In this day and age, brands can fall in a matter of minutes. Here are 5 ways a brand can become undone. Many may seem obvious to you, but brands make mistakes every day, and the bigger the company, the harder they are to avoid. Take a look, and make sure you can honestly say your brand is on the high road.

1. No internal branding. Outbound marketing is the easy part. Getting all of your employees to beat the drum, to be completely in tune with your positioning statement and the brand philosophies that go along with it – that’s hard. Just ask Rupert Murdoch and the folks at NewsCorp.
2. Misuse/Misunderstanding of Social Media. Some companies let interns admin their Twitter accounts. Some jest about serious situations in the world (ahem… Kenneth Cole). But countless brands are learning the hard way that Facebook and Twitter require a definitive strategy, and someone smart and trustworthy to execute it.
3. Deeply Discounted Counterfeits. No one in the fashion world was hurt more by this phenomenon than Burberry several years ago. But it looks like things are starting to look up since they initiated a counterfeit crackdown and generally tightened up the ship to get back in the good graces of their core luxury consumers.
4. Guilt by Association. Unfortunately for some brands, there can always be an untargeted market that flocks to your products. You may think Toyota’s biggest problem is recovering from recall mayhem, but perhaps the Taliban poses a bigger problem.
5. A Case of the Crazies. Charlie Sheen. Anthony Weiner. Howard Dean. Need I say more? Yes, these are individuals. But they are celebrity brands, political brands. Brands that have careened into oblivion. CEO’s tweet an awful lot these days – what will yours say next? And what will it mean for your brand?