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JIBR VIEWPOINT
2,4
Brands – vulnerable entities
in an uncertain world
256
Tuhin Sen
Dentsu Marcom Pvt Ltd, Gurgaon, India

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the vulnerability of brands in the context of the
uncertainties which afflict modern business. The paper cites two instances in which custodians of two
sets of brands acted in markedly different ways. In doing so, one set of brand custodians managed to
protect their brand, the other set jeopardised the very brands they were supposed to protect. The paper
therefore charts out a prescriptive roadmap, which practitioners of the art and the science of branding
could use to their advantage while dealing with the vagaries of today’s business environment.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper cites two specific instances of brand management.
One could be termed exemplary in assessing the reputational risk, which could have had a severely
adverse impact on the brand in question. The other instance could very well be termed as an example
of what the brand custodians should never have done. The two contrasting cases highlight the fact
that brand management has to be practiced within the atmospherics of modern day business. Today,
brand management, by no means, could be dissociated from the context in which the brand operates.
Findings – Brand custodians who take a holistic view of the universe in which a brand operates,
would be in a better position to protect the brand from reputational hazards. Implicit here is the idea
that the universe a brand operates in has to take into consideration the market-government-civil
society triad. If brand custodians ignore the existence of his triad, they would fail to anticipate
reputational risks that might emanate from any single constituent of that triad. If brand custodians fail
to anticipate the risks, they would be ill-equipped to deal with the same.
Originality/value – The paper shows that a brand’s reputation can be protected by branding
practices, which take into account potential threats emanating from various constituents of society.
In the same vein, the paper also highlights the pitfalls of brand management practices, which ignore
the seemingly innocuous rumblings of resentment that society harbours towards a brand.
Keywords Brands, Brand management, Brand awareness
Paper type General review

Journal of Indian Business Research
Vol. 2 No. 4, 2010
pp. 256-261
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1755-4195
DOI 10.1108/17554191011084166
Introduction
The recent recession, apart from exposing the weaknesses of the larger economic
system, also exposed the frailty of a firm’s most leverageable asset – its own brand. As
markets tumbled, bottom lines plummeted; venerable names became history,
companies across sectors found it increasingly difficult to protect their own brands
and their corresponding brand values built over years of hard work, dedication and
many sacrifices. That erosion of brand value, in uncertain times, could be attributed to
various factors. Many authors and commentators have spoken about the near
sightedness of the stewards of the company itself. Often the erosion of brand values (or
reputation) has been attributed to the never-ending debate about the short term versus
the long term, the immediate gains versus the long-sustainable competitive advantage,
the vagaries of the market forces, which defied analysts’ neat models and social turmoil.
In times of dipping fortunes and crumbling reputations, one or many of these factors
could have been the reason why many seemingly invincible giants of yesteryear fell on Brands
hard times. Some reputed names such as Lehman Brothers are no more.
The objective of this paper is to highlight brand vulnerability through two events
and recommend action plans to protect brand value. One event could be construed as a
classic case of brand value protection. The other, in sharp contrast, could be interpreted
as squandering away of the same. By no means an exhaustive study, this paper will
touch upon the impact of these two occurrences on the brands in question. In doing so, 257
the paper will seek to identify how, in each of those cases, the custodians of the said
brand sought to protect the brand’s innate values or chose to put them in serious
jeopardy by less-than-desirable business practices.
This study is, in part, based on my lived experience of having been a custodian of
brands on the advertising agency’s side for many years. Some of my comments are from
the viewpoint of a consumer/citizen who interacts with brands on a daily basis. Implicit
in that line of thinking is the idea that a corporate/brand lies within a triad of the market,
the civil society and the government. Therefore, custodians of the brand need to be
aware of those forces while steering the brand to market glory (or while defending it
against ignominy as the case might be). Another set of my comments are based on my
work as a consultant at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), Paris where I studied the issues of sectoral competitiveness through their
seminal work on regional competitiveness vis-à-vis the automotive industry in 2006 and
2007.

