SCHMITTblog

The Fiber of a Brand

Did a video a shoot this morning. The makeup artist commented on my suit, which was an Ozwald Boateng. She said, “It’s such a formal business suit, but it looks so contemporized.” Which is Boateng’s message precisely. Embodied unmistakably in the suit’s very fibers. (Just as wholesomeness is embodied in the fiber of Kellogg’s Cornflakes.)

What’s in your brand’s fiber?

Keeping Up with the Times?

Last night I attended a certain formal dinner, where there was lots of talk about change and innovation. Being sensitive to the rapidly changing fashion environment, I showed up in my tux with a skinny black tie. Looking at the crowd, I was surprised to find I was alone. I think it is important for forward thinking organizations and their leaders to be sensitive to every aspect of the environment, especially fashion.

 

Skinny Ties

Suddenly those skinny ties are everywhere!  I saw them at the Oscars: all the cool actors were wearing them.  The only ones that still showed up in the dated bow tie outfits were the low-hierarchy documentary film editing folks.  Last night the host of American Idol wore a skinny tie.  Anderson Cooper will most likely be next.  Even Levav, my most fashionable academic colleague, may be pulling out his by next year's Oscars.  (My other colleagues may never have stopped wearing theirs from 20 years ago.)

So, it’s time to make a major wardrobe shift myself.  Watch out for an auction of my “old” ties on this blog soon.

If you didn't keep your own Miami Vice black leather skinny tie, try:
http://www.findcoolclothes.com/01187.html

SCHMITT Wears Zachary Prell

A former student of mine has launched a luxury men's shirts brand, and I just bought three of them.  Watch this video to find out about the new global brand "Zachary Prell."

Hair/No Hair as a Competitive Advantage

Busy day yesterday. I am manically finishing my new book; so that takes out lots of time from my day, starting in the very early morning hours. 

Headed to the World Business Forum to catch a speech by Wynton Marsalis on how to make corporations “swing.” Also loved Malcolm Gladwell. In guru speeches lots of hair (Gladwell) or no hair (Godin) is definitely a competitive advantage. I must discuss that with my Afghan hairdresser this weekend in Munich.

Listened to part of Bill Clinton’s gig and then had to go to my MBA/EMBA class at 5:45 pm. Rushed to  Yoshi Yamamoto’s Adidas Y-3 fashion show afterwards. (I had even changed between Bill and Yoshi to look proper. I explained my jeans outfit – bought in a tiny place in Rome four months ago – to the students by saying “Look, it’s fashion week.”)

But I was late. The show entrance was at 8pm, and I arrived at 9:15. They had built the stage on one of the piers, and the audience had to cross the stage over a bridge to get to their seats. They had already removed the bridge. “Yoshi would not like it,” I was told by the usher who turned me away. 

But what if my hair had been big?

Is this Brand a Revolution?

Can starting your own brand be an act of counter-cultural rebellion?  There was a long, and highly-emailed article last week in the NY Times Magazine called “The Brand Underground” that profiled the originators of small indie fashion brands, mostly selling limited edition t-shirts with an urban, non-mainstream appeal:  aNYthing, The Hundreds, Barking Irons, and others.

These brands originate with young hipsters in places like L.A. and Brooklyn, gain notoriety in a world of skateboarders and sneaker collectors, and with luck, become the craze among non-comformist youth in Tokyo and beyond.

The brands’ originators think they are starting an “anticorporate” countercultural movement – something akin to experimental art from Andy Warhol’s Factory, the poetry of the Beats, or the punk scene of the early CBGB’s. 

And the author’s article spends a lot of ink contemplating whether small-batch t-shirts that knock off and remix pop culture iconography are a genuine revolt. 

Can creating a brand be an authentic and creative act of rebellion? 

Is a counterculture that consists of nothing but buying micro-branded products really a counterculture?

No, no, and geat real.

The author buys in too easily to these kids’ self-image of themselves as rebels.  The founders of The Hundreds are not the Ramones and Tokyo’s avid sneaker collectors are not the SDS, marching on Washington for social change. 

Materialism is part of every vibrant counterculture, and inevitably someone cashes in on selling the trappings of the movement.  But when all you have is the brands and the products, you’re not “making history.” 

You’re making fashion.

- posted by David Rogers

LVMH and J.C. Penney?

What on earth could these two companies have in common? According to today’s Wall Street Journal, both will soon be running Sephora stores. J.C. Penney announced that it intends to open mini Sephora stores inside new J.C. Penney locations beginning this fall and eventually roll out Sephora cosmetic departments in existing stores acrosss the U.S.

While incorporating a high-end cosmetics department to its stores could be an image booster for Penney’s (though maybe too little, too late), is this really a smart move for Sephora? Sure, it gives them a larger retail presence and access to a wider market, but at what cost to Sephora’s brand image?

On Wal-Mart And Facial Hair

(Don’t worry. Not more Levav!)

How do you reposition a brand to be current – I mean “really” reposition it. (Let’s call it: “really new positioning” in analogy to what some researchers call “really new products.”) Clearly not by looking at a few dots in your two dimensional perceptual map.

One way to stretch the imagination is to take a look at hot trends (general ones, not within an industry) and make them relevant to the brand.

That’s what I asked my students to do today in my class today: First, create a visual/mood board of the current image of a well-known brand. Second, create another board that explores a hot lifestyle trend among consumers (identified by my own brandkultur researcher team). And third, to come up with a creative way to reposition the brand in line with the trend -- expressing it in a cool new product, service, or launch event.

We thus repositioned, for example, Kellogg’s Cornflakes with a trend I called “spiritualism,” Delta with “health and wellness,” and Wal-Mart with the new trend of “facial hair.”

Facial hair as a trend? “Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol?” You bet. In fact that is the title of a recent New York Times article in the Fashion & Style section. Among its evidence… Ralph Lauren runway models who look like Ulysses S. Grant, fashion editors and hipsters expanding on last year’s whiskers with full bushy growth, and of course George Clooney’s beard grown for his role in Syriana.

"This is some sort of reaction to men who look scrubbed, shaved, plucked and waxed," said the designer Bryan Bradley, who stepped onto the runway after his Tuleh presentation looking like a renegade from the John Bartlett show, at which more than half the models wore beards: untidy ones that scaled a spectrum from wiry to ratty to shabby to fully bushy.

"It's less 'little boy,' " Mr. Bradley said. "For a while men have looked too much like Boy Scouts going off to day camp."

Yes, I tried to give the students difficult matches between trends and brands.  But their repositionings showed real creativity. As for Wal-Mart, the retailer could capitalize on the trend of the moment with barber shops and specialized facial hair aisles.

If you just stretch the brand imagination a bit, the far-fetched seems quite doable!

Posted by SCHMITT