Business Finance Homework Help

Branding Disasters

There are many stories of famous people and companies that had a great brand and then over night lost that brand power due to something negatively impacting the brand.

For this assignment you will research a person or company that had some sort of misfortune that caused the brand to crash and burn.

1. Step one: decide on a person or company with branding issues
2. Step two: conduct research on the chosen person or company (cite your sources when you provide your answers)
3. Step three: your original post should define the original brand (branding), discuss what made the person or company popular (one fully developed paragraph)
4. Step four: discuss what happened to cause the brand to crash and burn (one fully developed paragraph)
5. Step five: discuss if the person or organization recovered from the loss in brand credibility (one fully developed paragraph)
6. Step six: provide the URL to the story you discuss or a photograph
7. Step eight: reply to at least one peer with a fully developed reply. Do address your peer by name.

As a reminder a fully developed paragraph is 6 to 8 sentences. Use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation with each contribution.

You must post before you can see peer posts.

Responses

• Blockbuster was founded in October of 1985 opening its first store here in Dallas, Texas. It was different than other video stores in that they had a selection of over 8,000 VHS tapes. A lot of people did not want to buy every VHS tape or movie that came out individually. With the addition of computers, a quick check out and investments in the company they quickly became popular and rose to fame. By 1988, they had expanded to many different video stores rebranding them as Blockbuster. Throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s blockbuster had reached up to 6,000 stores globally and was doing very well.
• As quickly as Blockbuster expanded it declined as new technology was emerging. In the late 90’s and by the time the 2000’s came around there was competition evolving around them with Netflix and Redbox. Netflix offered to ship DVDs to people’s houses directly while Redbox offered quicker rental options with no late fees. It turns out Blockbuster was making up to 16% or $800 million in late fees. Blockbuster had failed to buy out Netflix and it continued to rise. They did not do a good job integrating with the new technology like launching Blockbuster Online, they were far behind competitors and in debt. With this and the failure to adapt to its competitors having no late fees for rentals, people started to move away from Blockbuster. Despite having its best year in 2004 the downfall was quick. The market value was decreasing and by 2010 they filed for bankruptcy.
• Blockbuster did not recover from the loss as of today and currently only have one store open in Bend Oregon. I think this is because they just did not adapt to change very well and continue to grow. They also had a lot of debt. Failure to market well and not getting rid of all the late fees. It was almost as if the second they got competition, they could not handle it. I think if they could have bought Netflix out in 2000 for $50 million it would have been huge for blockbuster. Netflix was newer and trendier while Blockbuster was kind of stuck in the past decades. They desperately needed to rebrand themselves in a new light and failed to do that.