How often we tap into stories of brands embarking in stretches and extensions into new, unexplored and brand-dangerous territories, such as entry price offers? It happens far too frequently in the Fashion world: the recent crisis which starting hitting few years ago and is persistingly embracing the Fashion & Lifestyle world in a deadly hug has pushed so many brands far away from their core values, from their true personality and from their valued consumer basis, desperately searching for business opportunities "down there", where prices are low, with flaming new entry price series.

Well the following story, one of true and authentic brand protection and enhancement comes from german luxury car manufacturer Porsche: never dilute your brand, alienating your consumers, were this to cost giving up plans for new segments and categories to be attacked, whenever these do not sit in your core values and personality territory.

And here's the story.


German sports car manufacturer Porsche - owned for 49.9% of its core business by Europe's largest auto maker Volkswagen - has dropped plans to build a two-seater vehicle which would have been smaller and cheaper than its Boxster model, Stuttgarter Zeitung reported on Saturday, citing Chief Executive Officer Matthias Müller.
Such plans would risk diluting the brand and alienate traditional customers, according to Mr Müller: 
“We would do no good to the brand if we were to lose traditional Porsche customers” by pursuing a smaller Boxster model, the CEO was quoted as saying in an interview.

Mr Müller said Porsche also has no immediate plans to develop a smaller version of its four-door Panamera sedan, though he indicated that such a model could become an option in five or six years.

 
 
Omnium rerum principia parva sunt - Cicerone
 
 
"Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground." - Theodore Roosevelt
 
 
"Even when opportunity knocks, a man still has to get up off his seat and open the door." Anonymous
 
 
"Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before." - Samuel Johnson
 
 
"There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that ;it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place." - Washington Irving
 
 
Where one door closes, another opens. - Don Quijote
 
 
When you're finished changing, you're finished. - Benjamin Franklin
 
 

 
 
It’s all happening in France. It is all exploding around end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. What a disgraceful way of closing 2011 for French fashion retailer La Redoute and what a hilarious and brilliant counter-campaign from its direct competitor 3Suisses.

An educational and inspiring story about competition and, sad enough, about failure in management, incredible when it comes from structured and organized contexts such as La Redoute, from PPR Group.

Here’s the story. Towards the end of 2011, Uk based fashion website and blog Stylist.co.uk, looking at one of the online visuals from La redoute’s website, discovers there’s a naked man (yes: A NAKED MAN) happily bathing on the background of this Kidswear visual (yes: KIDSWEAR AD VISUAL). Take a look at the image below:  

Picture

The French fashion retailer quickly apologizes for the photo in which the naked man appears behind a group of children advertising beachwear. La Redoute is forced to try to control crowds of French people and consumers, commenting sarcastically or furiously against the failure on all Social Media, apologizing on Facebook and eliminating the photo.

Obviously in the meantime the image has gone wildly viral on the Internet: montages appeared on the internet showing the naked man in some iconic images, such as the Moon landing.

In one of the spoof images the face of the disgraced former International Monetary Fund chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was pasted onto the naked man.

A spokeswoman for La Redoute, quoted by the AFP news agency, said an internal inquiry had been launched to determine how the error had happened.

The error was compounded by the fact that La Redoute provided a magnifying glass so that people could examine the beachwear close-up.

Some tweeters remarked that the "bad buzz" surrounding the photo was actually useful publicity for La Redoute.

Now, the question is: “How can it possibly be that such scandalous photos do get to publication without being stopped in post-production?”. This is unacceptable. In my personal experience with dozens of shootings for fashion brands, with photographers of every kind, style, level and background, I have gone through dozens of checks with dozens of key levels of control, for every single image, in order to spot hair on an arm of a model or a wrinkle in a pant which would ruin the aesthetics of the pic and these guys at La Redoute, brand of the celebrated PPR Group, fails so heavily on such a delicate matter?

On the counterside, though, we cannot but admire and applause the quick reaction of La Redoute’s main mail-order competitor, 3Suisses, who immediately launched this brilliant Facebook Campaign


Translated from French its claim says: “It is clear that not everybody knows we sell bathing suits”.

Bravi 3Suisses!