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.)

I’ve noticed something lately — name brand food packaged goods are changing their brand visual identities to what seems to me to be a more generic brand look.  Following the two-times-is-just-a-coincidence-but-three-makes-it-a-trend adage, I offer 3 examples:

• Tropicana orange juice
  

  old carton design

new carton design

• Post Shredded Wheat cereal

old box design

new box design

• Lay’s potato chips

old bag design

new bag design

In each instance, the brand name seems to be de-emphasized, while the product type is more the focus.  I find this an interesting approach, given the battle between private-label and branded goods. Private-label brands are growing in number and market share, in part because of their increased “branded-ness” — cases in point:  Whole Foods‘ 365 Everyday Value brand and Costco‘s Kirkland.  And branded goods have been struggling to fight back.  (I previously posted about this.)

Are branded goods trying to emulate a private-label look in order to compete more effectively on shelf?  Or are they simply going for a more streamlined design and have inadvertently adopted a more generic look?  Either way, it’s a curious approach — one that doesn’t make sense to me.

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.

I recently came across 2 different items that I left me similarly unimpressed.

The first was a sticker on my Hertz rental car folder, announcing the company was now offering to re-fuel my rental at market prices (instead of the $9.99 or whatever they used to charge.)  Upon further investigation, I learned this was part of an “innovative re-fueling program” Hertz introduced last month.   For customers who don’t refill the fuel tank before returning their rentals, Hertz will charge local market fuel prices plus a one-time Refueling Fee of $6.99.

The second was an article about Whole Foods seeking a more budget-friendly image.  Apparently the company is hurting as consumers pull back on discretionary spending, so they’re offering deeper discounts, adding lower-priced items, and emphasizing value in their messaging.  Such efforts are intended to win back customers who’ve defected to lower priced alternatives and to reinvigorate the company with Wall Street who’s pummeled their stock price in the last 24 months.

While there’s a part of me that is glad to see these companies making an effort to help strained customers, I find myself generally underwhelmed.  Basically Hertz is foregoing their usual price gouging which they should be ashamed of — and Whole Foods is waking up to the reality that $39.99/lb triple cream goat cheese is just not on most people’s shopping lists.  These companies — and many others like them which are struggling to maintain their relevance in today’s economy — should have been treating their customers more fairly and offering great value all along.

Brands gain credibility and develop strong relationships with customers when they do the right thing consistently — not just when the chips are down.  Am I wrong?