image crisis

Guest Post by: Monica (Market Sentinel)

How the Gap logo debacle turned a PR crisis into positive brand awareness for Gap’s “iconic blue logo”.

With reports that the oil gusher in the Gulf is nearly kaput, BP's new CEO announced Friday that the company would scale back its cleanup efforts in areas where there is no more oil. Makes sense. Still bad for the brand, though.

There are two problems with which BP must contend, one situational and the other conceptual:

This BP mess is definitely an ecological disaster as well as a brand disaster of the century and it will take us decades to see the real impact. BP has lost half of its market value and there are even considerations for shareholder lawsuits on behalf of BP investors who have lost money because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

What does Toyota's travails mean to green marketing?

That question seems ripe these days, as the leading Japanese auto maker gets a comeuppance for its allegedly serious safety defects — and the more than 8 million cars it has recalled worldwide as a result. Toyota, after all, had become a darling of the eco-minded, a case study in the green halo that can inure to old-line companies that bring environmental innovation to mainstream audiences. Toyota seemed to have done it the right way: with products that weren't just greener, but better — in this case, high-aesthetic, high-performance, affordable cars.

Unlike its response to the 1982 product tampering crisis, Tylenol is writing a textbook case with its reaction to the FDA's concerns about dosage...a case history of what not to do.

Last week, an advisory panel of doctors and consumer representatives (whoever they are) announced that: