Brand Failures

146 Brand failures
they should, especially in desert conditions, and if the treads did strip
off, the vehicles were more inclined to roll over because they have a
higher centre of gravity.
Whether Firestone has a point or not, its brand has been considerably
damaged by the very public mud-slinging as both it and Ford tried to dodge
the blame for the accidents. It all came to a head when Ford announced it
would replace up to 13 million Firestone tyres. Ford explained that, ‘tyres not
covered in the original recall could experience increased failure rates.’ This
decision came a day after Firestone abandoned Ford as a customer.
As the investigations of more than 100 deaths in tyre-related crashes of
Ford Explorers continued, Firestone was rapidly losing the public’s confidence.
In one Fortune magazine survey, the company dropped to the bottom
of a chart of most-admired companies.
‘Looking at the brand today, I would say it’s a highly challenged brand,’
says Gwen Morrison, a branding analyst at Chicago-based marketing agency
Frankel. ‘The very core of what tyre brands have stood for is safety. You see
ads with a baby sitting in a stack of tyres; there had been a halo over the entire
industry.’
The fact that Ford and Firestone failed to provide clear, consistent and
comprehensive information to the public, explaining the crashes, was an
obvious mistake. Sure, however they would have been handled, the crashes
were always going to be bad news. But by sitting on information and failing
to co-operate, Firestone has put its own long-term future under greater threat
than it would have been otherwise.
Many branding experts now expect parent company Bridgestone to
abandon the Firestone brand altogether, and concentrate on its own branded
tyres instead.
Lessons from Firestone
Be honest with customers. The tyre failures themselves have probably caused
less damage than evidence that Firestone held back information about the
problems.
Act fast. In the event of a brand crisis, such as a product recall, companies
need to act fast to re-establish customer confidence. Waiting six months
before publishing your findings is only going to fuel negative speculation.