A brand divided against itself cannot stand. Or can it? The strongest brands are those that remain true to that which made them strong to begin with. The weak are those that forget what made them relevant and lose their way. Seems to me there was a book about that recently. And yet, we have Google, which makes all of its money selling advertising, but doesn’t invest much in advertising for itself. There’s Nike, whose use of recycled materials is often at cross-purposes with its reputation for “performance.”

We now live in a world where Toys ‘R’ Us owns FAO Schwarz and the Penske Automotive Group, a retailer, owns Saturn, a car company. Then again, we live in a country where an African-American man with a Muslim name is President of the United States. These curious bundles of contradictions aren’t purely an American phenomenon, though. In Germany, BMW is encouraging its factory workers to buy the cars they make. Factory workers buying luxury cars! Imagine that. They couldn’t be serious.

Or could they? Oh, probably not. But just think about that for a moment. Google’s strength is its weakness. Nike’s weakness is its strength. BMW may just be smoking something. It is indeed a delicate balance between strengths and weakness where brand identity is concerned — witness the rise of store brands as innovative rivals to national brands. Like much of the rest of marketing, things are not always as they seem, but a world of possibility resides within brand-identity contradictions. What do you think?

To me, the whole Saab thing started the first time I walked into Saab of Westport, and only moments after the sales guy had learned my name, he threw me a set keys and said, "Go for a drive." Instant trust, the likes of which I had never experienced in an auto showroom before ... or since. The car itself was comfortable, and just felt like home (of course, you should see the house where I grew up (pdf link). Saab is often described as "quirky," mainly because the ignition is between the seats. Naturally, this oddity is exactly what sold me on the car.

That was about nine years ago, and back then, the car was snappy. Today, it's crappy. To be fair, the car probably handles as well as it did before -- maybe better. It is probably just as reliable -- I never had any problems with either of my two Saabs. But somewhere, somebody got the strange idea that the headlights should be enrobed in heavy chrome and the tail lights should look like they came out of a gumball machine. There's just no way I was going to sit inside a car that took its visual cues from Willy Wonka. But, until then, Saab had me pegged.

"It was seen as a discerning choice," industry analyst Tim Urquhart told USA Today. "A quality car, but not an obvious statement," adding, "Without being too rude about it, GM sucked all the brand value out of it." Maybe that will change now that Saab's been acquired by Koenigsegg Automotive, a maker of million-dollar sportscars. Christian von Koenigsegg says his goal is indeed to re-connect with Saab's heritage, as "neither a luxury nor a people's car," and with "a bit of postmodern comfort, sport, but with environmental thinking." Whatever that means. What do you think?

It's not every day I buy a nice, new shirt, but it was the only way I could get out of buying a new pair of shoes. It was just one of those little negotiations that makes my life so interesting and really requires no explanation to anyone who knows how I dress. So, I headed down to Main Street with my fashion advisor, who doubles as my daughter. Our first stop was Banana Republic, which oddly enough is my favorite place to buy socks. I figured buying a shirt there ought to be a snap. We head straight for the back of the store, which is where they hide the stuff for men.

Sure enough, there's a wall full of men's shirts. Jackpot. Oh, and a table of them right in front of us, too. As we're standing there, trying to make sense of it all, a young fellow with a hand cart, tilted, with some boxes on it, stops and asks if we need any help. Uh, yeah. I'm looking for a shirt. He appears to be stumped, so I help him out. These are your shirts, right? He nods, informs me that there are more shirts up front, and moves on. Well, these shirts were $79 each and didn't look like anything special.

So, we head up the street to Brooks Brothers, even though the place kind of scares me. We find the shirts (also $79) and are immediately approached by a fancy salesman, which was what I was afraid of. He asks -- what size? -- and I hesitate. He says, "I'll measure you." He does, we find a nice, pin-striped shirt, which he promises never has to be ironed. We'll see. Anyway, he's ringing me up, and asks if I wear suits at work. Um, no. He smiles, tells me his name is Daniel and hands me his card. And I'm thinking, two $79 shirts, one that comes with some help, a promise and a smile. What is Banana Republic thinking? Your thoughts?

One of my favorite things in the whole wide world is to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon wandering through Manny's Music on 48th Street in New York City, also known as Music Row. It's a big, wide-open store, with guitars hanging in every nook and cranny. You can take them down yourself and put them back, without some pesky salesguy bugging you. Unlike a lot of other music stores, you can find your own little corner and play in peace, without feeling like you're being sized up, or down. The guitars aren't necessarily unusual, but the experience certainly is.

Look up, and you might be sitting under a framed receipt, signed by Jimi Hendrix. Look over, and you'll see a wall full of autographed photos from just about every legend of music you could imagine, because they all shopped at Manny's. Look across, and puzzle over the famous, beaten up, broken down yellow guitar, for years used by customers to sample gadgets. One of those customers, George Harrison, wanted to buy the guitar, but Ian Goldrich, Manny's owner, wouldn't sell it. Now it rests, its broken-off peghead at its side, museum-like, in a plexiglas case.

