A new study from marketing experts at Interbrand suggests that Bear Stearns may have bungled it’s marketing starting all the way back in the 1990 recession, at time when rival Merrill Lynch spent far more to market its brand to the market than Bear.
“Merrill Lynch was seeing the return on its early ’90s branding investment in its ability to build and leverage its reputation in a broader market. It may have outspent Bear Stearns to do so, but the positive return was clear,” Interbrand says.
Of course, Bear was in a very different business than Merrill, which has a much broader retail business. (And Interbrand is obviously conflicted here. It’s hard to imagine a marketing company urging customers not to spend more on marketing.)
Nonetheless, the contrast in early nineties stock performance is striking. Merrill outpaces the S&P every year while spending more while Bear more or less tracks the index. It certainly leaves open the possibility that if Bear had done a better job of explaining its business to the market, the market may have been more confident about its ability to survive and perform during the credit crunch.
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This was revenge. Stop trying to figure out what happened. Revenge for their behavior during the LTCM “bailout.”
@1
Agreed. Proving that there is, indeed, a god, and that arrogant douchtastic behaviour does, at least sometimes, come back to bite you in the ass.
Eat more Mayo!
> Caution: stock performance over relatively short periods is very end point sensitive and therefore not such a useful measure.
yes, adverts are very not important.
MER is about to kick it -although the running bull is awesomely funny.
was GS running ads in the 90s?
-retail donny douche
Talk about some self-serving bullshit… “Hey, maybe if Bear had used the services of a top-notch brand consultant (wink, wink), they wouldn’t have been in this predicament!”
what is going on with this mayo craze!We are turning into a MAYO NATION.I know it goes well with turkey,but this mayo worship has got to stop!
dare I say it: MHL
Mayo Nation Rulz!
“bungled its”, not it’s
shoddy attention to detail
MHL = mayo, ham and lettuce
#11 that is a great sandwich, good job.
completely worthless report from Interbrand…looking at marketing spend as the only explanation for increase in share price is ridiculous. let’s show the increase in janitorial services spend at MER vs BSC and attribute MER’s performance to the fact they took more shits
I agree. Clean toilets lead to success! And the shit hit the fan at BSC.