Brand Management 2026, Part 3: How Brands Squander Trust

Brand management 2026. Part 3 of our series.

On April 1, 2006, Afri-Cola gave up. It was no April Fool's joke. The brand went back to its old recipe. It had taken eight years. Its fans had known right away: this was no longer their cola.

How could this happen?

Three ways to lose trust

Trust can be lost in different ways.

Through the product. In 1998, a new owner took over the German cola brand Afri-Cola. The new owner changed the recipe and lowered the caffeine content. Loyal fans no longer recognized their cola. At the end of 1999, Uwe Lübbermann organized a protest. Without success. Around two years later, the group launched the old recipe themselves. Its name: Premium-Cola. In 2005, Afri-Cola tried to move closer to the original. In 2006, the old recipe returned. By then, a competitor had already emerged from its own ranks.

Through price and ownership. In the mid-2000s, the German organic soft drink Bionade was a cult brand. A statement against the big soft drink companies. In summer 2008, the price rose by 30 percent. The justification: a premium surcharge. Sales halved that same year. In 2009, the Oetker group bought in. For many in the core target group, the brand had now sold out. On top of that came imitators that presented themselves as just as natural. The cult status was quickly gone.

Through gestalt and communication. In 2009, Tropicana got new packaging. The familiar orange with the straw disappeared. In less than two months, sales fell by 20 percent. Competitors grew over the same period. Tropicana went back to its old packaging.

The German Fritz-Kola is now at a similar point. The brand started in Hamburg in 2002. Two students sold their caffeinated soda directly to pubs from a VW camper van. Fritz-Kola presented itself as a cheeky challenger to Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Later, its advertising became political, for example around the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017. Today, it is one of the three largest cola brands in German retail (excluding discounters). In 2026, it took the politics out of its advertising. Founder Mirco Wolf Wiegert says: "That is why we are sharpening the brand and reducing it to its core" (our translation).

This raises a question: what is the core? Fun and caffeine, as in the new campaign? Or the stance the brand stood for over many years? Growth is a legitimate goal. If the stance remains recognizable, growth can succeed. If it grows quieter, a gap may open up. Premium-Cola shows how quickly others can fill it.

Of course, we are explaining these cases with hindsight. There were always several causes. But the pattern repeats itself.

When others take over the brand

In the age of dialogue, a brand's meaning no longer belongs to the company alone. Customers help shape it. That is usually intended. But it has its limits.

This is where the concept from Part 2 helps: self-similarity. A brand may develop. But every new form must grow recognizably out of the old one.

Lonsdale understood this. In the early 2000s, the boxing brand became a badge of the neo-Nazi scene against its will. Under an open jacket, only the letters NSDA remained visible. One letter short of NSDAP, the name of Hitler's party. The company did not let anyone take its brand core. In 2003, it launched the campaign "Lonsdale Loves All Colors" with non-white models. It supported anti-racism initiatives. And it stopped supplying well-known neo-Nazi shops. In doing so, it gave up revenue.

It was credible. In my view, that is also down to its origins. The history of boxing cannot be told without Black champions. Lonsdale did not bend. The brand drew on its own origins.

What brands can learn from this

You don't win new target groups by giving up meaning. You win them by telling your own meaning anew. To do that, a brand must know what it stands for. And what really binds its customers to it.

This is exactly where depth-psychological market research comes in. It shows which meanings carry a brand. And where it can evolve without losing itself. At CURTH+ROTH, we support brands on this journey.