10 Worst Brand Blunders of 2009
The year 2009 was fertile ground for branding blunders, but I've picked out ten that are particularly heinous. These are all real, and all perfect examples of egregious marketing stupidity.
The final page of this post has a poll for you to vote on which blunder was the worst. When there are enough votes to get the group's opinion, I'll rearrange the list to match YOUR ranking.
BTW, the last blunder on the list is so over the top, it's hard to believe it's real. But apparently it is.
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Also of Interest:
2009 Branding Blunder:
Merrill Lynch's $35,000 Crapper
CEO John Thain got a $15 million signing bonus, between $50 to $120 million a year, and even then felt obligated to spend corporate money to renovate his office suite to the tune of $131,000 for area rugs, a $68,000 antique credenza, guest chairs costing $87,000, a $1,400 wastebasket. Next to that, the $35,000 crapper seems like chicken you-know-what.
Unfortunately, a $35,000 crapper is the kind of corporate perk that tells the world that the top managers in this company think they excrete diamonds. It's symbolic, in the most ribald manner possible, of the culture of insane excess which characterizes the banking industry.
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2009 Branding Blunder:
The Republicans Rebrand Their Party
After the election of the first mixed-race President, the Republican party needed to shed its image as the party that panders to the racism of rural white America. The Republicans apparently decided to that an Afro-American as Party Chairman would burnish their brand by giving them a bit of badly-needed diversity cred.
Unfortunately, there was apparently a lack of competent Afro-Americans in the Republican party, since they ended up with Michael Steele. He quickly made a series of statements that invited widespread ridicule from both inside and outside his own party, thereby making his appointment seem more like a token gesture than the manifestation of a meritocracy.
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2009 Branding Blunder:
Citibank's Stadium Logo
Even in the best of times, stadium-naming is a stupid branding move. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no evidence that any "good will" transfers itself from the stadium to the brand. (See "Boston Garden.")
However, when Citibank decided to go ahead with plans to spend $400 million to stick its logo on a stadium in Queens, it was just after the company had accepted billions of dollars in bailout money to save itself from financial disaster. Dumb move.
To make matters worse, Citibank didn't even put their logo on the stadium, but instead created a stadium logo that echoes their corporate logo, thereby limiting the brand identification to the 50 or so branding wonks in the world who care about such stuff.
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2009 Branding Blunder:
Dunkin' Donuts Challenges McDonalds
Apparently McDonald's new "actually drinkable" coffee has Dunkin' Donuts running scared. In reaction, Dunkin' Donuts has done the worst thing possible -- called even more attention to the fact that you can now get good coffee, cheap, at the Golden Arches. They've launched billboards explaining that Dunkin Donuts "don't clown around"... a clear reference to long-time mascot, Ronald McDonald.
The problem with "counter-branding" is that it always has the exact opposite effect. Rather than positioning Dunkin' Donuts as something special, this campaign simply reminds people, once again, that McDonald's now has coffee that's arguably as good as Dunkin's. Why else would Dunkin' bother to carp about it? Dumb... Really dumb...
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2009 Branding Blunder:
Accenture Waits to Dump Tiger
You'd think that a company that touts itself on helping other firms to make good business decisions would bother to do some due diligence on the person they selected to represent their corporate image. But that's exactly what Accenture failed to do.
The first time Tiger hit on "that cute little number in reception" at Accenture (and you just KNOW that happened more than once), the PRs dweebs at Accenture should have taken the hint and gradually (and quietly) extracted themselves from the endorsement. Instead, they kept Woods on board until it was too late to get out of the deal gracefully, forcing them to dump him unceremoniously after the scandal finally broke. As a result, Accenture looks 1) foolish for not taking action earlier, and 2) ungrateful for kicking Tiger when he's down.
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2009 
Branding Blunder:
Chrysler Shafts Its Dealers
Right before filing for bankruptcy, Chrysler officials told multiple dealers that if they didn't buy a bunch of new cars, they'd be cut off from the franchise. As a result, numerous dealers ordered millions of dollars in inventory that they neither wanted nor needed, and then had their franchise canceled anyway. While Chrysler no doubt needed to pare down something in order to survive, the company forgot two things.
First, if you don't have a sales force, you don't have anybody who can sell your product. Second, all of those dealers will be leaving the Chrysler fold with anger and hatred in their hearts. Many of the canceled dealerships were "anchor" businesses in small-town America -- a market that remained loyal to U.S.-built cars when much of the rest of the country moved to foreign-branded models. So they just alienated a big chunk of their potential customer base.
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2009 Branding Blunder:
Microsoft Bungles "Bing"
With web-based applications poised to clobber the Microsoft's PC-based market dominance (as pointed out in "PC Vendors Must Adapt or Die"), web-based applications are becoming a real threat to PC-based applications because they're cheaper, better, faster, and more secure. You'd think that, under the circumstances, Microsoft would be taking bold moves to blunt Google's inexorable advance. But you'd think wrong.
Microsoft's big plan? "Bing." Say whut? After failing for years to displace Google in Google's primary market, Microsoft launches a product that nobody needs (another search engine) and spends $100 million to push the "Bing" brand. Of course Microsoft is famously dreadful at brand marketing (check out this video), with an alphabet soup of single-syllable branding flops from "Bob" and "Zune". But you'd think that anybody with any sense would know that, in the world of pop culture, there's only one Bing (the one who sings White Christmas) and in the world of business, there's only one Bing (my incomparable colleague.)
Note: As of this writing, Bing has managed to achieve a whopping 3.26% market share, less than Yahoo and Baidu, and far less than Google's 84.91%.
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2009 Branding Blunder:
The SciFi Channel Becomes "Syfy"
NBC took name that means "here's where you watch cool science fiction on television" and replaced it with "here's what I caught when I forgot to use a condom." NBC hired two (!!) ad agencies to give birth to this monstrosity and apparently wasted hundreds of hours of management bandwidth discussing this, so we're talking about wasting millions of dollars.
NBC "tested" the new name with a focus group, at which one participant stated: "If I were texting, this is how I would spell it." This was apparently taken as evidence that the rebranding would be a big success among the all-important Generation Y consumer. Unfortunately, what the focus group participant didn't say was that, after he texted "Syfy," he immediately followed it with "WTF??? ROFLMAO!!!"
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2009 Branding Blunder:
The Banks Sequester H1N1 Vaccine
Put on your branding caps! Ready? Here's the situation. You've paid your CEOs obscenely high salaries, awarded your worker drones billions of dollars in bonuses, driven the economy into the toilet, and then asked the taxpaying public to bail you out. Gosh! That's really tough on the old brand-name, eh? So what the best way to get back in people's good graces?
You guessed it! Kill some children. Nothing says "we're serious about our brand" than making sure that your filthy rich employees get the vaccine for a potentially lethal disease before the children who are actually at risk. What's the next step in your branding campaign? How does "shoot a grandma; get free checking!" sound to ya?
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2009 Branding Blunder:
Hanna Montana-Brand Cherries
No comment.
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Meanwhile, Sales Machine readers pointed out five more blunders that should have been in the list. They are posted in: