Know-How Exchange : Branding

Pick on a particular brand and follow its story for example Burberry from chic to chav to chic again. How a brand can vere off in the wrong direction and kill itself.

I believe you can take this topic and use examples to demonstrate the power of branding. You can take categories of products. For exmaple, every day food brands, health and beauty aid brands, luxury brands. You could demonstrate the power of branding by taking every day food brands as a category and using few examples demonstrate how average consumer prefers branded food products to private label, on branded products. You could take it step further by trying to find out some good local food brands that are still local (restaurant food) and haven't made it to national level simply because they haven't had funds to do sell and market nationally.
You could do the same for luxury brands. Pick a category in the luxury items( coach purses etc.) and demonstrate how because of power of branding, they have been able to sell to a much larger target market versus another product in the same category that hasn't been able to larger target market and command higher prices. Of course, you will have to find products that meet these criteria. A visit to few stores should resolve the problem.

It all depends on how much work you want to do. TOYOTA can be another exmaple.It sure has hurt itself badly, really badly. If you compare their stock price now to before the scandal. In Consumer Product Goods categories, there can be tons. You can add other car companies to it, guranteed there were other factors that added to the problem.
Coke almost killed itself and soon they realized that people are emotionally tied to their brand and found a solution; with Coke classic.
I believe there is book out there titled "BRAND FAILURES" by Matt Haig that covers biggest 100 brand failures.

If Burberry intrigues you, I would definitely go with that. If something intrigues you, it makes it easier to do the work. Good luck to you.