The Eyelet.

Not too long ago, consumers thought Old Spice was simply your father’s Aftershave. It came in a rather oddly iconic white glass bottle and anyone over 30 remembers seeing in their Father’s/Grandfather’s bathroom. It was cheap. It was potent. And supposedly, it was what “real men” smelled like. Strong, burly and handsome men. The kinds with hairy chests, that worked on ships and always got the girl. After all it was marketed, in all seriousness, as “The Mark of a Man.” But times change, the 80′s came and attitudes like that can only last for so long. The idea behind it became, for lack of a better word, cheesy, old and musky. And that will turn your hunky brand into a 90 lb weakling. So what does an irrelevant, stagnating brand do?

Read more

Since the Tiger Woods scandal broke last Fall, we’ve been regularly asked our opinion on the effects both to his personal brand and to those of the brands who’ve endorsed him. I’ve fielded the question in brand workshops, speaking engagements and client meetings. In the five months since the story unfolded, we’ve generally seen it as one of the larger destructions of brand equity in recent memory. In fact, Associate Professors Dr. Victor Stango and Dr. Christopher Knittel at the University of California Davis estimated that from the time of his accident to the announcement of his “indefinite leave” from golf that his endorsing brands lost $5-12 billion of shareholder value.

Read more