Introduction

1. Background:
Due to increased worldwide rivalry, marketing has evolved as the most crucial job in today's
mate, with even small enterprises now employing new marketing tactics. With the widespread
coverage of television and the internet, marketing is not limited by geographical limits, but
rather by location and time constraints.
As markets expanded, many corporations were dissatisfied with the concept of selling more
and more. They required a foundation for directing their efforts, as well as more effective
techniques for recruiting and retaining clients. From mass marketing in the 1950s and 1960s
to segmentation and line extension in the 1970s and intensified niche marketing in the 1980s,
total quality management blended with the marketing concept in the late 1980s, broadening
the traditional marketing concept to involve all members of the organization in striving to
improve quality in order to satisfy customers.

Marketing businesses must create organizations and systems that can adapt to changes
in the marketing environment. The fundamental aim is to build an organizational
climate that is open to change and evolves in accordance with the needs of global
marketing. There is a need for cross-functional organizations that can collaborate with
multidisciplinary teams, and organizational culture and climate must be adaptable
enough to adopt the culture of the global market structure.

If a firm has invested a lot of time and resources on establishing their brand, you'll
have an emotional reaction when you hear their name. Based on previous interactions
with the firm, current stories about them, and/or the opinions of individuals in your
social circle, your reaction might be favorable or negative. Each of these elements
adds to the organization's overall image. People naturally link favorable sentiments
with organizations that have a strong reputation.

However, these reputations may be rather vulnerable. Only one error might jeopardize
a customer's love and faith in a brand. This is especially true when the issue involves
the health and safety of the consumers.

Companies must develop strategies to address these issues as soon as they arise in
order to regain the public's trust. If their brand does not recover from these errors, they
risk losing these clients for good.

Even well-known companies with strong customers’ base and good reputation can
sometimes deploy some marketing strategies that turn out to be against them and affect
negatively their brand image, this occurs principally because of the fact that the
company ignores some side effects of its strategy while deploying it.
Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s, Samsung and H&M are four companies that operate
in four different fields but what is common between them is that they all faced a
marketing related problem; bad brand image.

A company's, a product's, or a service's brand image is more than just a logo. Today, it
is a mash-up of associations formed by customers depending on every engagement
they have with the brand. Thus, selecting the brand image to be examined as one of the
marketing difficulties is vital in order to understand how it impacts the firm as a whole
on the one hand, and how the organizations described above handled this critical
difficulty on the other.

To study the problem related to the brand image that McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson,
Samsung and H&M faced, we are going to adopt an experimental research design
simply because it allows us to test cause-and-effect relationships.

2. Scope and method of investigation:

1- McDonald’s:

The world's largest fast-food corporation has long been chastised for its
unhealthy menu offerings. However, after the documentary Super-Size Me
premiered in 2004, McDonald's faced an especially strong wave of criticism
(Secondary data). One of the most infamous illustrations of how quickly a
brand's reputation can deteriorate.

2- Johnson & Johnson:

People are familiar with Johnson & Johnson because of one of its most
recognizable products. Johnson's Baby Powder However, consumers have lost
faith in the corporation as a result of the company's once-popular product,
baby powder. Asbestos-related ailments often manifest years after repeated
exposure. According to documents released in 2017, management were aware
of asbestos liability as early as the 1970s. (Secondary data)

3- Samsung:

Due to a battery malfunction, Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 smartphones caught

fire and exploded in 2016. Because of the problem, Samsung users all over the
world saw a 15% drop in sales.

4- H&M:

H&M caused outrage in 2018 while announcing a new line of animal-centric

children's sweatshirts. I know what you’re asking, how could this negatively
impact the organization’s brand image?

The outrage arose because the image used by H&M to promote the new line
featured an African American child wearing a sweatshirt. The fact that it was a
 sweatshirt was not the issue; the outrage was caused by the design on the
sweatshirt.

The words "coolest monkey in the jungle" were written over the breast of the
sweatshirt.

Critical discussion

McDonald’s:

A documentary that was a sociological experiment was done to see how the food
chain’s impacts health. Spurlock, the man that filmed the documentary, ate nothing
but McDonald's for a month, and every time a staff asked if he wanted to "Supersize"
his meal, he agreed. A Supersize meal came with around 200 grams of French fries
and 1.25 liters of soft drink.

Spurlock had gained over 25 pounds, as well as increasing body mass and
cholesterol. His doctor advised him to discontinue the diet since it was causing liver
damage. Because of worries about consuming junk food, McDonald's UK sales
plunged to one of their lowest levels following the documentary.

