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1: Mission Possible: Brands Can Turn Around

The author asserts that "even the most troubled brands can get back to being on top," and throughout this book he will present real-world examples of brands that have done so.

There are a number of benefits to having a well-regarded brand:

Reputation is not permanent, and brands fall from grace. Sometimes, it's a mistake on their part; others, it's something they didn't see coming (and arguable should have). The latter is particularly concerning, because if your competitors see it before you do, they can either blindside you or position to move faster than you can.

Branding Recovery: A Full-Cycle Journey

The author defines "phases" that a brand goes through when it goes bad:

  1. Brand-Shaking Event(s). Something happens, whatever the soruce or cause, that has the potential to change the market's perception of a brand.
  2. Market Reaction. There is a change in behavior toward the brand. Popularity wanes, people stop buying, the press turns hostile, the tenor of conversation changes.
  3. Brand Response. The stewards of the brand make a response - comments to the public, open letters, press conferences - hoping to rectify or mitigate the reaction. (EN: The author includes this in the second step, but it really is a separate thing. In fact, reaction-response is a cycle that the brand will go through for a while, as people will react to the action the firm takes, and the firm must respond to that, etc.)
  4. Collateral Damage. Sometimes, the process of handling one crisis creates another. Ameliorating the press may offend customers; ameliorating customers may offend employees or regulators. This puts out one fire, but starts others.
  5. Road to Recovery. If small efforts do not succeed, or complicate the problem worse, the firm must undertake a strategic approach to rebuilding relationships. This can take significant time.
  6. Return to Glory. The end of a journey is a return to the former glory: public sentiment and consumer confidence are restored to their former levels. While all is forgiven, it is not forgotten - and the brand must be acutely attentive to these issues, as being forgiven for the very same thing a second time is much more difficult.

Commercial Brands

Commercial brands consider marketing in its most obvious context: a firm that sells products or services to customers to earn revenue. Having a strong brand means the firm sells more units, to more people, more easily, and at a higher price. There are also benefits to their channel power, attractiveness to employees and investors, etc.

The author looks to a specific brand as an example: Domino's Pizza. The firm has been around since 1968, and has seen its share of misery (HQ destroyed by fire, IRS issues, lawsuits over its brand name, serious traffic accidents involving drivers, YouTube videos of employees tampering with food, and the like).

In 2006, it was the largest delivery chain, and ranked dead last in consumer preference, and other firms began nibbling at its market share by offering a "better pizza" for which customers became increasingly willing to wait longer and pay more. It took a few more years for the firm to finally decide to do something about it.

In 2010, Domino's attempted "the pizza turnaround." It was an extensive ad campaign that began with executives reading letters and reviews from disappointed customers and promising to do better. Over the next two years, the firm spent $2 million to reformulate its product and $75 million on advertising - and halfway through the campaign, saw a 10-15% increase in net profit growth.

Key components of this strategy are highlighted:

(EN: In fairness, they did not do the right thing right away. They tried to stifle a competitor's claim to have better pizza through the court system, and were hostile to critics for years before they finally were willing to accept that the fault was their own. Aside of dragging the facts of the case back into the light, this also goes to show that even if you do the wrong thing first, you can do the right thing later - though I wonder how many millions were lost during the four years of avoidance.)

Cause and Nonprofit Brands

Nonprofit organizations are often pushed to the side in discussions of brand, as they do not have a product or service to sell - but brand is important to nonprofit organizations because the reputation of the firm is tied to their ability to appeal to an interact with others. Some benefits or brand are:

As an example, the author takes the American Red Cross, a charity that has had a sterling reputation for many years. The organization suffered a black eye in the wake of the September 11 attacks, in which the firm set up a high profile fund to push Americans to donate to the organization to provide relief for those affected - and the funds collected went into a general pool, little was actually spent on the specific cause for which they were collected. Arguably, this was not the intent: the organization simply jumped the gun and began collecting funds before they know how they were going to spend them, and was left with a lot of cash to spare. All the same, it was a PR fiasco, and the organization's reputation was sullied.

