“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.”

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.

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.

In a time where Ad Age is endorsing the notion that Brand building must give way to hard sell, it is refreshing to remember where I came from and why it is I pursue originality and only-ness with such rigor. Thank you Mr. Griffin.

In the movie City Slickers their is a scene where Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch, is alone with Curly, played by Jack Palance.

Curly gives Mitch some life advice that makes more sense than most Brand Babble I have heard over the years:

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? 
(holds up one finger) This.


Mitch: Your finger?


Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.


Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?” 

Curly: That’s what you have to find out.

Do you know your brand’s one thing? What are you willing to stand behind? Do you have a plan to get there?