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However, emotions aren’t to be messed with. Once a brand has created that necessary bond, it has to handle it with care. One step out of line and the customer may not be willing to forgive.

This is ultimately why all brands fail. Something happens to break the bond between the customer and the brand. This is not always the fault of the company, as some things really are beyond their immediate control (global recession, technological advances, international disasters etc). However, more often than not, when brands struggle or fail it is usually down to a distorted perception of either the brand, the competition or the market. This altered view is a result of one of the following seven deadly sins of branding:

Brand amnesia. For old brands, as for old people, memory becomes an increasing issue. When a brand forgets what it is supposed to stand for, it runs into trouble. The most obvious case of brand amnesia occurs when a venerable, long-standing brand tries to create a radical new identity, such as when Coca-Cola tried to replace its original formula with New Coke. The results were disastrous.

Brand ego. Brands sometimes develop a tendency for overestimating their own importance, and their own capability. This is evident when a brand believes it can support a market single-handedly, as Polaroid did with the instant photography market. It is also apparent when a brand enters a new market for which it is clearly ill-suited, such as Harley Davidson trying to sell perfume.

Brand megalomania. Egotism can lead to megalomania. When this happens, brands want to take over the world by expanding into every product category imaginable. Some, such as Virgin, get away with it. Most lesser brands, however, do not.

Brand deception. ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality,’ wrote T S Eliot. Neither can brands. Indeed, some brands see the whole marketing process as an act of covering up the reality of their product. In extreme cases, the trend towards brand fiction can lead to downright lies. For example, in an attempt to promote the film A Knight’s Tale one Sony marketing executive invented a critic, and a suitable quote, to put onto the promotional poster. In an age where markets are increasingly connected, via the internet and other technologies, consumers can no longer be deceived.

Brand fatigue. Some companies get bored with their own brands. You can see this happening to products which have been on the shelves for many years, collecting dust. When brand fatigue sets in creativity suffers, and so do sales.

Brand paranoia. This is the opposite of brand ego and is most likely to occur when a brand faces increased competition. Typical symptoms include: a tendency to file lawsuits against rival companies, a willingness to reinvent the brand every six months, and a longing to imitate competitors.

Brand irrelevance. When a market radically evolves, the brands associated with it risk becoming irrelevant and obsolete. Brand managers must strive to maintain relevance by staying ahead of the category, as Kodak is trying to do with digital photography.

Brand myths

When their brands fail companies are always taken by surprise. This is because they have had faith in their brand from the start, otherwise it would never have been launched in the first place. However, this brand faith often stems from an obscured attitude towards branding, based around one or a combination of the following brand myths:

If a product is first it will succeed. This concept is one of the most enduring in business theory and practice. Entrepreneurs and established giants are always in a race to be first. It is research from the 1980s claiming to show that market pioneers have enduring advantages – in distribution, product-line breadth, product quality and market share – which is to blame. Beguiling though the theory of first-mover advantage is, it is almost invariably a mistake to be first. As Gerard Tellis, of the University of Southern California, and Peter Golder of New York University’s Stern