Deborah Hill Cone: Famous names branded with shame

It is really hard to see how all this financial mayhem will end up. But one thing is certain: it is not going to be boom time for manufacturers of loud corporate-branded golf umbrellas any time soon.

Or, in fact, any of those look-at-me logo-encrusted products beloved of the financial services sector. All that naff bumf that marketing departments of large banks and insurers and investment companies sent their grotesquely wealthy clients at Christmas, although no self-respecting client would be seen dead in a 100 per cent viscose windcheater that functioned as a free walking billboard for their bank. Anyone fancy a fold-up deckchair with Citigroup logo on it, going cheap? Nah, didn't think so.

These days the poor morale-depleted employees of bailed-out insurance giant AIG are being told not to wear their security tags when they leave the building and certainly not to carry their branded gym bags when they sneak off for a Pilates class. If you worked for AIG you could be excused for sneaking round the corner to a seedy bar for a bowel-tightening kamikaze instead. How grim can it be to be working for such a fiscally and spiritually bankrupt brand? And it's not even as if, like Enron, the management is being accused of anything criminal.

Even the author of AIG's corporate history told the Financial Times: "I wouldn't want to have to defend that brand just now." Last year AIG ranked number 54 in Interbrand's league table of global brands - but given that Merrill Lynch was at 34 and no longer exists, that means four-tenths of diddly squat.

I can't see the AIG brand appearing on a new crop of baseball caps in the near future. But what I can't help wondering is whether so many other corporate brands, even ones not in the banking sector, are also trolleyed. That is, if the intangible assets on balance sheets are a teensy bit "impaired", to use the bean counter jargon. That means they are brands no one loves any more.

If everyone in the business world is now going to focus on actually flogging tangible widgets rather than inventing mad-arse financial products that no one understands, where does that leave the financial candyfloss of brands? Especially the ones which appear at the top of glass towers at the big end of town - as opposed to Havana Club or Huffer, which will always have a folksy charm. Aren't corporate brands simply another accounting conceit which depends on faith and groupthink?

The goodwill attached to brands is still as easy to value as a credit default swap. Marketing, like kooky financial instruments, is partly a confidence trick. You have to be a true believer. And brother, those are hard to find these days.

I am bracing myself for another long international flight with two preschoolers which will be deeply, deeply hideous no matter which airline I fly on or which part of the plane I am sitting in. I used to get angry at how hard airlines make it for people flying with children. But now I just meekly accept my lot and pack extra-strength Phenergan and every Thomas the Tank Engine DVD ever made. Why have I acquiesced to blame-the-victim syndrome? I wonder if there is a book Customers Who Love Too Much. Or perhaps, Your Airline Is Just Not That Into You. I think I have learned helplessness syndrome. Like a battered wife, I go back for more. I feel lukewarm coffee and a surly manner is all I deserve. Just saying.

deborah@coneandco.com