Seeking Help in Identifying Benchmark Businesses

Brand Autopsy readers … I’m working on a writing project and would like to tap into the wisdom of the blog crowd.

Please help me in identifying benchmark businesses that have seen their market dominant position crumble because of complacency, conservatism, and conceit.

What businesses/brands do you identify with losing their competitive edge because they became content with doing business the same as they had always done it? This act of complacency allowed for an upstart competitor(s) to dethrone the market leader. Any examples come to mind?

How about a few businesses/brands that stopped taking risks and thus lost their leadership position? Any examples come to mind of how a business/brand lost its edge because of conservative decision-making?

Which businesses/brands have you seen where their inflating ego has blinded them from encroaching competition and resulted in the business losing its leadership position to an upstart?

Thanks y’all for your help here. I promise to share more about this writing project in the weeks/months to come.

Comments

[Jorge]

I would say PeopleSoft is a great example of the first and third bullet points of your post. They were the leader in business software for many years, but were complacent about the web, about the changing economics of software delivery, etc. I'm not an insider, but from my vantage-point, the company's collective ego got in their way. They're now owned by Oracle - a company they once viewed as inferior.

[johnmoore (from brandautopsy)]

Thanks Jorge. Peoplesoft is a great example.

[Stephen Pierzchala]

The most glaring example: Microsoft.

smp

[Spike Jones]

General Motors.

So sad. So very, very sad.

And not only have they all but killed the Buick and Pontiac brands, but have so completely diluted the Saturn brand that the amazing culture that defined it is all but gone.

[Karan]

I think Microsoft today is in a sad postion. Google is on fire

[Zane Safrit]

I vote for GM, then Ford and right after that Tivo.

NHL is a glaring example. They took away a season and no one complained.

[johnmoore (from brandautopsy)]

Zane ... the NHL is a great example of egotism crumbling a business.

Spike ... I agree GM has lost its edge. Conservative decision-making has diluted the Saturn brand.

Karen, Stephen ... yeah, MSFT is another example. Thanks.

[Gary Peare]

How about AAA? Here are a just a couple of things they used to be synonymous with, but largely missed the revolution on: maps and driving directions, hotel and restaurant information. Plus consider how services like On-Star make membership redundant.

[Tom Asacker]

Where to start? Trump, Vlasic, Chiquita, KMart, Bethlehem Steel, FAO Schwartz, Prince, Polaroid, Schwinn, TWA, US Air, Owens Corning. Have at 'em John!

[johnmoore (from brandautopsy)]

What a trove Tom! Thanks. And thanks for giving me the opportunity to combine 'trove' with Tom.

[Patrick Hurley]

Motorola

I worked on the Motorola cellular handset business a decade ago for its ad agency at the time, J. Walter Thompson.

At the time, Motorola had a commanding SOM for analog mobile handsets. That market dominance generated incredible arrogance and hubris, however, coupled with general marketing ineptitude. They foist Lee Trevino on us as the company spokesperson because the Motorola senior executives were golf fanatics. Then they tried to persuade us to incongruously include him in campaigns directed to working mothers, etc..).

I'll never forget my boss trying to impart a sense of urgency in Motorola management as to the dangers posed by a relatively small but fast-emerging company called Nokia. In typical fashion, that warning was waved off dismissively. As we all know, Nokia then went on to eat Motorola's lunch.

[tom willerer]

How about Sears, Sony Walkman, Yahoo! Search, Wall Street Journal (paid subscription??). Just a couple thoughts.

[Stephen Macklin]

AT&T

HP

[Kyle Coolbroth]

My vote is for the record labels that were busy suing their customers, while at the same time Apple changed their world forever...

[Patrick]

Oh come on, people, Microsoft? Puh-leaze. Yes it's hip to be down on Microsoft but did you read the criteria for nominations?

Yes, maybe one could argue bullet point three but even then, where has Microsoft lost its leadership position? Firefox? The iPod? Talk to me in a year.

Microsoft may be an imitator, may be late to market, and may have an inflated ego but reports of their death are greatly exaggerated.

[jimmiejo]

I was recently reading Marketing Warfare with it's devotion to the ways of IBM. Ries and Trout couldn't see IBM's fall in the pc world coming. Outdated, overpriced, and underserviced; IBM deserves the honour of being the most stagnant company of our time.

[Matt]

I too was going to hold up IBM as an example of what John is asking for. I don't even know what they do or make anymore (is the Thinkpad still around?).

[Tom]

I worked for a division of Newell Rubbermaid. They as a company have run down more brands with strong leadership positions in the marketplace than can be imagined. Almost every division has lost its leadership position in the marketplace. It is an institution that is trying to cost cut itself into growth.

http://newellco.com

[Harry Joiner]

How about the "RIAA" (Recording Industry Association of America)? They satisfy all three of your criteria.

[Gary Peare]

Oh, another thought. In Kubrick's "2001, A Space Odyssey" there a lots of brands featured (Pan Am, and Bell Telephone come to mind) that are shown onboard the space station. That might be a fun reference...

[Shawn Lea]

KMart

[Harry Joiner]

I'm back for another response: Rosie O'Donnell. Nothing wrong with my first response ("RIAA"), but I just stumbled on to Rosie's Flickr photo album and couldn't help but reminisce about how much my middle-American wife used to LOVE "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" until Rosie became a militant gay rights activist.

Now: There's N-O-T-H-I-N-G wrong with being a gay rights activist. That's not my point. My point is that one should always seek to be "hard on the issues and soft on the people."

Yet unlike Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie was so militant about the gay rights issue that it seeped into her company's editorial platform and alienated her viewership. It seemed like every time we turned on the news, Rosie was pissed off about something -- and that vitriolic image ran counter to the happy-go-lucky, I'm-OK-you're-OK image we saw everyday at 4:30pm.

I know that rather than embrace Rosie's cause, my wife simply stopped watching Rosie's show. Yet she remains a fan of Ellen's.

See http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosie/15300190/

Harry

[[no author]]

Patrick has a point. People have been sounding the death knoll for Microsoft for 20 years, and they'll still be doing it in 2025. I hate that company as much as the next person, but facts are facts: They're alive and well, and nothing gets them down.

Dammit.

Now for my nomination: WordPerfect. If ever there was a great product that was screwed into the ground by neglect and corporate reshuffling, that was it. The downhill slide started when they made a Windows version that was too much like Word, and not enough like the program we'd come to depend on. After that, it was shuttled through a series of foster homes (Borland, Corel,etc.) until today ... well, does it even exist any more?

Also: Harry, that's a good example. We shouldn't forget that celebrities are consumer products too, and their "brand equity" can be squandered just like that of scouring powder.

[Dustin]

Toys 'R Us
Jeffrey the Giraffe has been reduced to more of a mouse over the past two decades. Those guys used to rule the roost in toy purchases. Have you been to one of their stores recently? It's like going into a time warp. Talk about complacency. No innovation whatsoever. You walk in the doors and it feels like you stepped into Great-Aunt Edna's house shortly before she died of old age. I assume that if you peek into the manager's office, he has a guest couch with the plastic still on it.

[Darrin Dickey]

I second Toys-R-Us. No one wants to be a Toys-R-Us Kid anymore.

How about Service Merchandise, Oldsmobile & US Steel?