Question

What if any example of a company engaging in an unethical practice which demonstrably harmed their reputation? What efforts (if any) have they made to try to fix it?

Answer 1

A company which has involved itself knowingly or unknowingly in unethical practices, may rebuild its brand in following ways :

1- Acknowledging what the company has perceived to have done wrong.

2- By controlling the brand conversation.

3- By understanding the complains which the brand is receiving.

4- Using analytics to make informed decision.

5- Be quick to apologize.

6- Be transparent in telling the customers what actually happened.

7- By creating quality subpages from the website.

8- Being patient.

A very good example can be taken of Maggie. The efforts taken by Maggie to rebuild its brand image is really commendable. Here's how:

- Using the Nostalgia factor

The first advertisement after the Maggi relaunch was of a mother speaking nostalgically about her child’s tryst with his favourite noodles, thus further adding to the emotional value of the customers right there.

- Keeping in touch through increased ad space.

After the fiasco of the Maggi ban, its parent company Nestle decided to increase its spending on television commercials, leading to a growth of its ad volume to about 96 percent by September, 2015 — two months prior to the relaunch of the famous noodles, according to various data estimates.

- Making it exclusive

Like with everything else, consumers thrive on the feeling of owning a product or service ‘exclusively’. Maggi by making a deal with Snapdeal, made snapdeal the only platform where Maggi packets were sold before its official comeback into the shelves of all stores. This raised its demand by a roof and customers were trying to outbid each other for the ownership of the packets, sometimes even paying more, before it went out of stock.