“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.”This is the fourth article by David Lemley to be featured at Popon.net. The first article ends on a sassy note, typical of the author’s style., “Authenticity is not for wimps. It’s called long term business (Brand) strategy. Authenticity requires telling the truth about what you believe in, what you stand for and not changing your position for short-term gain. It’s something that advertising agencies typically do not excel at because there is no media spend. So, next time your ad agency starts talking about Brand as a media spend, it may be time to clean house.”

In addition to gently teasing Mr. Schultz with lines like, “I hope he ate his Wheaties” Lemley gets right into what he believes is at stake for Starbucks with the launch of VIA. Lemley writes,

“It doesn’t take a Tasters Choice fan to realize that Starbucks is now mid-trip on the bus-ride to Hell. Never mind the price-point focused posters in the windows or the fact that they are slinging mud in their advertising (BTW: they never used to have to advertise to get the word out). For Starbucks’ own sake and the sake of the Third Place, so many of us have come to rely upon as our oasis between work and home, I hope that Via fails quickly.”

This is Lemley’s first article for INNOVA. Read Entire Article

Lemley offers sound advice with sharp wit, “Economic limbo cannot erase the fact that we live in a world where cars start the first time, phones are addictive and the gourmet coffee, is well, gourmet. Only the Unaware offer products or services they deem good enough to a world where everyone can get anything they want almost anywhere. …branding purgatory doesn’t happen overnight. It comes after a lifetime of refusing to be saved. Sadly, for every good thing we can do, there are many more actions we take either purposefully or by happenstance, that simply don’t contribute anything worthwhile to the brand’s presence, personality and strength.”

This is Lemley”s the third article featured at Popon.net.  Previous articles include Authenticating The Brand and Category Disruption.

From the Packaging Diva’s Press Release: PackagingLaunch.com: Where Packages are Judged by the People Who Buy Them…

Amazon, Wal-Mart and most recently YouTube are engaging the consumer in the online feedback process.

Tropicana spent 35 million dollars creating a package that consumers hated because they didn’t do the consumer interaction right the first time and learned a very expensive lesson.

PackagingLaunch.com allows you to capture the pulse of the public quickly, effectively and economically:

Avoiding costly packaging mistakes;
Packaging failures;
Packaging that doesn’t sell products;
and retail packaging disasters.

How much are you spending to ensure your packaging works?
Packaging consultants can charge $250 an hour; While the average packaging design costs $7,000 through to millions.

PackagingLaunch.com provides reviews from experts in packaging design, branding, intellectual property, product development, labeling and manufacturing.

David Lemley is pleased to be one of the experts specializing in brand strategy and package design.

Last night I had the privilege of speaking to a group of students who are about to graduate from The Art Institute of Seattle, BFA Design Program. I suggested that pursuing a career in design is very much like the movie Groundhog Day. Here is the reading list I promised them might cure the “Self-Obsessed-Creative-Professional-Syndrome.”

Books
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Rise of The Creative Class by Richard Florida
Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands by Marty Neumeier

Blogs 
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
http://www.murketing.com/journal/ 

Articles
Bob Garfield’s Chaos Scenario 2.0 /The Post Advertising Age by Bob Garfield
The End Of Advertising as We Know It (from the IBM Institute for Business Value) By Saul J. Berman, Bill Battino, Louisa Sipnuck, Andreas Neus

Additional Resources from discussion
For a general pulse on design HOW
Recources for those insane enough to start their own practice.

“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.”

This is the second article by David Lemley to be featured at Popon.net. The first article ends on a sassy note, typical of the author’s style., “Authenticity is not for wimps. It’s called long term business (Brand) strategy. Authenticity requires telling the truth about what you believe in, what you stand for and not changing your position for short-term gain. It’s something that advertising agencies typically do not excel at because there is no media spend. So, next time your ad agency starts talking about Brand as a media spend, it may be time to clean house.”

In the article Lemley comments,“… in the three latest retail Brand revitalization projects my firm has spearheaded, members of the client’s internal cross-discipline team have pulled me aside to express their concerns around a common theme: “Did you know 80% of all Brand revitalization efforts fail?”

I calmly tell them, “Yep, and I know how we can avoid being part of that statistic.”

This is the second time Brand Channel has tapped Lemley for the latest thinking on Brand strategy for its Papers section. The first article A Reason to Believe: Finding the dramatic difference in retail brand revitalization features his firm’s extensive work on the REI brand as a case study.

It could be the school where he earned his degree.
It could be, perhaps, his longstanding obsession with pedigree.
But, I think that the mostly likely reason of all,
may have been that his ego was the size of a mall.

Whatever the reason, his school or his folks,
He stood there on Thanksgiving, certain that Branding’s a joke.

Staring down with contempt and a Recessionary frown
at a well lit Apple store aglow across town…
For he knew modern hipsters with Crackberries in tow,
would be looking on Flickr for ways to spend dough.

“And they’ll be drinking Peppermint Mochas!” He snarled with a sneer…
“Tomorrow is Black Friday! It’s practically here!”

Then He growled, with his Recession knees nervously jerking,
“I MUST find a way to keep Branding from working!”
For tomorrow He knew, they would start on Brand-worship.
The thing He detested as much as old clam dip.

And THEN they’d do something The Recession liked least of all!
Every Brand in the land, from Levi’s to Wii,
would stand close together and command premium fees.

