The Brand Flux Model - The Impact of Disruption on the Corporate Brand

This paper presents an understanding of the Brand Flux Model via case studies of service organizations that after numerous attempts to deal with environmental pressures by various forms of rebranding or repositioning made the decision to radically rename. Given the importance of a corporate brand, and the significance of the name to the brand, the study specifically explores why these organizations decided to change their names. As technology increasingly generates vast amounts of marketing data from scanners, Facebook, Twitter, etc. the inability to synthesize this data stream has the potential to become a disruptive factor to an organization’s strategic plans, and puts a premium on the ability to rapidly adapt to today’s dynamic business environment. This paper describes the Brand Flux Model, which illustrates brand management actions an organization can pursue in response to the pressures brought on by this wave of marketing information. To the extent an organization can successfully manage the brand within the Brand Flux Model, the extremes of renaming or retirement of the organization brand is not necessary. But this recent wave of instantaneous marketing information flow and nearly instantaneous consumer awareness of issues affecting the organization brand has reduced the luxury of brand management deliberation.