Why No Brand Identity is immune
Aaron Kwittken, CEO and Partner, Kwittken + Co., recently asked on
Forbes.com if Walmart and Apple have developed a virtual immunity to damaging, even radioactive, news, thanks to the amazing and unique value they offer.
I want to suggest to the PR community the answer to this very critical and thoughtful question is no. Setting aside universal and ageless warnings against assumptions of invincibility, from Oedipus Rex to The Monkey King, not to mention the Titanic, here's my reasoning as to why no brand identity is immune:
Even the most beloved brands -- or the most powerful monopolies -- sooner or later will face competition. Savvy competition loves an opening, any opening, to position its offerings as superior to all else, via superior value, superior ethics, or a combination of the two.
Consider what happened to the web hosting industry after the founder of one of its top providers, Go Daddy, posted a video of him killing a wild African elephant last year.
Within days,
rivals happily used all the controversy to shine a big light on their innovations, giveaways, and clever cause-relatd marketingNo matter where you stand on the issue of hunting endangered species, or how many new customers these other web hosting firms managed to "bag" at Go Daddy's expense, for a time Go Daddy helped promote companies that want to drive it out of business.