All too often, brands lose credibility in a short amount of time. The speed in which we are able to communicate with masses of people can destroy a once good brand in the length of time it takes to send a tweet. For example, in 2010 the Nestle Corporation was besieged on Twitter and their Facebook page with negative comments about their use of palm oil. The critics claimed that Nestle’s use of the oil was responsible for rainforest destruction which threatened the habitat of the orangutan. Protesters began to post reworked Nestle product logos with the word "Killer” replacing the brand name. There was a day when an upset customer would just send a letter to your customer service department. In extreme cases, someone might set up a picket line outside your offices. But today, your brand can be under attack from the masses of bloggers and social media users in a very short amount of time.

How do you guard the reputation of your brand? First of all, figure out what your brand really stands for in the mind of your customer. I am not talking about what you decided it would stand for in a high-level marketing meeting in the boardroom. Find out what your customers really think of you. How do you do this? It is simple: ask them! This can be in the form of a customer satisfaction survey or by taking them to lunch and asking some questions. At the heart of brand management is listening to your customers.

Beyond listening, you need to act. It doesn’t matter whether the customer has a positive or negative impression of your brand, there is a marketing task to be implemented in either case. If the news is good, figure out how to use customer satisfaction in your marketing. Get the word out that customers think you’re great. Social media is at its best when this is the response you are getting. However, if the news is bad, fix the problem and let people know you are doing so. That needs to start with your own employees and getting them to see the problem and help implement change. Marketing can unfurl a banner about change, but if there is no follow through on the part of the people who work for you, your marketing will backfire. Communicate the changes to your customers. Again, social media is a cheap and effective way to get a message out to masses of people.

One of the most public marketing efforts to promote such a change happened with Dominos Pizza. Dominos made a series of TV commercials that talked about the fact that their brand had taken a beating in customer opinion polls. They promoted that they had listened to their customers and had reinvented their menu. They used a variety of social media to promote the change. They created a web site dedicated to the changes that had taken place and how the new pizza was beating their competitors in taste tests. (See pizzaturnaround.com). In the highly competitive pizza restaurant business, the Dominos brand rated near the bottom until they made this change. Has it worked? In the near term, maybe. If you look at their Facebook page, they still get pummeled about being cheap and not paying their employees enough money. In the long term, they may have created a new generation of loyal customers. Time will tell.

The bottom line is this: the standing of your brand is in the opinions of your customers. It is imperative that you know what they are thinking and act upon it. Otherwise, you could find that your brand is standing against you, not for you.

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Nestle mess shows sticky side of Facebook pages, by Caroline McCarthy, cnet.com, March 19, 2010