The Brand Crisis Polka

I: Narrengold Industries Unveils [Product] Campaign

DATELINE: Vuotaville, May 2023
  At an exclusive launch event, Narrengold Industries unveiled the much-anticipated [redacted] campaign. The [brand] features edgy spokesmodels, flashy imagery and nothing at all informing the customer about the product.

  Says marketing intern Meghan Cruzak, “As the first left-handed Libra with pink hair to lead a giant consumer product, it’s an amazing opportunity to really evolve this brand I know nothing about.
  “This campaign is meant to be different for the sake of itself, with a lot of empty overconfidence. It’s really critical to depict people as they appear in my own imagination, and that means a campaign pandering to the latest social fads will somehow magically appeal to consumers.
  “In my head, I had one thought, and it was ‘This brand needs my stamp on it, and if we don’t attract consumers to buy this brand, my resumé will look pretty thin,’” Cruzak said.

II: Market Revolt and Blamestorming as Damage Control

“They hate it!”
  Marketing gurus insist the campaign was just to make the brand appeal to ‘everyone,’ retro-actively describing it as an attempt to ‘authentically’ connect with people across imagined demographic spectrums. An innocent-sounding, yet dubious claim coming well after the Clydesdales have left the barn door.
  But actions betray words.
  “We had wanted to elevate this iconic brand and focus on ‘inclusivity’ because anything that doesn’t jibe with our solipsistic worldview must itself be in decline,” admitted Cruzak. “If consumers decide to no longer buy the product, obviously it’s because they’re bad, bad people, and must be painted as such.”

III: C-Suite Buck-Passing and the Taphonomic Spiral

Naturally, senior level company executives claim no awareness of the polarising activities of their marketing manipulators. This way C-Suite deadweights can maintain plausible deniability whilst blameshifting their responsibilities to minions of the lower echelons. Those fools are shuffled off, and execs will go through the appearances of trying to revive a dying brand, to no avail. No worries, though — they’ll just cash out and move on.
  As for the ‘edgy spokesmodels’ — they’ll milk the victimhood thing for awhile. But being narcissists, this will be seen as a notch in their belts for their remaining lives.

Brand taphonomy shows many parallels to corporate taphonomy — the usual brew of hubris, ignorance and avarice. In other words: Nothing new here.

“History shows again and again how poor business decisions point out the folly of men.” — Johnny Gutts