Top Famous Brand Failures and Solutions of all time

Often, a company will put effort and spend lots of time and money to get a brand established, creating a name and tagline to build promise with their audience. They build brand-name awareness into their company culture and do the right things to fit their core values. All of this is to ensure they can honestly deliver what the brand promises. The aesthetics come into the picture here where they wrangle over the colors to make sure they are right avoiding any kind of Brand Failures and reinforce the name and tagline.

In the end, the launch is done with a big branding announcement and a flurry of advertising activities. The bottom line is going up. You might think now is the perfect time to relax, right? However, far from it. Branding is an ongoing unified effort and process that should never stop.

A bad Branding strategy can easily lead to Brand Failures. It can be done deliberately or mistakenly. Below are the most common mistakes some of the most popular brands made and how they could be solved. Try to Record all of them, and if you catch yourself doing any of them, turn it around fast.

Stumbles are always expected in the beginning stage. But when well-established brands mess up, the spotlight on their failings is harsher and less forgiving.

Right from American Airlines customer’s confidence to BlackBerry’s service interruptions, we will take a look at how major players faltered and what they could do to regain their customers’ loyalty. So with any further ado, let’s dive right into it.

Top Brand Failures and Their Solutions

American Airlines

The Problem: Customer confidence takes a hit

In the past, American Airlines was being saddled with some grueling challenges. Followed by the bankruptcy filing of its parent company in November 2011, the airline faced negative publicity regarding loose seats on its aircraft. “It’s a terrible image to think about being bounced around in flight,” says Bobby Zafarnia, founder of Praecere Interactive, a Washington, D.C.-based branding firm. This was combined with a companywide reorganization and labor strike with the airline’s pilots union that caused widespread flight delays and cancellations.

In a case of terrible coincidences, two days after The New York Times published a story on one writer’s rough travel experience flying American–including getting grounded in London and experiencing a seemingly endless tour of Heathrow–the airline’s Facebook page asked users to share their favorite London travel experience. “When a company’s social media channel is disengaged with what’s happening in the general media, that’s a huge disconnect,” Zafarnia says.

The Solution

When the seats came loose, the airline blamed the malfunction on the spilled beverages. According to a story published by CNN, an airline spokeswoman said that the plane can “get gunked up over time with people spilling sodas, coffee or whatever, and that can affect that locking mechanism which connects the seat to the ground floor.” This resulted in raising more questions for already skittish flyers.

Blackberry

The Problem : Core service interruptions

BlackBerry users were fiercely devoted and loyal to their brand. However, that loyalty had been tested in the past as the devices experienced power outages, leaving some without access to essential services like the internet, e-mail, and messaging. “The company failed to deliver on the expectation of reliability,” says Scott Seroka of Seroka, a brand-development firm in Wisconsin.

BlackBerry’s numbers are enough to justify the damage. In 2012, BlackBerry made up just 5 percent of the global smartphone market, which was 11 percent in 2011. A story from New York Times also described the company as being “in survival mode.”

“While the existing audience group prefers it, winning new customers away from the competition remains challenging,” Seroka says. “BlackBerry has to sell the truth that they have something special and better to offer to their customers. For example, is it the operating system or the keyboard or the reliability factor? They have to offer consumers something they don’t even know they’re looking for–something Apple is exceptional at doing in today’s time.”

The Solution

BlackBerry must have convinced its customers (and prospective new ones) that the technical difficulties are a thing of the past. “They should come out and announce, ‘Here’s how we’ll be reliable from this day on,'” Seroka says. “I don’t think customers are going to be as tolerant of future outages.” The company hoped that the introduction of BlackBerry 10, will welcome customers with an improved product and a snazzier web browser. It certainly didn’t turn out that well for them.

Bud Light

The Problem: A flood of options leads to Brand Failures

Bud Light introduced to their consumers a high-alcohol beer Bud Light Platinum with an ad during the Super Bowl. Everybody saw the launch of the margarita-flavored Bud Light Lime Lime-a-Rita; and they witnessed the demise of Bud Light Golden Wheat. Mike DiFrisco, popularly known as The Affordable Branding Guy, says the ever-changing product line makes it “hard for consumers to know what Bud stands for. Apparently, a Bud is now just some form of alcohol-based liquid.”

Now, with the Budweiser name standing for so many different things, customers might get confused when standing in front of store shelves. “The worst thing you can do is make it difficult for consumers to figure out your brand,” DiFrisco says. “A customer’s purchase decision should be immediate, and that’s always easier when you stand for something singular.”

The Solution

While the new line extensions aim to help owner Anheuser-Busch reverse a decline in sales. Adding too many variations on a brand can come at a cost. “To extend and grow their brand, the ego must forgo,” DiFrisco says. But Bud’s always a great name, but when launching a new off-core brand, like Lime-a-Rita, they should create a new brand rather than hang the Bud name on it, ultimately watering down what Bud stands for.

Also Please find our complete guide on How to Build your Personal Brand at Work

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