Shell – a largely peaceful day in New Delhi and then a bomb in Iraq
In 2004 and 2005, my mandate as a Creative Director on the Shell account at Contract
Advertising New Delhi was to oversee the largely below-the-line led communication for
the corporate brand and the individual products. As part of that mandate, I oversaw the
development of a poster for a particular brand of lubricant. The artwork was being
prepared in the studio. The photographs were in place and so were the product shot. As
standard operating procedure, we sent out the creative to London for approval. The
printing deadline was looming. To our surprise, in came a resounding “no” from London
on the question of final approval. The day before, Western media had carried photos of a
similar scenario in which a truck in the combat zone was bombed to a mangled heap of
metal[1].
For the brand custodians for Shell, in London, it was a question of pre-empting a
potential reputational risk, which could hurt Shell as a brand in India. Though at first it
seemed like a far-fetched logic that an Iraq-centric photograph in the mass media could
impact Shell’s business prospects in India, the threat of a backlash against Shell could
have been real. A brand like Shell is a political and a social entity as well. What
happens to its facilities in Sakhalin Islands or Nigeria makes world news in a 24 £ 7
world sans boundaries[2]. Shell’s marketing/corporate communication works in that
context. So does its advertising. We as a collective, responsible for protecting Shell’s
brand reputation, did not intend to approve a piece of communication that could have
created grounds for adverse feelings, from any quarter, towards the Shell brand.

Ford, GM, Chrysler – of private jets and public anger

Many years ago one used to hear the expression in the USA that what is good for General
Motors is good for America. In more ways than one, the onward march of the automotive
JIBR industry shaped the economic fortunes of the industrialised West. Then came the
Japanese automotive revolution and the American pre-eminence in automotive industry
2,4 drove into the sunset. A detailed account of that shift is beyond the scope of this study.
But what is important to note, is the erosion of market share and therefore brand value for
the American Big Three – GM, Ford and Chrysler. Compounding the problem further,
was the recent recession. It was not long before the Big Three had to go to Washington,
258 District of Columbia looking for access to the bailout fund, which was supported by
taxpayers’ dollars.
What happened thereafter is a test case of what should not have been done given the
public mood and resentment against big business for having let America down. The
three chiefs of America’s largest automotive companies, Allan Mulally (Ford), Rick
Wagoner (GM) and Robert Nardelli (Chrysler) flew into Washington, District of
Columbia in private jets. Thomas Schatz, President of the watchdog group Citizens
Against Government Waste concurred:
They’re coming to Washington to beg the taxpayers to help them. It’s unseemly to be running
around on a $20,000 flight versus a $500 round trip[3].
Replying to the criticism swirling all around, Tom Wilkinson, the GM Spokesperson
commented:
Making a big to-do about this when issues vital to the jobs of millions of Americans are being
discussed in Washington is diverting attention away from a critical debate that will
determine the future health of the auto industry and the American economy[3].
In a statement, Lori McTavish, the Chrysler Spokesperson said:
While always being mindful of company costs, all business travel requires the highest
standard of safety for all employees[3].
While Shell could be cited as a case of smart management of brand reputation, the
Big Three did a huge disservice to their brands. Antagonizing the consumer
community could never be considered as good brand management practice. This was
especially true at a time when public resentment against big business was boiling
over. As a consumer and advertising professional, watching this whole episode from
thousands of miles away, I could not but ask myself the question that whether the
auto chiefs could have been a little more sensitive to popular sentiments. Or, as
leaders, were they so unmindful of the values their brands stood for? Ford made
mobility akin to a democratic (read mass) right. Its CEO chose to fly an elitist
private jet. The disconnect between Ford’s consumers and the Ford brand could not
have been sharper.

Analysis and action plan

So how does one go about protecting brand reputation in highly uncertain times? Also,
how does one anticipate challenges to the brand’s wellbeing given the stakeholder
universe of a brand is ever shifting and, more importantly, ever widening? A reasonably
sound way to arrive at a roadmap for brand value protection is to identify who
are the primary, secondary and tertiary recipients of a brand’s goodwill as against
a brand’s message, which is the function of a specific marketing/communication
programme. A brand’s goodwill, on the contrary, could be defined in a loose way as a set
of cumulative positive feelings that a brand inspires. Those feelings could very well be
dissociated from any specific marketing/communication task. Let us take the case of Brands
Shell, for instance. In the aforementioned example, one could identify a few recipients of
Shell’s goodwill:
.
Shell customers (retail and enterprise level);
.
governments (at local, regional and federal levels); and
.
civil society (including environmental non governmental organisations). 259
While doing business, Shell has to strike a harmony between all three of the above-
mentioned stakeholders. It is important here to note that the three-tier stakeholder
categorization bears resemblance to the market, government and civil society triad
mentioned earlier on in this paper.
In the case of the Big Three, here are a few things that should never have been done
in their stakeholder universe:
(1) Big Three customers, retail and enterprise level: the three chiefs signalled a
gross disregard for the spirit of the times. In sharp contrast, consider Hyundai’s
marketing campaign called “Hyundai Assurance” in 2009. If a customer lost his/
her job he or she could return a vehicle they buy without paying the remaining
monthly payments and without jeopardizing their personal credit rating within
the next year[4].
(2) Big Three annoyed government functionaries at local, state and FEDERAL
levels – bad move given the fact that the government was bailing them out.
(3) An outraged civil society launched a vicious campaign against all three of them.
This campaign fed into the popular disenchantment with some of America’s
best loved brands of yore.
In sharp contrast to what the Big Three did, a brand in a similar situation could do the
following:
.
A multi-pronged campaign that does not lead with print and TV. Instead, it relies
on credible opinion makers’ cyber talk.
.
An advertising burst in the aftermath of a disaster (of any sort) is damage
control at its best and nothing beyond that. Today’s consumers are savvy
enough to spot that.
.
Instead, a brand could gently detail out a community centric initiative. Special
care should be taken to avoid any causality vis-à-vis the event in question.
.
Above all, there’s nothing more assuring to a citizen, who is also a consumer, than
a sincere tone of voice, be it on TV, print or on the internet. Often a folded-hand
apology works a whole lot better than a billion dollar advertising blitz. To a
consumer that is an honest brand speaking, not one trying to talk its way out of
trouble. One could track the case of British Petroleum and the Gulf of Mexico spill
to see how a brand of that stature gets out of that quagmire or does not. In it
would be a lesson in brand reputation management for all.

