When brand association can be bad association...

Everyone is a brand expert these days. Like it or not we have been conditioned to recognise and appreciate brands. Brand awareness now extends across the whole marketing spectrum, from consumer to business products and services, with countless tomes written on the subject. Leading Brand Marketers have become obsessed with branding awareness and perception and in many instances a brand’s worth can even outstrip the value of a company’s tangible assets.

We are all familiar with brands like Rolls-Royce and Coca Cola for example and instinctively we associate them with specific experiences such as luxury, refreshments and so on.

How important (and how short-lived) a brand reputation can be is something we also witnessed recently with BP in the Gulf of Mexico, or BA during the strike action. But while many of these events can be attributable to strategic errors, what keeps Brand gurus awake is the sort of brand association’s dilemma recently experienced by Toyota. Many of its vehicles have been seen in news footage across the world driven by Taliban or Al Qaeda operatives. And there is nothing Toyota can do about it. However, brand experts are still divided on the outcome with some even thinking that its association with a rugged and inhospitable environment might even eventually benefit the brand. Time will tell, no doubt.