Managing Brand Transgressions: 8 Principles to Transform Your Brand

Finalist in the Marketing - Branding category of the Goody Business Book Awards 2024

Boeing Max 737’s twin crashes, Volkswagen’s Dieselgate scandal, worms in Cadbury’s chocolates, cyanide in Tylenol, the #MeToo movement… In the past 24–48 hours, chances are you have read about a brand believed to have transgressed in some part of the world. These and other transgressions – real or perceived – plague company brands and, as in the case of the #MeToo movement, human brands, routinely and globally. And they often come with serious consequences: consumer injury, billions of dollars in recovery and restitution, legal nightmares, bankruptcy, and damage to the brand. Despite their universal prevalence, negative outcomes, and the justified media frenzy around their occurrence, in-depth, thorough, and critical reflections on brand transgressions are scarce. Consequently, barring the lens of some quick-fix solution, managers lack a precise understanding of how to handle such potentially explosive situations.

Managing Brand Transgressions: 8 Principles to Transform Your Brand presents over 25 case studies of brands like Boeing, Cadbury, Dolce & Gabbana, Fox News, Maggi, Starbucks, Stoli Vodka, and Tylenol in countries such as USA, China, India, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Latvia. Through these real-life stories, the book captures a snapshot of approximately 50 years of company responses to crises – some successful, some not – caused by brand transgressions. Most importantly, it provides managers with a roadmap of eight principles that companies must use to turn transgressions into opportunities and transform their brands from inside out. Thoroughly researched, gripping, and provocative, this book can guide a brand not only through its crisis but prevent it from becoming a dinosaur.

Shailendra Pratap Jain is Bret Wheat Endowed Professor of Marketing and International Business at the Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Seattle. He has held faculty positions at Indiana University’s Kelley School, University of Rochester’s Simon School, Cornell University’s Johnson School, University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School, Cambridge University’s Judge School, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and BITS School of Management, Mumbai. Well-known for his widely published scholarship in consumer psychology, Dr. Jain has extensive publishing and editorial experience in top marketing journals and has won many executive and graduate (MBA) teaching awards. Prior to his academic career, he worked in sales, brand management, and advertising in industry and is associated with several noted marketing campaigns in India.

Shalini Sarin Jain is Associate Professor of Management and the inaugural Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Milgard School of Business, University of Washington, Tacoma. She has published articles on gender representation and compensation parity in top management, allegations of sexual misconduct, sustaining livelihoods or saving lives during COVID, and corporate response to mandatory CSR regulation in leading management journals including the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Management and Organization Review, and Journal of Family Business Strategy. Dr. Jain teaches courses in business and society, ethics, and CSR at the undergraduate and MBA level and has extensive industry, government, and non-profit experience leading and providing consulting services to state, county, and city governments.