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Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood sent Toyota stock into a nosedive two years ago when he told a congressional House Appropriations subcommittee, “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it.” Jay Leno quipped, “Things are not looking good for Toyota. In fact, today, two crash test dummies refused to get …
Greyhound’s negative brand made headlines when Alec Baldwin went on a rant. He “apologized” for his boorish behavior on a recent American Airlines flight by slamming the airline’s service, claiming: “Filthy planes, barely edible meals,” making “air travel experience as inelegant as possible,” and making “flying a Greyhound bus experience.” Predictably, a Greyhound representative has …
Greyhound’s Negative Brand: When Your Brand Is a Symbol of Awfulness Read More »
When ABC debuted its new show “Pan Am” this fall, reviewers mentioned the long-gone glamour of jet travel when people dressed up to take flight. Flying today is about as chic as traveling by bus. Now new advertising programs like those being offered by Spirit Airlines and Ryan Air make the bus analogy all the …
Overhead Ads: Flying Is More Like Riding a Bus Than Ever Read More »
We were on the Brand Money show on Atlanta’s Business Radio talking about how licensing can build brands and how brands can profit from licensing.
Most people don’t think of Al Qaeda and marketing in the same sentence. But marketing is important to Al Qaeda and so is the strength of its brand. The al Qaeda brand is the key to raising money, recruiting jihadis and motivating them to attack. Weak Al Qaeda Brand Image The Al Qaeda brand is …
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is suggesting we rebrand Ground Zero. At a speech on September 6th near the Ground Zero site, he said “The time has come to call those 16 acres what they are: The World Trade Center and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.” Good luck with that. Mayor Bloomberg …
A month ago, we wrote about the damage Google was doing to its core Google brand with its bungling of Google+ policies and enforcement. Shockingly, the company still can’t fix the problem. Today, a columnist at ZDNet was notified of a pending suspension of all her Google products because they erroneously suspected her of violating …
Google+ Still Threatening the Health of the Google Brand Read More »
Reuters reported yesterday that investors have offered Tavern on the Green bankruptcy trustees $1.3 million to buy the shuttered restaurant’s name. The investors want to market food items such as salad dressing under the Tavern on the Green brand. Though the food at Tavern on the Green was at best mediocre, the high menu prices, …
Justin Bieber has become the latest celebrity brand spokesman to find himself in brand endorsement trouble. Advertising Age wrings its hands at the damage his prank could do to his power as a celebrity endorser for brands such as Best Buy, Proactiv, and Google Chrome. We’ve covered celebrity brand woes and the impact of personal …
I was right in the middle of writing a blog entry on how the well-documented trust problems of the Facebook brand have left a gaping strategic hole that could have allowed Google+ to topple the social media giant. But then Google+ messed up brand trust in a big way. They no longer can claim trustworthiness …