David Lemley’s article, Henny Penny and The Recesionistas is featured at Popon.net in the site’s Insights section. In the article, Lemley discusses the art of leadership in tough times. He asserts that strong leadership today has the power to catapult average brands into tomorrow’s superstar brands. He begins by poking fun at those busienss leaders who would follow the herd mentality.
“The NY Times declares, “People are trading down, luxury is out, thrifty is the new nifty.” The National Retail Federation babbles, “The sky has fallen, now what?” Well, Adage is advising brands to hunker down, refrain from brand building and focus on promotional sales. Egad! Don’t they know what happened to Ducky Lucky and Goosy-Poosy?
During the last economic downturn I witnessed a handful of Foxy-Loxies reposition themselves to become market leaders. I would love to stand here and tell you that it was our great creative efforts that moved them to the top, but I would be lying. The truth is that much of their success came because they knew what to avoid.” (more…)
David Lemley’s article Category Disruption has been featured at Popon.net as the lead article for the site’s retail section. In the article, Lemley discussed how consumer facing brands can use positioning as offense to increase customer loyalty.
“These Category Disruptors have another thing in common: they created positioning strategies to exploit the vulnerability of an established Category. These exploitations were not new technology-centric ones but, rather, new positioning. Each used positioning techniques to go on the offense and to transform a Category by removing its traditional boundaries.” (more…)
The worlds only online exchange about Branding, BrandChannel.com features an article by David Lemley as the paper of the week for December 2008. Lemley’s Brand strategy article, The Emperor’s New Brand: How to Fail at Brand Revitalization, has been republished with permission. It was first published in Lemley’s newsletter, BrandTail.
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Online retail marketing network, pop.net, has tapped David Lemley as the site’s first retail brand strategy expert for its Insights section. Lemley’s recent brand strategy article, Authenticating the Brand: A Miracle Far Beyond the Capacity of an Ad Campaign, has been republished in the newly launched Insights section, with permission. It was first published in Lemley Design’s newsletter, BrandTail.
David Lemley’s expertise, and that of his consultancy, Lemley Design Company, has been tapped by POP Online to cover trends and insights pertaining to brand strategy and package design with a particular emphasis on retail brands.
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The Design Management Institute (DMI) commissions David Lemley to write an article for their Spring 2008 Review, to be published in July 2008.
The article, The Road to Authentic Brand is Littered with Design, discusses Lemley’s opinion of the essentials needed to navigate the intersection of Brand building, business strategy and design.
“Brand strategy requires a new business model,” writes Lemley, The old model, which we can call Compliance, involved decisions by committee, a sink-or-swim culture, and top-down ideas handed out by management and imposed upon employees. The result: a brand that nobody will hate.
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The first symptom: Relief that the Brand revitalization process is finally over, followed by a vague sense that “something is missing.” Continued loss of market share, failure to make customer connections and a continuum of caustic corporate culture are telltale signs that your effort has missed the mark. (more…)
David Lemley has written an article featured in Design and Display Ideas Magazine. The article, ‘The Indelible Brand, Bonding with the Customer’ is featured in the publications ‘Think Tank’ section, a monthly column for industry leaders to provide innovative perspective on branding and design. ‘The Indelible Brand’ emphasizes the importance of bonding with the customer through a brand’s unique individual character communicated through its personality.
The article explains the importance of understanding the personality of the customer in conjunction with the personality of the brand.
As an example, Lemley states: (more…)
Lemley’s feature article written for the Brazilian corporate marketing and design community, discusses the importance of developing a brand’s character as a guide map for every other decision in the design and development process.
In the article, Lemley advises companies to be genuine with their representation by keeping the brand character paramount throughout the design process. He also emphasizes that character traits can only be attributable if the message matches the reality.
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Lemley’s feature article for the July issue of Package Design Magazine compares the unique process of brand building with the process of method acting. Just as an actor ‘becomes’ his character, a brand ‘becomes’ those key characteristics that differentiate the brand for its competitors.
The article appears in both the print edition and the online version of Package Design.
Addressing the importance of creating ‘theatrical experiences’ around the brand, Lemley emphasizes the importance of embodying the brand’s character traits into every step of the design and development process.
Lemley states: “An actor connects with the audience based on a truthful expression of the character brought out through his own feelings, memories and experiences. By internalizing the core characteristics of the brand with the persona of the customer, the product will become that character.”
Package Design Magazine is one of the top packaging magazines in the country covering the packaging and branding of worldwide products in all industries, news and trends in package design technology, materials and innovation. With a distribution of 30,000, Package Design is read by industry leaders in top consumer product companies, worldwide. Read the article here.
This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for Marketingprofs.com
“How companies deal with negative experiences is just as important as creating positive experiences.In light of the recent pet food poisoning scare, several companies have taken the lead in reassuring pet owners that they are being proactive in responding to their concerns. Brands like Eukanuba, Iams and retailers such as PETCO and PetSmart, have endeavored to be proactive in addressing the crisis by pulling product, providing notice information and updating their websites with information about the recall. Reacting immediately and proactively is not an option. It’s the right thing to do from both a humane perspective and from a brand sustainability perspective.”
Read the whole article at Marketingprofs.com.
