Well, the simple answer would be to avoid doing anything that these 10 brands did this year!

Using data from the two largest brand-valuations firms as a reference, 24/7 Wall St. chose 10 big-name brands operating in the U.S. that have lost substantial chunks of their brand valuations in the first half of this year. They then mixed in a whole host of other criteria, and ended up with a list of “The 10 Biggest Brand Disasters of 2010″ — those on the list have lost well over $100 billion in brand value since Jan. 1.

The list includes brands like (BP (of course), Dell, Adobe (Blame Apple), Sony, Johnson&Johnson and Toyota(recalls will do it). Each company in the list was once a giant in the industry, well respected and definitely ahead of its time. But, with new changes to other brands, huge disasters with their products or problems with their services…these brands have lost serious footing.

The question is: How can we avoid the same fates as these once-giants?

Think, then react. Almost all of the above companies either reacted to problems before they thought them through (resulting in more problems) or thought about it a lot and did nothing (resulting in nothing). There are so many ways that many of these companies could have pulled themselves out of the holes they were in if they had only reacted the right way and been involved and honest with their customer base.

Let’s look at Adobe (the least controversial on the list, but still one worth looking at). Adobe took a huge dive this year because of a few harsh words from the Apple man, Mr. Steve Jobs. At a press conference, he started his tirade against flash…and continued it in writing: “Flash was created during the PC era for PCs and mice. The mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open Web standards, all areas where Flash falls short”. Big words from a powerful man, and in one fell swoop, the Adobe stock took a dive.

So how could they have fixed this problem? Possibly by admitting that Jobs was right…partially. Yes, mobile interfaces may not need flash, but there are still many sites that use it and so having it as an option for your users is a positive – not a negative. Adobe needed to also reach out to its users and talk with them…who knows, they may have had a great way to help! At the end of the day, Adobe did nothing to combat the words, nor to rally their troops around their product.

Don’t let this happen to you.