The 10 Most Overrated Brands

A gent by the name of Lucas Conley (a name widely-known to 0.1% of the population) has a new book out called Obsessive Brand Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion, in which he examines the inner workings, implications, and general insidiousness of marketing strategies that attempt to sell you on a brand name rather than on the actual qualities and benefits of a product.

You don't have to look around for long to realize how pervasive this technique is becoming in this day and age, as our attention spans dwindle and the opportunities for advertisers to reach us multiply exponentially. After all, if you don't have sufficient time or energy to research and evaluate your purchases rationally, all you're left with is a gut feeling whose genesis may have largely resulted from exposure to various sorts of black magic (e.g. brand marketing). (Think about it: who wouldn't be tempted to fill up their gas tank with a sexy iPump even if it cost them $0.50/gallon more?)

To help promote his book, Conley released to The Boston Globe a list of what he considers to be the ten most overrated brands. To save you the trouble of clicking through the whole list (and from all of the advertising entailed by this experience), I've reproduced it below:

• Southwest Airlines


• The Gap


• Los Angeles Lakers*


• Oprah


• MTV


• Dunkin' Donuts


• Victoria's Secret


• Apple


• Trump


• Generic Store Brands

*Okay, while the traumatic events of Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals will have me forever cursing the name of this Tinseltown team, Conley's argument that Kobe Bryant's spoiled, whiny egomania somehow translates into an over-inflated image of the team as a whole doesn't really make any sense. I suppose he could find a less transparent way to pander to his audience, but eh.

Any big surprises here? Which brands would you add to this list?

Your Choices at the Pump

The incident that prompted this post happened the other day at the Natick Plaza service station on the Mass Pike eastbound.

I had just pulled up to one of two pumps at the end of the station that offer both gasoline and diesel. These pumps have two separate nozzles, one at either end, and two banks of buttons to select either one of three grades of gas (standard, plus, or premium) or diesel. The diesel pump is clearly marked with a green handle, and the overall picture looks a lot like the one at right (only with an annoying television that endlessly blares the ever-tantalizing GasStationTV as you fill your tank).

As I watched the numbers on the pump tick upward at the rate of $4.96/gallon, a middle-aged woman in an old Subaru (a typical New England sight) pulled up to the opposite face of the pump I was using. Not thirty seconds later, she made her way around the pump to ask an innocent question:

Excuse me, can I ask you a question? Which one is gas, and which one is diesel? I don't want diesel.

As I explained to her that diesel was the one with the green label and handle, and that all she needed to do was use the other one, it occurred to me that questions such as hers are only going to become more common.

Imagine that it is the year 2020, you're on an extended road trip to see your parents, and you've just pulled off the interstate into a British HesxonGulfbil station to refuel your 2011 Toyota Camry (which is one of a shrinking population of non-hybrid Toyotas still in use). What would your reaction be if the pump console looked something like this?

Yep, that's what's probably gonna happen if (as it currently appears) there's no one-size-fits-all solution to our automotive energy needs. In this case, the only solution to the usability problem is for Apple to invent the iPump, whose extremely sexy touchscreen interface with integrated passive RFID payment capabilities will make sorting through this mess both easy and fun:

Tracking Your Car's Fuel Economy in an Excel Spreadsheet Is Completely Normal

As you can see, in the upper-left-hand corner is a summary of MPG metrics (including the average, median, best and worst fuel economy between fill-ups), in the upper-right is an embedded line graph of the Mystery Ship's fuel economy over time, and below that is a running log of all fuel stops that I've made since I purchased the car in December 2004:


That's about it. Nothing too special... I mean, I didn't bother to do a 3D plot fuel economy versus fill-up location over time or anything.

So, what does your spreadsheet look like?

Update (6/5/2008): If you are interested (and are completely normal like me), you can can download my spreadsheet template here to get started with your own fuel economy log.

I'm sure you'll note that there is clearly a general upward trend in fuel economy (taking into account seasonal variations in fuel composition and ambient temperature), mostly due to a recent increase in the proportion of highway driving relative to city driving (as reflected by the increase in fill-up frequency). Although some might ask whether the 2007 federally-mandated availability of ULSD fuel (which boasts a 97% reduction in sulfur content over LSD fuel, and therefore which I use exclusively) might have had an impact on these numbers, the 2007 data clearly indicate that the switch to ULSD had a negligible effect (if any) on fuel economy. Of course, you can't really see much of the 2007 data in the screenshot above, so you'll have to trust me on this one.