Does Best Buy Need an Identity Check?

Either a bunch of people at eTail 2008 were yanking Best Buy chief marketing officer Barry Judge’s chain, or the big box electronics store has become too many things to too many people.

In a live poll conducted during Judge’s Aug. 5 keynote in Washington, 37% of participants identified Bust Buy as a brand that is all about helping people get the most from their technology.

But Judge had reason to be concerned: 25% felt the Best Buy brand was largely undefined. Yikes. That’s not exactly something you want to find out as you’re delivering your keynote.

Based on some of Best Buy’s recent marketing history, it’s understandable. And as a matter of fact, “largely undefined” was the answer I went with, even though I am a big fan and frequent shopper of the merchant.

Why? Because Best Buy has become many things to many people.

In the earlier part of the decade, Best Buy was the store you go to for no-hassle electronics purchases. It had a great in-store warranty that promised a complete replacement of a product that turned out to be a lemon. (Personally, that got me a free upgrade of my laptop just before my warranty expired).

It was also one of the first stores to have a rewards program. Even before that, it made customers happy with in-store and automatic rebates, which made reading its Sunday flyers a fun research project.

And don’t forget the television spots from back in the day: Every day was back-to-school, with the school’s coolest kids (and a sock puppet) piling into a dorm room to have a big party with the products they just bought at Best Buy.

Then Best Buy did something revolutionary. In 2005, it converted its stores so they would be customer-centric, based on the personas that frequently shopped its locations. So the Best Buy on one side of town may be the store for gamers, while the one on the other side would be the place to go if you had a home office.

But if you shop online at BestBuy.com and go for the store pick-up, you can find out which one of your local Best Buy stores carries that camera, video game, printer or washing machine that you want.

At about the same time, it started focusing more on its Geek Squad acquisition, bringing the computer repair service into its stores (unfortunately—or fortunately—after my laptop replacement).

Today, the first thing that pops in my head when I think of Best Buy is “Geek Squad,” followed by “in-store pick-up,” and then “Rewards Zone,” the loyalty program.

But I can understand if someone who is not a fan of Best Buy doesn’t think its mission is largely undefined – especially if these customer-centric locations haven’t evolved since 2005, and are not catering to the correct demographics.

Best Buy is evolving further. Judge took the wraps off its new brand identity and logos at eTail 2008, and showed off the new uniforms in-store associates will be wearing. And the inserts and the Web will reflect change, too, to try and better tell the Best Buy story.

Now it just needs to get that word out, before average Joe Consumer thinks Best Buy just polished an apple to make it shinier.