LUCIAN CAMP, CHAIRMAN AND EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR, CCHM:PING
My two most life-changing recent brand moments have been when the good ship Arthur Andersen sank with all hands on deck, days after running onto the Enron rocks, and when a tracking study showed that the fledgling More Th>n brand had overtaken its 290-year-old Royal & SunAlliance parent on every key attribute less than four years after launch.
Conclusions: brands are far more vulnerable than they may appear, and can be built far more quickly than we thought.
The conclusions for Northern Rock: with huge expense and effort, maybe it could be refloated. But why bother? As the punchline of the Irish joke would put it, if I were you, I wouldn't start from here.
JOHN BILLET, BUSINESS CONSULTANT, JOHNBILLET.COM
Northern Rock's business model needs changing first, and immediately. Its image is busted because the market on which it was built no longer exists.
The bank's strategy of buying money at low interest rates from wherever it could, and selling it on to borrowers that others had rejected, and on overvalued properties, has been blown out of the water.
Its high-risk business strategy is no longer appropriate for today's financial times. Its immediate task is to jettison those who got it into this mess, replace them with customer-facing bankers and products for silver-savers, and re-profile its lending book. Only then can it move forward and sell the good bits to other banks.
CHRISTIAN SCHROEDER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, LAMBIE-NAIRN
The case of Northern Rock brings to mind the old adage 'it takes years to build a reputation and minutes to destroy one'.
Is anyone really surprised? A consumer society that seems to be predicated on short-termism and self-interest needs to wake up to the fact that there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Irrespective of the business or even the human impact, the brand has clearly suffered a severe blow in terms of consumer confidence and perception for all audiences, and the question of who is to blame is, ultimately, irrelevant.
My advice would be for Northern Rock to invest in the best PR it can get and hope for a miracle.
SIMON GULLIFORD, MARKETING CONSULTANT
Northern Rock is a well-known name with a well-executed visual identity, but is some way removed from being a premium brand with strong brand equity.
Strong financial services brands leverage high levels of trust. This occurs when customers accept the validity of a statement without reference to alternative sources. This is no longer the case with Northern Rock, where trust has been destroyed, fuelled mostly by the crass, misinformed behaviour of the media and idiotic MPs.
The only solution is to change senior managers, rename the business and provide a series of strong, independently backed guarantees. Economically, this would be very difficult. When the dust settles, its name will be quietly consigned to history.