examples where reputation has ruined/aided a business?

Answer 1

An example of a business using a person's reputation to aid the business: No Excuses Jeans was known through the eighties and nineties for signing up Jessica Hahn and Donna Rice types to capitalize on their notariety.

An example of a product's strong reputation aiding the business: Tylenol had a scare in the eighties when people died from taking pills from tampered bottles. The company basically wrote the book on how to handle a crisis, but probably would not have been able to come back on the market as a strong presence without the solid reputation it had built up prior to the scandal.

An example of a person's reputation ruining the business: Dan Rather brought the CBS Evening News from the top rated to the lowest rated evening newscast on network TV. His reputation clearly destroyed the franchise.