This was compounded a few years later in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in which allegations of fraud were leveled against Red Cross contractors and volunteers, and the organization was criticized for some of the more inelegant response. The net result was a considerable loss of public faith which, in 2008, left the organization with a $209 million operating deficit.

The organization appointed an executive from the commercial world to help put the organization back on stable footing and better coordinate its disaster response.

In 2010, ARC provide a decisive and effective relief effort for earthquake survivors in Haiti. It's still too soon to know if this will restore public confidence in the brand, but it does provide evidence, beyond words, that the ARC remains a competent organization. Beyond this, the organization deals with "thousands of smaller events" every day domestically and abroad, and the real work of rebuilding the brand has been handled through these services.

Elements of the brand turnaround strategy:

A special note is made about the online channel, which more nonprofits are leveraging for fundraising, communication, and volunteer support. Social media, in particular, has been a powerful tool to get people to rally around causes.

The ARC, specifically, is mentioned nearly 700 times a day in various social media platforms, has a quarter of a million followers on Twitter, and has forged partnerships that get their messages high priority on other sites during times of crisis.

Individual Brands

The notion of an individual brand is largely new: celebrities and public figures have had image consultants since the mid-twentieth century, but it is only recently being considered in light of the principles of brand.

An individual's brand has a number for benefits. Aside of the payment a celebrity can demand for an endorsement, even everyday people find that a strong personal brand brings them more opportunities, increased personal income, positive reactions, greater trust and authority, etc.

The author considers the rise, fall, and recovery of Kobe Bryant, the first star basketball player who was hired straight out of high school and became to youngest all-star player. From the very beginning, he had star quality and corporations flocked to him for endorsements.

Then came scandal: Bryant was accused of rape and, while he proclaimed his innocence, it was clear he had been cheating on his wife with his accuser, and his reputation went "from gold to mud" during a year-long legal battle in which his name was in the media on a daily basis. Naturally, sponsors fled and his popularity with fans (hence the drawing power of his team) plummeted.

Because Bryant was a sports figure, he was largely pardoned by fans for his athletic performance, which suffered during the trial, but returned to record-setting afterward. He publicly atoned for his behavior and mended fences with another player in which he had been engaged in a public feud, and eventually returned to star status, being the third highest paid athlete, and regaining professional endorsements.

Key points from this case study are:

Destination Brands

Destination brands promote a location rather than a specific product. This is most commonly seen in promoting tourism, but cities also promote themselves to attract industry and residents to their areas.

The benefits to a destination for having a strong brand include attracting new visitors at a lower cost, an increase in revenue to local business (hence to tax revenues), visitor advocacy, and greater civic pride.

The author considers Aruba to be a brand turnaround story: it was a popular destination resort until a high-profile news story in which a teenage American girl was murdered by the son of a diplomat, though the police couldn't prove the case (and still have not).

After that, rumors flourished and Aruba became known not for being a happy island, but a good place for tourists to get murdered. The Lifetime channel created a fictionalized account of the story that was viewed by a record-setting audience. If the bad publicity alone weren't enough, there were grassroots efforts online to boycott Aruba, and within a year, the tourism industry was in serious decline.

Ironically, Aruba is far from the worst tourist destination in terms of crime, and is really quite safe compared with a number of nearby destinations to which people were flocking instead. But in this case, as in others, a single incident involving an attractive, young, white girl from a wealthy family caused a public uproar.

While it's still fairly recent, the island's reputation is already showing some signs of recovery. The tourist board has done a great deal of advertising to restore the positive image of the island. It has also taken efforts to get promotion for being an ecologically-friendly destination, having island-wide access to the Internet, marketed to bring film festivals and other events to the island, and has been cooperative with television and film companies that produce travel and tourism programming, etc.

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