CNNmoney.com has a great article detailing some of the biggest corporate blunders we’ve seen so far this year, and quite a few of them are customer and branding related, such as GM, Tropicana, and my New York Yankees.

Now obviously it’s easy to sit back and play Monday morning quarterback when it’s all said and done, especially when it’s a multi-billion dollar company. But if there’s one common trend among many of these it’s the impact that blogging and consumer – controlled, Web 2.0 feedback has had on product announcements such as these.

Before the Internet, perception management was subjective at best, and branding was more an art than a science. That concept has gone right out the window with the advent of blogs, social networking sites, etc. But on the flip side, it’s also given product and marketing managers an opportunity to turn the table and leverage the Internet as a tool to draw feedback on consumer’s perception of your business…and in the process avoid launching something that looks like this:

This was GM’s idea at remaking itself as a purveyor of fuel-efficient vehicles?