- McDonald's reacted by discontinuing their Supersize servings. The restaurant

company changed its menu to offer healthy alternatives like salad and milk. In
addition, it introduced the "Every Step Counts" campaign. By handing free
pedometers, this emphasized the benefits of regular activity. It even provided
funding for a push to train community football coaches.

- By analyzing this secondary data we can say that McDonald’s did not ignore
the problem because a similar act could have cost it its most valuable asset
which is its brand image.
McDonald’s instead took advantage of the situation and changed partly its
menu by offering healthy alternatives and introducing the “Every Step Counts”
campaign.
Johnson & Johnson:

To keep skin dry and avoid rashes, Johnson & Johnson's baby powder contains
crushed talc, which absorbs moisture and reduces friction. Many talc sources have
natural asbestos contamination, which causes mesothelioma. However, it appears
that Johnson & Johnson did not address this issue in their baby powder.

As a result, the corporation was confronted with legal concerns related to asbestos
exposure from the well-known product. This includes almost 6,500 complaints
alleging that the powder caused ovarian and mesothelioma cancer.
 - After identifying one tainted bottle purchased from an internet merchant,
Johnson & Johnson voluntarily recalled over 33,000 bottles. The corporation
agreed to settle litigation and pay large damages to claimants who were
harmed. It further claims that over the previous 40 years, thousands of tests
have always proven that the talc has never contained asbestos.

- By taking a look on the secondary data, the company defended its brand image
by setting clear evidences claiming that its product is not dangerous.

Samsung:

Because of the serious and frightening condition, the firm received a barrage of
negative feedback. Samsung, on the other hand, was able to recover via
consistent efforts. The first step was to remove all phones from circulation.
The firm recalled the Note 7, halted sales and shipments, reimbursed
customers, and exchanged phones. As it turned out, the replacements had the
same problem, so Samsung recalled those as well.

- The corporation accepted full responsibility for their issue. A team of

experts put phones and batteries through rigorous testing in order to
detect the problem. After that, Samsung revealed what went wrong: the
phone batteries were too large for their casings, leading them to
overheat. It also announced the implementation of a quality assurance
procedure as well as other safety features.

- Samsung worked on regaining people' trust by reminding them of the

reasons they should adore the brand. It altered its internal culture since
its brand identity "lacked warmth and empathy." The organization created
a similar goal for all of its customers by developing the phrase "Do What
You Can't."

H&M:

The term “Monkey” has an unfortunate history as a racial slur toward African
Americans. Many people thought the image showed that the company
considered the child to be less-than-human.

In contrast, some other sweatshirts from the same line used white models. A
white child modeled a hoodie from the same line featuring “survival expert”.
Another said “junior tour guide”. Many people believed that this direct
comparison was a deliberate move.

People on Twitter accused the brand of profiting from online backlash and bad
PR. They thought the comparison was on purpose.
- H&M took the image off all of their social media accounts.
Conclusion/ recommendations

Managing your reputation requires planning and insight. Before launching any
campaign, the company should ensure that it has thoroughly examined all aspects of
its marketing strategy. To do so, the company can set up Google alerts for all titles in
question using brand names, product tags, popular misspellings, competitors, senior
team leaders, key industry terms, and popular search phrases.

The organization should also have a well-thought-out plan in place for dealing with a
reputation problem. Sometimes the greatest way to solve an issue is to not respond
to it at all. Check to see if the offending website that hosts the nasty comments about
you will gain popularity as a result of rebuttals from the firm or individual attempting
to defend himself—if the site performs well on other people's remarks, it may be best
not to react at all.

According to some, the only three rules of reputation management are authority,
authority, and authority. The more authority you have, the easier it is to influence
where the content appear on the search page results. Building a social media
reputation with a large following is one approach to develop authority.

This is accomplished not by buying likes, but by connecting with people as a thought
leader or by being really honest about your business.

Other basic measures you may take to establish or repair your reputation as it shows
in search results include:

 Own Your Past. 

 Control the conversation about your brand. 
 Understand complaints your brand already receives. 
 Adjust your social media response plan based on research, not emotion. 
 Monitor employee complaint platforms.
 Be proactive to prevent issues from turning into a crisis. 
 Limit potential surprises. 
 Take complaints offline when possible. 
 Be quick to apologize to customer complaints. 
 Be transparent when handling client issues. 
 Fix what you can! 
 Use testimonials. 
 Create quality subpages from your website. 
 Reward loyal customers. 
 Be patient. 
The Internet has altered the way people handle and view their reputation. While it
takes millions of dollars and years to construct a respected brand, it just takes 45
seconds to open a Twitter account and possibly harm an organization's online image.
Nothing is more vital to a company's health than controlling its brand's reputation in
today's environment.

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