a “marketing productivity” metric — that is, a way of determining the appropriate amount of marketing spend based on 3-year projections of expected gross margins.  This would mean those products that are likely to produce the most margin would be allocated the most marketing dollars; and low-margin products would get fewer dollars.

On the one hand this approach would limit the common marketing practice of heavily promoting “loss leaders” in order to attract people to your brand, with the hopes of eventually trading them up when it comes time for them to actually make a purchase.

And in some cases, budgeting your marketing dollars according to margin projections would be a self-fulfilling prophecy — after all, how much you spend on marketing should affect the margins you generate.  But your 3-year projections could be made based on normative data, thereby removing the effect of spend.

In doing so, applying a “marketing productivity” metric could be a worthwhile approach.  It would take some of the subjectivity out of marketing budget allocation process, thus assuaging the concerns controllers often have about what seem to be random marketing decisions.  And I would think it would improve marketing ROI (we spent more money and we made more money, assuming the projections were correct) — again something that’s sure to please company leaders.

But perhaps the biggest benefit of utilizing such a metric could be the integration of product development and marketing.  That is, product development decisions could be made simultaneously with marketing decisions — e.g., do we think we can promote these additional features well enough to produce the incremental margin we need in order to include them in the product?  or are they simply add-ons that don’t really make a difference to the customer?

In this way such integration would strengthen the company’s discipline of customer intimacy.  Products would be developed with their relevance to customer needs and wants in mind from the start — vs. the more common approach of engineers and designers creating products based on technological or operational capabilities and then throwing them “over the fence” to the marketing department to figure out how to make them meaningful to customers (cartoon compliments of Tom Fishburne — check out my post on his book!)

What do you think?  Do you think implementing a “marketing productivity” metric makes sense?  I’m eager to hear your thoughts on pros and cons.

Tom Fishburne‘s new book, This One Time, At Brand Camp, is delightful.  Comprised of over 100 cartoons that poke fun at all the wonderfully stupid things we marketers say and think, the book contains some real gems.

I’ll never be able to use the phrase “target market” or “brand loyalty” with a straight face again.

I’ve seen Tom’s cartoons regularly appear in Brandweek and other international journals but never knew the story behind them.  Apparently back in 2002 Tom “started lampooning business in a marketing cartoon called Brand Camp about life on the M&M bowl side of the focus group glass.”  A couple of gigs later, he’s now Senior Marketing Director of Europe for method products (yes, that really cool brand that transformed dishsoap into an object of desire) and cartoons on the side.

Hope you enjoy his work as much as I do — have a laugh on (at?) me!