Call it déjà vu. Call it Groundhog Day. Call it your worst nightmare revisited. Call it what you will. The 2007 Rugby World Cup will go down as one of the biggest, if not the biggest, sporting disappointments in our history. Like most New Zealand households, we were glued to the television last Sunday as we awaited an expected quarter final victory over France. But it was not to be as yet another All Blacks team failed to deliver on its enormous promise.

After the French ambush in 1999 and defeat at the hands of the desperate Australians in 2003, we were led to believe this time it would be different. It was different alright. An unceremonious ousting at the earliest stage ever in our world cup history. For a die-hard rugby fan such as myself, it was almost too much to take in. As the post-mortems get underway, we can now only look forward to the next world cup in 2011. At this stage, it’s not even worth considering not making it to the final. Then again, who would have thought we would be eliminated after our first meaningful game of the tournament.

So what of the All Blacks brand? There’s been a lot written about the damage and it’s been the subject of a lot of talkback discussion.

My view is that the brand has not so much been damaged as re-positioned.

Those of us who have been around long enough will have witnessed how the All Blacks has developed into one of the most recognisable sporting brands in the world. It all started with successful teams taking on all comers and winning. Throw in some legendary names such as Meads, Lochore, Williams, Going and Jones and you had the makings of a formidable brand.

With live television bringing it into the world’s living rooms, the stage was set for the big spending corporates to fork our millions for sponsorships and endorsements. Added to the games being a window for the brand, huge money has been spent on campaigns leveraging the sponsorships making for huge amount of air time for the games, the team and the individuals. Then of course, there’s the PR machine. Not a day goes by when we don’t read about the All Blacks, see them on TV or hear them on the radio. The brand is a juggernaut.

Over the years it has come to mean many things. Winning, hard work, honesty, humility, mentally and physically tough to name a few. In many ways it’s a brand that fits with how New Zealand has developed. Being small we need to have all these attributes in order to compete and the All Blacks have always personified this.

How has this world cup affected the image of the All Blacks? Time will only tell and in the scheme of things, if we happen to win the 2011 World Cup all will be forgiven. But for now, it’s hard to see the brand staying in its same shape. At a basic level, the winning attribute has been tarnished. Although we won the Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup this year, it’s hard to get excited about this. We didn’t win the game that mattered. And what about hard work. It seems the team trained hard but it’s hard to buy into this when we are treated to photos of players cavorting on some exclusive French beach. Honesty? None of the players seem dishonest, but it’s hard to swallow when we are told by team management that the strategies were right when we didn’t even make the semi-finals. I don’t think any of us came down in the last shower, or the one before that. The main point is that these are the games we are supposed to win. In close encounters, when the going gets really tough and we are backs to the wall, it’s usually the All Blacks who come out on top. And when we go down, we know there is no fuel left in the tank and we forgive them for it. Mental and physical hardness are what has made the brand what it is.

So now, after a totally unexpected exit, it’s very hard to buy into the brand in its old form. It means something else now, because rather than being a brand we could trust to deliver, it has once again failed to deliver on its promise. And in the end that is what strong brands do. They keep their promises.