MIT Sloan Management Review

By unpacking the idea of a good or bad reputation into a profile of what the media says about their company, executives and public relations managers can understand and then influence their corporate reputation — and with it, their company’s real performance.

Many executives talk about corporate reputation and brand as if they are one and the same. They are not, and confusing the two can lead to costly mistakes.

Conventional wisdom holds that consumers faced with a large product assortment, like PCs with varying processor speeds, would rather choose a product that is middling than one at the extremes.

As people increasingly tune out the most common forms of advertising, savvy marketers are turning to four surprisingly affordable strategies.

Are you battling imports and losing market share? Has your product become an “unplanned commodity” as your sales negotiations with customers more and more revolve around price rather than value? Is your marketing team launching new products that support your brand and differentiate your company in the marketplace? Do you

When one company acquires another, executives have 10 distinct options for the corporate rebranding. Selecting the right strategy can set forth a compelling vision for the combined entity and send important signals to employees and the outside world.

Last September, executives from Arla Foods amba, the Danish dairy giant, probably paid scant attention to a series of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten. Six months later, they learned a hard lesson about religion and commerce.

The marketing implications of litigation are often not factored into the decision to take legal action — but they should be.

Consumers are a fickle lot. Case in point: It’s long been known that a consumer will be unhappy if he or she realizes that someone else got a better deal. So marketers tread very carefully when considering a promotion that targets one set of consumers for fear of alienating another.H

Vanishing mass markets, the proliferation of products and services and new technologies are requiring many companies to redefine their beloved core business doctrine: “Give customers what they want.â

In many organizations, the corporate marketing function has lost budget, head count, influence and confidence, resulting in strategic consequences that run deeper than many senior managers may realize. The question is not how to rebuild the marketing center, but how to disperse marketing competenceacross the organization.

Many companies’ brand portfolios have become bloated and obscured. A five-step approach can illuminate which brands should be supported, retired, repositioned or otherwise honed to bring greater clarity to the portfolio.

Marketing research must become a model for innovation rather than support the mere incremental administration of brands.

While relationship marketing assumes that companiesrelate to customers, collaborative marketing requires that companieswork with customers to define, design and deliver value.

The information revolution is making consumer disaggregation vastly more efficient and profitable than aggregation, the traditional source of brand power. This raises a fundamental question:

At a time when competitive factors have weakened the power of many storied brands, companies can regain an advantage by acquiring or developing a branded feature, service, program or ingredient. As examples, the author cites Westin Hotels, Krispy Kreme, UPS Supply Chain Solutions and many others.

As more and more firms realize that the brand names associated with their products or services are among their most valuable assets, creating, maintaining and enhancing the strength of those brands has become a management imperative.

Americans are joiners — nine out of 10 belong to at least one group or association, such as the American Automobile Association and the AARP, and these groups provide a potent mechanism for developing, marketing and distributing a host of products and services.

Skepticism about the motivation behind corporate social responsibility initiatives can undercut their effectiveness.

Brands associated with high quality make the most inroads among consumers around the world, according to a paper published in the Journal of International Business Studies in January 2003.