By David Gumpert

Don't forget your fans, Britney, don't forget your fans… -- a line from the new album, Rock Star, by folkie Andrew KerrIt's often said that one of the toughest challenges facing any entrepreneur is building a lasting brand. It's also said that just a touch of scandal or inferior quality can do irreparable harm to an established reputation. One of the classic B-school studies in brand reputation and the importance of preserving it examines the lacing of Tylenol with cyanide in 1986, and the swift recall by Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ) of all Tylenol on store shelves -- a $1 billion effort that restored confidence in the brand so that it eventually recovered a leadership position.

Are all brands really so potentially fragile? I don't know of any studies on the subject, but I do know that a number of brands have taken seemingly huge hits of late, and are still around to see another day, with little in the way of defensive action on the scale of Johnson & Johnson's recall. Despite the pleadings of individuals like Andrew Kerr to Spears, whose recent eye-opening activities have scored acres of ink in the gossip columns, there is no sign that the Britney brand is on the wane.

Celebrities are essentially one-person business empires. They attract fans to performances, endorse products, and in some cases even help raise money for charities. So what happens when a celebrity does something unprofessional or, worse yet, illegal? The brand would seem to be in trouble.

THE MARTHA MODEL.  But the reality is much different. Take basketball star Kobe Bryant as an example. You might think that being charged with rape last year might have tarnished the hoopster's brand just a tad. Yet with the charges still outstanding, there was Bryant in July, 2004, signing a new seven-year contract with the Los Angeles Lakers worth more than $136 million. If that's what a tarnished brand commands, I'd be curious what it would be worth in pristine form.

One of the best known examples of a robust celebrity brand, of course, is Martha Stewart. Then she was charged with misleading investigators. You might think that would be the end of her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (~~). While it has declined in value over the last two years, from just above $20 a share to the current $11-plus, it still has a market capitalization well in excess of $200 million. In fact, on the day Martha was sentenced to a five-month jail term, it rose precipitously, and now a new strategy appears to be emerging to see her corporate creation through the inevitable publicity that will surround her appeal and, if it happens, her stay in prison (see BW Online, 8/13/04, "Martha's Latest Recipe").

No matter how much the celebrities ignore, patronize, or offend us, we keep going back for more. Thus Andrew Kerr's song mourning pop singer Britney Spears' indifference to a young fan:
I'm ten-and-a-half years old I have been to all your shows… There's one more thing I have to say You'll never read this anyway Cause I've written to you 19 times And you've never written back to me… Don't forget your fans, Britney…

DIFFERENT STANDARDS.  The most amazing examples of brands that grow despite disappointing fans are the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. The Red Sox have gone 85 years and the Cubs 95 years without winning world championships -- several generations of product futility -- yet both brands continue to attract sold-out crowds. The sale of the Red Sox to a group of acquirers for more than $600 million in 2001 still stands as a record for a major league team. As brands, habitual failure actually appears to increase their value!

So to singer Andrew Kerr, I offer this advice: Forget about shaming Britney Spears into answering her young fans. In fact, forget about getting any celebrity brand to worry about taking a big financial hit for being less than respectful to the fans (i.e. customers). Unlike the sure and dreadful fate that awaits a small business that makes the headlines for, say, selling adulterated food or peddling watered-down gasoline, it seems a celebrity brand's cache is immune to scandal's side effects. While they rule the world, they also have too little to lose.