bringing your brand back from the brink

The internet and social network sites in particular have changed the way of handling with products having branding problems. Dealing with such a branding crisis is all about keeping control, but social network sites have made it very difficult to keep the product from breaking down. Why is this so much harder? As an example we take Toyota. This company was forced to recall 8 million cars. Because of the social network sites, the need to respond is now a real-time issue. Toyota failed to respond quickly to the customers questions and got therefore a lot of criticism. The problem is that brands have a fear to communicate through the online world because they think it will lead to more negativity. But in fact the opposite is true. The social media can help a brand to recover after a blunder. If Toyota had done this communication earlier, many problems could have been avoided.  marketingweek

Anthony Pieters