The long and winding road

How many people remember Gerald Ratner ? Anyone who does probably remembers him for one thing - the fact that he very publicly destroyed the Ratner brand, literally overnight.

The Sunday Times published an excerpt from his forthcoming book, which is the story of the circumstances of this quite astounding corporate suicide, and what happened next. What is quite interesting is Ratner's observation that, 16 years on, the ridicule he suffered still hurts. Well, that hurt is certainly something that he'll live with for the rest of his life, but what about his reputation ? There have certainly been some phenomenal bounce-backs from public ridicule in recent years. Jonathan Aitken, Jeffrey Archer and Neil Hamilton (OK, maybe not) spring to mind, but in all cases they were the brand, and it was their public reputation that was under threat. This is wholly different, because it involves gaining the public's trust to buy your products. And when the very person who gave his name to the brand says they are rubbish, and furthermore that the buying public are idiots if they buy there again, there can really only be one outcome.

I have to admit that I have only read the Times article, not the whole book (yet - it comes out on 1st November) so can't really comment much further than that, but I wonder whether there are some cases where damaged reputations are just irretrievable. Or whether the public's memory of what happened is such that, 16 years on, their memories of what happened are substantially less than Mr Ratner himself. Perhaps his book can shed some light on that answer to that, but given his Ratner Online site doesn't appear to be challenging Ernest Jones or H Samuel (the brands that Ratners turned into when Ratner was ejected from the board), the evidence would suggest not.

For those that want to read the article, click here.