Brand

With so many companies facing extinction there will be a lot of discussion in the value of a brand as a way to avoid annihilation. The thing with brand practice is it makes people adapt to the world without the worrying blindness of a business that has not got a brand in place. Wedgewood, Whittards, Woolworths? What happened, did the grim reaper simply get stuck in the W's working through the directory? Did the brand repair sales teams stop when they got to Virgin as there was so much fun to be had? Could the three W's have survived? I think they could. Wedgewood could have been really edgy, with exciting tea parties linked to the Mad Hatter with Philip Treacy doing the honours. They could have had positioning like Burberry and been really challenging, pulled apart the class system that spawned them, had tea in tower blocks, underground secret tea parties with unusual cakes - Alice in Wonderland fairy cakes - the new Kate Moss an obvious - or even the estate lass made good Cheryl Cole with Ashley - serving tea and drop scones - the magic and mystery could have been dazzling. They messed up with their ordinary and expected positioning. Whittards - the same - they could have had a lot more fun with their heritage and made tea an object of desire like wine and like they have now done for chocolate. Woolworths the same - more difficult with such a scale of property - but if the recession is going to be about thrift they could have done much more in that space. They let it fall to a disgraceful place - they linked cheap mercilessly with nasty - their ads, whilst frequent offered nothing to excite. I know business is hard and will get harder and somebody probably is writing the book of what actually happened right now. Whilst i love change i hate to lose heritage unnecessarily - let's hope Waterstone's has got good backing x