Most large corporations in America for decades assumed they were respected and trusted as good citizens by their employees and the public. The primary focus of management, therefore, had been on producing and selling their goods and services at a profit attractive to shareholders. This has been the primary focus of marketing and marketing communications as well. Efforts to build a strong, positive corporate reputation have been the province of public relations or low on the priority list while everything else focuses on transactions. A few companies like General Electric, DuPont, Toyota, McDonalds, and BP created memorable corporate efforts.

One of America's greatest inventors, Benjamin Franklin, once said “glass china and reputation are easily cracked, but never well mended.” A simplistic and thankfully outdated notion, yet with an element of truth.

Marketers are getting their groove back. But if the year ahead heralds the “return of marketing,” it certainly won't be marketing as we know it.

This article uses the Anholt Nation Brands Index to measure the power and appeal of America's brand image by surveying 10,000 consumers in 10 countries on their perceptions of America's cultural, political, commercial and human assets, investment potential, and tourist appeal. The findings show that while U.S. exports, investment, immigration, tourism, and people rank relatively high among the other nations indexed, the global opinion of U.S. governance and culture and heritage are very low. Recommendations for improving America's global brand image are presented.

Do consumers really care about corporate reputation when it comes to purchasing decisions? This study tests that hypothesis by comparing consumers' perceptions of companies to the consumer equity of brands owned by those companies, using international studies of brand equity and corporate reputation. The results show that poor corporate reputation makes building strong brands difficult, but a good reputation is no guarantee of success.

The elements of corporate reputation that seem to matter most to consumers in practice are perceptions of fairness toward consumers, and perceptions of corporate success and leadership, rather than public responsibility. Consumers want good business practice but when it comes to brand strength and purchasing, more personally relevant factors take precedence. So pushing a corporate social responsibility agenda to consumers may not reap the strongest rewards. But “ethical” brands that bring no penalty in cost or quality are likely to be more successful.

The stock market response to corporate scandals and the use of the internet by pressure groups have sensitized boards to the risk of reputation loss. Particularly at risk are companies using corporate brands whose fame and spread makes them particularly vulnerable. This study looks at these and other pressures on branding and investigates if and how leading companies have responded in the deployment of their brand portfolios. A repeat audit of the use of brand portfolios by leading companies using exactly the same method used over a decade ago reveals much change. Brand structures of the 20 companies investigated have indeed changed but not uniformly in extent or direction.

Following recent increases in the financial value of sport sponsorship programs, some commentators believe this has been accompanied by the development of sponsorship management practices. Despite this, there are still widespread concerns about some of these practices. This study therefore sets out to examine and comment upon the practice of sponsorship management from an English perspective, specifically in soccer. This is an area of sponsorship that has previously been examined and is a sport in which there have been significant commercial developments in recent years. Using face-to-face interviews and questionnaires, 43 corporations provided information about their sponsorship programs. While there is some evidence of good practice, a continuing failure to effectively manage sport sponsorship programs is clear. The study thus concludes by making recommendations about the future development of sport sponsorship management.The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution made by Victoria Wynn during the formative stages of the study.

This global study analyzes ambush marketing from the perspective of the sponsor and sport entity as partners in a business-to-business relationship. While it remains a real threat to the strategic co-branding objectives sought from the relationship, ambush is not necessarily as dangerous to sponsors as it has been in the past. Sponsors can use ambushers' attacks to their advantage by drawing attention to issues of legitimacy, by enhancing brand or corporate authenticity, and by appealing to consumers increasingly wary of disingenuous brands. Our findings confirm the potential to approach the sponsorship relationship as a co-marketing alliance to optimize co-branding objectives and to negate the effects of ambush.

The Best of Branding: Best Practices in Corporate Branding by James R. Gregory, McGraw-Hill, October 2003, ISBN: 0071403299, $39.95, 288 pp.

Jim Gregory believes in the power of brands. His firm, CoreBrand, has tracked the impact of branding communications on the bottom line for almost 15 years. This book is his attempt to present the basic principles of his CoreBrand measurement system (Part 1), the consulting approach he and his firm use in the brand building process (Part 2), and finally a series of basic principles of good branding based on case studies (Part 3).

305 Corporate Reputation: What Do Consumers Really Care About? GRAHAM PAGE and HELEN FEARN

314 Managing Brand Portfolios: How Strategies Have Changed SYLVIE LAFORET and JOHN SAUNDERS

328 Managing Sport Sponsorship Programs: Lessons from a Critical Assessment of English Soccer SIMON CHADWICK and DES THWAITES

339 Defending the Co-Branding Benefits of Sponsorship B2B Partnerships: The Case of Ambush Marketing FRANCIS FARRELLY, PASCALE QUESTER, and STEPHEN A. GREYSER