Brand marketers are in the throes of deciding how transparent their brand must be. This is a significant issue in many boardrooms around the globe. A close friend was in Turkey last week, and sent me the photo below of the Oscar Watch store in Istanbul… they actually sell “Genuine Fakes”. Talk about transparency… they are making money on telling the truth.

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By now, there has been a lot reported and written about BP. The branding debate has been about whether their “Beyond Petroleum” proposition can be sustained. The answer lies in how they choose to act.

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What turns me off is when a manufacturer tries to pull the wool over my eyes.

One of my little sins has been buying Hero preserves from Switzerland. I first discovered the brand in France years ago. It is an upscale line of jams and preserves that has amazing quality and consistency. That ended this week. They just totally changed the product to become a “fruit spread” instead of a “preserve” and tried to make their package for the lower quality product look as identical as possible to the original. I can guess at why they did this, but the reason isn’t important. By trying to fool me into sticking with them (like I wouldn’t notice) they jeopardized our “relationship.” It’s not the product that I am mad at. It’s the Hero brand. They tried to pull the wool over my eyes.

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Today, the Lexus suspended sales of the GX 460 because a Consumer Reports issued a “Don’t Buy” warning due to rollovers in their testing. Toyota is finally listening, but consumers may give the credit to the Lexus brand, and not the parent brand – Toyota. [Read more →]