Musings of a Marketing Maven

The brands I admire most have a long-standing com­mit­ment to their core prin­ci­ples, the things the brand stands for in the mind of con­sumers. Whether you like the brand or not, you know what it stands for.

I sus­pect that one of the rea­sons brands tend to zig and zag so much is the impact of orga­ni­za­tional dynam­ics, or the human desire to make a mark — what hap­pens when a com­pany changes its mar­ket­ing agen­cies, swaps out Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cers, or lacks a brand stew­ard… Because the new mar­ket­ing lead­ers (or agency guys) want to show a dif­fer­ence in their work ver­sus what was done by the prior team, those changes show up in brand expres­sion or a lack of align­ment between “brand DNA” and com­pany behav­ior, or prod­uct functionality.

It’s hard to come up with a list of brands that have stayed true to their core essence. Apple and Ivory soap come to mind… Maybe South­west Airlines.

Unfor­tu­nately, it’s eas­ier to come up with a list of brands that have lost their way. Here are just a few of the once strong brands whose core promise has been diluted over time:

An odd assort­ment, I’d agree, but I can explain why, from my POV, these brands are no longer deliv­er­ing on their essen­tial brand promise.

BMW

Take BMW, for exam­ple. As some­one who grew up lov­ing the respon­sive power and nim­ble han­dling of the orig­i­nal 3-series mod­els, I find their cur­rent 3-series sedans a far cry from the “ulti­mate dri­ving expe­ri­ence” that BMW promises. Adjec­tives like heavy, slug­gish, and slow to respond come to mind instead of “ulti­mate dri­ving experience.”

Unlike BMW’s usual iconic designs, this model is hard to tell apart from other man­u­fac­tur­ers’ sedans at a quick glance. To my eye it’s ungainly and heavy look­ing. (My per­spec­tive comes from long expe­ri­ence as an owner/driver of 3-series mod­els. My first 3-series was the 1985 model, fol­lowed by the 1997, 2000, 2003 and now 2006 mod­els.) To the extent that the BMW brand aspires to “badge sta­tus,” it’s painful to see what has hap­pened to the 3-series.

Ben & Jerry’s

Or take Ben & Jerry’s. I was lucky enough to be in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., in the mid-1980s when the founders of Ben & Jerry’s intro­duced their new “Cherry Gar­cia” fla­vor. The B&J founders showed up at the Con­gres­sional Office Build­ing in rum­pled tweed jack­ets, Birken­stocks — their “Vermont-urban” fash­ion sense — and down-home val­ues. They pro­ceeded to enter­tain the assem­bled sen­a­tors and other politi­cos with an old-fashioned ice cream social. The ice cream tasted great, of course.

Now that their com­pany has been acquired by a big cor­po­rate behe­moth, the ice cream no longer tastes the same. Need­less to say, the quirky per­son­al­ity attrib­utes asso­ci­ated with the founders have largely dis­ap­peared, except in the humor­ous names given to the flavors.

I won­der if a per­cent­age of the prof­its is still donated to char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions? Some­how it’s hard to imag­ine that’s still the case…

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