Brand Betrayal

Why is it that companies intentionally do things to undermine their brands? To piss off their customers?

In just one week we've had two examples in the Tech world.

First, Apple drastically lowered the prices of their products, notably the iPhone by $200, causing their early adopters a LOT of heartburn. Steve Jobs quickly relented and offered up a $100 store credit towards Apple products.

But at what cost to the next product launch?

Today, several irate bloggers are writing about how Microsoft bypassed their automatic security update feature on Windows XP and Vista, to "force patch" that very application - even if their customers had disabled the feature on their PC!

This corporate "home invasion" is completely unacceptable to most of Microsoft's customers.

Yet someone in the bowels of the organization thought they could "slip something by the consumer". Has there ever been an example where this type of behavior has worked to the long term advantage of a company or their brand?

Was the Ford brand enhanced long term by the internal decision NOT to fix engineering problems with the Ford Pinto, because customer litigation costs were anticipated to be a fraction of the cost to remedy the problem?

Did the Firestone brand benefit by manufacturing substandard tires?

There's an old leadership adage that says; "Run your company as if your name were on the door."

For some public companies, that lesson seems lost.