Find Conviction, Beyond Conviction

As I look at brands that went bad and returned to glory, most were in very scary, dark places. They experienced mountains of rejection; others had extreme debt or were about to run out of money; some brand leaders or individual brands were sentenced to prison time and a lifetime criminal record; some felt abandoned by their stakeholders; all questioned their self-confidence and battled inner demons as well as aggressive public enemies—they were on the edge facing an uncertain future.

Too often, some in the media see these brand blow-ups as an opportunity to sell more papers or draw more viewers. The bigger the brand name, the more they trumpet the story. They’ll slice and dice the story from every possible angle—sometimes long after the story is told and the brand is down. There is a tendency on the media’s part to search for several smoking guns; thus, a story about an explosion at a plant, for example, might start with the explosion, but then the media targets the CEO’s past, the vendor’s past, other plants, and so on.