Good article! You raise an
Good article! You raise an important point: Brands often find it hard to recover from serious stumbles. Once Jaguar earned a "reputation" for it's problems, it was in a much harder place to earn consumer trust back from its current customers, and then attract new ones. In the 1980s and 1990s, word of mouth was bad enough; these days it's word-of-mouth-around-the-world-with-social-media, where "gremlins" are retold and retold and retold at the speed of light. And even if Jaguar has dramatically improved its electrical problems (and I personally love the new design compared to the old), it has to do more to foster positive brand perceptions. Mad Men wouldn't be able to be "hard" on the brand if brand loyalists were vocal about the improvements. Even Apple withstood "antennagate" easily, because its fans were loyal to a fault.