They’d stand hand-in-hand, all a-glow with their meaning,
while avoiding commoditization, which is really demeaning.
And the Brands would start selling! They’d sell! And they’d sell!
AND they’d SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL!

And the more The Recession thought of the Brand-Selling-Ring,
the more The Recession thought, “I must stop this Brand thing!”
“Why since the Great Depression, I’ve put up with it now!
I MUST stop Brand building from working! …But HOW?”

Then He got a toehold! An awful toehold!
THE RECESSION GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL TOEHOLD!

“I know just what to do!” The Recession laughed in his throat.
And He made a quick MBA program for the advertising dolts.
And He chuckled, and clucked, “What a great Recessiony perk!
With this program, Brand-marketing will go totally beserk!”

“All I need is a scape goat…” The Recession looked around.
But since scape goats are scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Recession…? No! The Recession simply said,
“If I can’t find a scapegoat, I’ll be one instead!”

So he called his dog Greed. Then he took some red thread,
and He tied a big Harvard logo to the top of his head.

“I will call the National Bureau of Economic Research!”
And happily remind them, “Economists view you like The Church!”
Then I’ll then bring up Yours Truly again (’cause they don’t seem to remember),
that I was their BIG idea way back, last December.

Across America the housing market tanked,
while inside the homes, interest-only loans were yanked.
Despite the fact that we all felt the shortage,
we didn’t believe the bank could double our mortgage.

He giggled and danced with Recessiony glee,
“Why, unemployment hasn’t been this bad since… 1993!”
He chuckled and clucked and grinned as He snorted,
“At least that’s what Bloomberg.com has reported.”

Mid-market retailers from Kohl’s to Penney
have been marking down private-label-failures-a-plenty.
To fill up the void left by Mervyn’s and Linens,
their stores were awash in red tags before Thanksgivin’.

Then retailers like Kmart, Sears and Tar-J,
began to proclaim, “Short-term survival is the rule of the day.”
While all of their margins were just pissed away.
The Recession enjoyed their bobbin’ and weavin’,
for their behavior left them nothing but HIM to believe in.

Then He slunked to FOX News, blubbering through fake tears,
“Despite the promotional ads coming out of our ears,
U.S. retail sales are the worst we’ve seen in the last forty years.”

He threw out Brand-planning! He crushed same store sales!
Then He cleaned out their hope with some promo emails.
All their mission and vision was gone in a flash,
and analysts resounded, “Nobody is willing to part with their cash.”

Then He stuffed all their brand equity out the window with glee.
“And NOW!” grinned The Recession, “I will stuff out their identity!”
The Recession grabbed their identity, and He started to shove…
And then, something happened He never dreamed of…

The people, en mass, came seeking great deals,
had sat there all night, stuck cooling their heels.
And then, in their frenzy for cheap stuff galore,
the people (jacked up on Red Bull) broke down the front door.

Doorbuster deals made them push without discretion
until they trampled a man without remorse or expression.
The crowd, busy lusting for all the cheap gifts,
killed that employee on his first holiday shift.

Despite the employee’s unfortunate death,
the mob, inside Walmart, would not stop for breath.
The mob, now freed from their greed induced cue,
could shop for TVs as McDonald’s coffee did brew.

The Recession got hold of the retailer’s good judgment.
You may ask, “Was the store closed in mourning?”
No, sadly, it wasn’t.

Instead, people cried, “Oh, the deals! Oh, the deals!
DEALS! DEALS! DEALS!” That’s one thing that mattered.
Not the poor employee nor the doors they had battered.

It was quarter past December when He packed up his sled…
packed it up with their only-ness, positioning and word-of-mouth-cred!
With their hang-tags and logos and packaging all-ablaze
He headed three thousand feet up the side of Mount Ad-Age.
Where tip-top ad gurus advised and appraised,
“Brand equity is dead, you had better go BOGO.”
(The worst kind of lousy, I hate myself, promo)

“Pooh-pooh to the Brands!” He was Recession-ish-ly humming.
“They’re finding out now that their Brand is worth nothing!”

All bright and lathered up in neurotic obsession,
He stared down on Brand-ville fighting off his depression!
Every Brand down in Brand-ville, who stayed true to the plan,
sold all they needed (without taking it in the can).

He HADN’T stopped Branding from working!
IT WORKED! Somehow or other, it worked just the same!

And He puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then The Recession thought of something He hadn’t before!
“Maybe Brand,” He thought, “doesn’t come from promotion.”

“Maybe Brand…perhaps…is attached to emotion!”

And what happened then…? Well…in Brand-ville they say
that The Recession’s big ego shrunk three sizes that day!
And the minute his head didn’t feel quite so huge,
He sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed the movie Scrooged.

The marketing halls of business schools across the land feature how-to courses on Brand repositioning; considered by many to be the Magic Mushroom of marketing.

Theoretically, this sounds great. After all, we want the high associated with strong sales figures and the brotherly love that relevant mindshare brings. It seems like a groovy trip to reposition the Brand.

Unfortunately, most repositioning efforts work out about as well as painting stripes on a horse and calling it a zebra. As rational, thinking humans we know this won’t work, but because we learned “repositioning techniques” in school we believe we can make our Brand into something it isn’t.

Brand repositioning causes a hangover because, in our effort to keep up with our peers, we overindulge in the heady brew of being something we are not rather than examining our Brand’s DNA and rekindling what makes us relevant in the cold light of day.

By contrast, Brand revitalization focuses on getting realignment with the core of who we are and what made us great in the first place.