We need websites that track _individuals_ for their reputation instead of just businesses.
I recently had a moving company move my car across the country. I picked the #1 rated broker in the United States the last 2 years running. They're just the broker, though. They pick an actual trucking company to move your car. I found out that the individuals involved in the company moving my car had opened 3 other companies in the past 4 years and closed them all. I dug more and found that they had absolutely horrible ratings on the biggest rating site for car-hauling companies and also horrible ratings on the BBB site. Luckily, I got my car without incident, but we need a good way to track scum.
If you tried hard and played by the rules in business and didn't do shady things and failed, then I can understand trying again without serious stigma, but if you're forming new companies all the time, you should be informally punished through lots of information/transparency. It's easy to say "don't go with a company that hasn't been around for X years", but that's really unfair to legit startups trying to innovate.
I never made the connection with Ryder trucks, that's an interesting one. It's sort of a reverse Q-tip effect, where instead of your brand being generically associated with your product, it's associated with the worst possible thing it could be used for. Few products have been so spectacularly misused as to warrant such treatment.
Anyway, my personal favorite has always been Philip Morris turning into Altria Group. I can just imagine the meeting where they came up with that one: "you know what, fuck it, let's just make up a nice sounding word."
On the other hand, it is great for companies that are falsely accused, and the false accusation sticks. I've seen people make the most ridiculous false claims on forums, then others find these when Googling and repeat them any time the company gets mentioned. Several years later, someone will mention that company in passing, and then someone pops up saying they plant child porn on your computer or steal your credit card.
It's nice when going into a new line of business to be able to do it under a new name and not have to deal with that crap.
Tallyrand, Napoleon's Foreign Minister, observed that one of the functions of a government is to rename institutions which have, under the old name, become odious.
Or replace the "a" with an "i": Ironn Barr. It will be a unique enough name that anyone's first impression will be "That's a pretty kickass name" as opposed to "You the HBGary guy?".
