Brand engagement NYC subway Jared

News media is reporting this morning that Jared Fogle – aka “Subway Jared” – has had his home raided by the police on suspicion of committing truly heinous crimes. With a significant portion of my business coming from creating trivia brand engagement events in NYC, I felt a shiver up my spine as I thought about what the folks over at Subway must be going through right now.

In today’s world, with a 24-hour news cycle and social media prevalence, brand is everything – both for companies, as well as individuals. Especially in a still-shaky economy, your reputation and how you are perceived are truly the only things which set you apart from the competition.

Partnerships and collaborations – so vital for businesses such as mine to expand beyond our capabilities and create new offerings and opportunities – come with a risk, in that your brands become inextricably connected, for better or for worse. While you can undoubtedly benefit from being associated with another brand which is viewed favorably in the marketplace, the flip side to that coin is you are also attached at the hip, should disaster strike.

In my business, I have the honor of collaborating with many prestigious organizations, venues and celebrities, each with the vision of establishing something which is mutually beneficial. They have built up their own brands over the course of years, even decades, and are trusting me to represent them in public. That level of trust is no small thing, and it’s not merely something I keep in the back of my mind: it is front and center, always. It shapes every decision I make, every action before I take it. I say it to myself over and over, like a mantra: their brand is everything; their brand is everything.

So this morning, I do feel truly awful for Subway. They created something extremely successful and unique in their longtime partnership with Jared, and placed an enormous amount of trust in him to be the “face” of their brand. Unfortunately, what Jared has done now reflects poorly on Subway, and that’s something that they must now deal with. As the representative of your own brand, personal or professional, I urge you to think: “what would I do if I woke up to this situation?”