One Bad Week Can Mean A Tarnished Brand

2012 has been a year for some major brands where one bad week can destroy years of investment. G4S and their Olympic security fiasco is this weeks brand falling into the firestorm, last week was 02 and a fortnight ago was Barclays and Nat West.

You can invest time and energy to build the credentials to be revered as a reputable brand, but no matter how much you spend, one bad week can undermine decades of hard work and consumer/customer belief to crumble.

We now live in a world where poor performance of your brand has nowhere to hide when things go wrong. Earlier this year we wrote an article on an event in London that was destroyed via Twitter (have a read by clicking here). If you are Bob Diamond of Barclays, you quit as Chief Exec, but the legacy represents damage to a brands ethos and no amount of Twitter response handling can help.

There are new lessons for us all to learn, with negative comment having the ability to spread like wildfire. What this does promote is for brands to operate in a responsible, honest and sincere way.

When your business stands for ‘doing the right thing’, it helps to add value. By standing for what is true and championing integrity, it becomes a powerful tool. The old world was fooling customers via effective advertising, todays world represents being engaging and providing positive, relevant content to drive advocacy and using the appropriate channels to deliver.

Remember, the big losers will always be those that sell mediocre products and services expertly. Those who stand and operate for what is right, will achieve a stronger market position.