Tuesday 29 January 2008

Whatif Brainstorming Brand Vulnerability?

Brand Killer Robots reveal::
A recent meeting of brand protection experts has caused much controversy amongst those so called security gurus who think that they have everything wrapped up. Apparently the brain storming session, the topic of which was to remain secret to the attendees right up to entering the door, involved using creative visualisation techniques to broaden the debate surrounding the field of brand protection in corporate America. Attendees were encouraged to dig into the experiences of the past, in order to locate potential threat patterns and experiences of interest to all present and to visualise applying known attack patterns developed in one part of their careers, against completely different areas of their organisation. Someone used their experience as a network security penetration tester to conduct an audit on the risk management procedures of an organisation, in order to dig up serious gaps in the implementation of manufacturing policy, for a tea company based in Holland.

Some of the issues of brand vulnerability that were exposed during this rather lengthy brainstroming session included:

1. What if our brand becomes confused with another brand?
2. What if our competition went to war using various pricing strategies?
3. Who would have an active interest in our brands demise? How could they attack us?
4. What information don't we want our staff to disclose?
5. Do our products or services have racial or religious connotations?
6. Could we be attacked as an animal rights abuser?
7. Are we involved with any partnerships where our reputation could be at risk?
8. Are we involved with any markets in regions where economic viability might take a downturn?
9. Are we especially vulnerable to disruptive innovators?
10. Are we exposed to risk through poor transmission errors?
11. Are we exposed by non-compliance to legislation, such as health & safety issues?
12. Where are we especially vulnerable to hackers?

In fact the list ran to over 5000 different issues of potential brand vulnerability, in 30 distinct categories and will be published in due course.

Entitled "Whatif Brainstorming Brand Vulnerability".

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