Conclusion
Shell and Ford offer two contrasting cases in which brand custodians behaved in
divergent ways when it came to the issue of their brands. Today’s practitioners of the
JIBR craft of branding need to be aware of their brands’ emotional impact (intended or
2,4 otherwise) on the community of consumers. Brands reside in the public domain.
Therefore, whatever happens in that domain have the potential to impact a brand
positively or adversely. Conversely, a brand’s wellbeing could bring about growth and
prosperity to the ecosystem in which the brand resides. When an automotive brand like
Fiat does well in the global markets, the region of Turin experiences a positive rub-off
260 not just by an image boost. Fiat’s fortunes have territorial development implications.
Robust business means prosperity not just for the assembler firm but also for
the tier one, two and three suppliers, ancillary industries and so on and so forth.
The community’s sense of wellbeing in Turin could, therefore, be attributed to the
wellbeing of brand Fiat. We, in marketing and advertising industries, often do not
give enough thought to this point.
By hurting iconic brands such as GM, Ford and Chrysler, courtesy the private jet
incident, the CEOs of the Big Three not only eroded the value of the brands in question;
they also negatively impacted the automotive ecosystem in Detroit. Over and above
this, the cumulative ill will generated by the controversy hurt the brands in many more
ways than one. It would be impossible to design a metric by which one can assess
the damage done. But as practitioners of branding, we all know that the controversy
did damage the brands in question.
Protection of brand value is of utmost importance in today’s day and age.
Proliferation of social media, crowd sourcing as a seductive new branding tool, the web
as a medium of communication per se, all hold out exciting possibilities for branding.
However, proliferation of branding channels also means as many sources of brand
value leakage. How does one prevent a blogger from trashing a brand by tweets? How
does one stop a disgruntled employee from posting adverse comment about a company
on Facebook?
It is a new democracy of information out there. Marketing companies, advertising
agencies, public affairs professionals need to learn to navigate its complex dynamics.
Brands are precious. They are the most valuable asset a business has. It is imperative
that we protect them the best way we can.

Notes
1. For the sake of confidentiality, further details are being withheld.
2. See http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/02/05/8399125/index.htm
for a comprehensive account of Shell’s Sakhalin Island saga.
3. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/11/19/autos.ceo.jets/
4. For details see http://blog.compete.com/2009/03/03/hyundai-assurance-sales-increase/ and
www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05auto.html

About the author

Tuhin Sen works as a Senior Creative Director at Dentsu Marcom’s Gurgaon Office. In a career
spanning 14 years, Sen has worked on brands such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Hyundai, Shell, Suzuki,
Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard and more. He has also worked extensively with the Foreign
Commonwealth Office of the UK in promoting the UK as a business destination in India. In the
past, he has spearheaded the British High Commission’s Public Diplomacy Initiative in India.
He was also instrumental in creating strategic communication initiatives for various policy
verticals of the UK High Commission in India. He played a key role in launching the Hyundai Brands
business in India with the launch of the Santro and Accent brands. He has also worked as a
consultant to the OECD in Paris and UNESCO in New Delhi. His work on competitiveness,
clustering conditions and supply chain dynamics of the global auto industry has featured in
the OECD’s sectoral competitiveness report on the automotive industry. A regular speaker on
sustainable competitive advantages of firms with respect to the policy environment, he is a
firm believer in clustering as a mode of spatial organisation of production. He holds an MPA
from Sciences Po, Paris. He lives in New Delhi with his wife and daughter. Tuhin Sen can be 261
contacted at: tuhin_presi@yahoo.com

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