Based on the business press, you might believe that subscription services are booming. And, for many subscription services, there is an upward trend. Netflix is doing well. Amazon Prime is doing well.
Professor Jean-Noël Kapferer has literally written the book, or many books, on how luxury brands must behave to retain their luxury brand status. He calls them the “anti-laws of marketing,” which means that if mass, fashion or premium brands turn right, then luxury brands must turn left.
A theme of recent business press writing is brand-business turnarounds. For example, Barron’s, the financial newspaper, points to the successful turnaround at clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. The Wall Street Journal reports on the underway turnaround at VF’s Vans, the sneaker brand-business.
The Home Depot’s “How doers get more done” is a customer empowerment promise akin to Nike’s legendary “Just Do It.” The brand is itself a “doer” of a balanced use of what we call hard and soft power. Often, power is equated with worth, valuation, stock price, access to capital, growth, market share, category dominance, etc. This is what we define as hard power. Soft power, on the other hand, is the proverbial velvet hammer....
Money—it’s top-of-mind for any aspiring entrepreneur. No matter how much you’ve put aside or how confident you are about reaching your sales goals, you’ll never feel you have enough money. Without a doubt, it’s scary to step out into the unknown, leaving the security and comfort of a job and career and putting your standard of living at risk.
