The new version of Aerosmith was healthy and energetic, and would go on to write and perform its most critically acclaimed music to date on its comeback album, Permanent Vacation.     Just as a major band can fall from the pinnacle of success to the floor of despair and then reincarnate itself to rise to top the charts again, so too can a firm willing to change more than its marketing message and image. The reinvention of the Kmart brand in the 1990s started out with a bang, in part because it put most of its mar- keting eggs in the Martha Stewart basket. Unlike Aerosmith, how- ever, Kmart failed to fix the problems in its operations, stores, and personnel as the band did when its members entered rehab and rededicated themselves to personal and artistic discipline as well as physical fitness. Wanting to be better is not enough; a firm has to fix its operations if it expects to reinvent a once-great but currently downtrodden brand. Successful brand reinvention is uncommon, business history reveals, but there is one case in particular that reads almost like a modern-day application of Aerosmiths principles. Like most rock- and-roll bands, few brands recover. One that did was Volkswagen.       Drive This Way   Admit it. When you see one, you smile. It calls to you, with its bulging eyes and defiant little grin, making the kid in all of us want to run up and hug it. If you drive one down the street, people smile at you and occasionally wave. It attracts attention with an approachable tone, soliciting Aww!s and Oh!s that until its introduction were reserved only for puppies and cooing babies. Ah yes, the VW Bug-the icon of teens and young adults of the 1960s and 1970s. The flower-power generation adopted the Volks- wagen Beetle (also known as the Bug) as part of its culture, inviting the car into its garages, families, and lifestyles and plastering its image on notebooks, lunch boxes, and T-shirts. Beetle fan clubs formed around the country, giving owners a chance to meet, exchange maintenance advice, and create a special kinship through a soiree of Bug lovefests. The Beetle filled a specific transportation need in the U.S. car mar- ket that the typical large American car didnt meet in the late 1950s and 1960s. In addition to being countercultural in its appeal and, to some, simply adorable, the car was known for its low price, reliability,     unique design, and good gas mileage. Volkswagen intentionally kept