Manny's is -- or was -- wholly unlike the Sam Ash store across the street, which is a cramped and noisy little warren of a store. I say "was" because, while Sam Ash has none of the character of Manny's, it owns Manny's ... and has just killed Manny's. Sadly, Ian Goldrich understands. "The fact is it's still the most famous music store in the world from a historical perspective ... but not from a business perspective," he told the New York Times. The photos, the memorabilia and the yellow guitar have been removed and placed in storage, and the spirit that was Manny's will be replaced by "a giant Sam Ash guitar shop." Damn. Your thoughts?

We just completed a survey of Cool News and Hub readers, in which we invited them to choose the strongest brand identity in a range of categories, based on nothing more than gut-level opinion. We also asked them to pick the strongest brand identity of all time.

After the worldwide vote, with an incredible 100 million votes cast, the winner is ...

Actually we received 523 votes (excluding those from Conway, Arkansas), which is pretty good. Some of the face-offs were lopsided (perhaps predictably) while others were tantalizingly close. On the last, open-ended, question: "If your life depended on picking just one brand identity that is the all-time strongest in the world, which one would it be and why?"

Well, it is Coke -- or perhaps Coke Is It. By a wide margin, too: Coke 32%; Apple 10%; McDonald's 5%; and Nike 4%, The rest were scatted across a wide variety of brands, led by Disney, Kleenex, Marlboro and Harley-Davidson. Others popular choices included the United States of America, Christianity and President Obama. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that Google only received four votes, Target two votes, Microsoft one vote and Walmart no votes.

My favorite was the person who voted for "The Human Race." I'm not sure he or she understood the question exactly, but definitely gets some points for evolved thinking! Don't miss the comments on each of the questions. Some of them are pretty funny. You can access the results here.

I'm also thinking we'll run this survey again next year, with re-matches for some of the closer votes, new opponents to replace some of the weaker ones, and some new face-offs entirely. I'd love to have your thoughts on which brands should go head-to-head next time around! Please post your thoughts below. Thanks.

Clark, South Dakota, a "prairie town of 1,300" just might be pointing the way to the future of retail, using a business model borrowed from the Green Bay Packers, reports Jeff Martin in USA Today (5/20/09). Football fans might remember that the Green Bay Packers franchise got its start when locals got together and "paid $5 a share to be part-owners of the team." To this day, the team is still owned by the community.

Taking a page from that playbook, more than 100 residents of Clark "have purchased $500 shares to finance the opening of the Clark Hometown Variety Store. Their motivation is simple: "We had no place in town to buy a pair of shoelaces or buy socks or underwear or any of those things," says Greg Furness, a shareholder, who also runs the local funeral parlor. They were without a store because the one they had was "underperforming" and shut down by its parent company, Duckwall-Alco Stores, back in 2005.

Since no other corporation was interested in taking a chance on Clark, the townsfolks took a chance on themselves, raising $100,000, with many volunteering to help build out a 6,500 square-foot store, which apparently is doing quite well. Similar efforts are underway in Sarnac Lake, N.Y. and Powell, Wyoming. This raises an interesting possibility: Maybe retailers should decide whether to open a new store based on whether or not the locals are willing to invest in it. And a question: What kind of a store would you care enough about to invest in so it could open in your 'hood?

"The mall is really beautiful but you just can't shop it," says Matt Bear, a Las Vegas real estate guy in a Wall Street Journal piece by Rachel Dodes, Karen Talley and Vanessa O'Connell. "The layout is strange," he adds. Matt is talking about the "$1.9 billion retail-entertainment complex on the Las Vegas strip that opened last year."

The mall is owned by General Growth Properties and is known as the Shoppes at the Palazzo. It is anchored by an 85,000-square foot store -- a Barneys store. To be profitable, this store had to clear $6 million a month. Six million a month! Well, guess what? It's about $4.5 million per month short and Barneys wants to close it, assuming it can get out of its lease.

Matt Bear says the "strange" layout makes it hard for shoppers to find the 85,000 square-foot anchor store. (!) "Surrounding luxury boutiques are also cannibalizing Barneys' sales, he said." Coach, meanwhile is shutting down four of its stores. Coach ceo Lew Frankfort says it's because the stores "are very expensive to operate, and we decided this was the right time to rationalize our approach to them."

"Despite our best intentions, we buy food impulsively and irrationally," writes Kate Stein in a New York Times op-ed essay (4/16/09). Kate makes this observation after watching "Shopper 46" make a purchase decision as part of Cornell University study of "thousands of supermarket patrons in situ from Whole Foods to Safeway." Armed with a stop watch, Kate spies "from behind a cereal display" and watches Shopper 46 "contemplating bananas for four minutes and 43 seconds."

It's great work if you can get it. Anyway, after picking out a bunch "with minimal brown spots," Shopper 46 "changes her mind" and "exits the produce department with a bargain tub of banana pudding instead." Kate's take: "We go to the supermarket resolved to watch our pennies and choose healthful foods. But we become disoriented when we're confronted with thousands of products and brands. So we end up spending $3.49 on an accidental bag of Doritos, $1.99 on M&M's."

It's not only a waste of money, says Kate, but on empty calories to boot. Her other observation is that "shoppers who took the longest, examining packages, stopping at whatever caught their eye, invariably spent more money. They tumbled stray, often unhealthy items into their baskets, and later, when questioned, couldn't cite a reason for the purchases." Kate's advice: "If it wasn't indelibly marked on your grocery list, control your insticts and move on quickly." Sounds like nightmare for shopper marketing to me. What do you think?