Alica Johnson
on brand.

there’s been a long lull since last i wrote.

i was creating some honest to god sweat equity in johnson + wolverton. we renovated our barn to be a bona fide brand skunkwerks. there were guys working on it for months, and then in october it became the project of just hal and i. all of the foundation and heavy construction was done. it was our turn to renovate the studio. i’d forgotten how labor intensive a renovation is. long, hard, sweaty days. soreness, frustration, impatience, and finally satisfaction.

it struck me midway through how similar a renovation is to a turnaround. granted, i’ve never schlepped 2 x 4s or scraped wall paper on a brand project, but you get the drift. the research and planning, the concepting, the design, the unending need for a fierce persistence of vision, the budgets and the schedules… and along the way the need to remind yourself and your partners why you’re doing this crazy thing when really, you’re so tired you just want to take your toys and go home. there’s something to be said for the long, hard, persistent labor that a barn or a brand requires. there’s also something quite amazing about the joy-dividend that sweat equity pays.

not coincidentally we were also working on our brand during this renovation. i wrestled for months with our positioning statement (and have a much deeper respect for our clients for having gone through it again myself) finally identifying a simple, honest statement that invigorates us: we breathe new life into legendary brands.

and barns.

what is a social era strategy? there’s the small scale social strategy where you define tactics for each of the social channels your brand participates in driving messages, and then theres the large scale social era strategy where your brand becomes social. where, as a brand, you relinquish control and engage.

that’s the strategy that frames a behavior for engagement with the likes of innocentive or kickstarter, that utilizes groups like co: or victors and spoils. that utilizes the genius of scale without size, and connects individuals to create value.

in a harvard business review interview with nilofer merchant the big ethical question is raised “how will ideas be valued and paid for in this new era?” obviously i’m curious for my own business, but i’m also curious for our clients. how can our clients be leaders in articulating the value and values of idea creation in the new social era.

there is a prevailing wisdom in automotive advertising that a car is the second biggest investment a family makes—the first being their home—and so a car purchase (or sale) must be treated with that kind of gravitas. i’ve lived with that wisdom for a long time, dutifully paying respect to the importance and scale of the investment. but it has never sat quite right with me. so i’m going to go ahead and call bull shit. a car purchase just doesn’t hold that place in our hearts or our minds. i’ve shot gowns in car ads that cost more than the car. certainly the jewels on set had as much security as the secret car did.

but the real insight reveals itself when you look at the monthly payment. in the u.s. it is the monthly payment that is shopped, not the purchase price. and when you look at that, the cost of the car is small in relationship to other basics, like monthly personal maintenance for instance. that’s the budget for things like clothing, shoes, bags, hair, gym, spa and nails. few women would divulge the actual numbers on that budget, but i’m willing to bet it outstrips her car payment.

i’m following the scent of a nuance. the difference between rest and relaxation and rest and renewal. my sense is that there’s a niggling desire for a something different than relaxation. i think it’s renewal, and that perhaps the garden is part of that. there’s a natural cycle in life that we’ve become detached from, so we tend to look at life in black and white rhythms (like our own life and death or the nanoseconds of an online sale). i’m curious about nurturing renewal. what does that look like?

when i was searching for the villa, this single word changed everything: garden. there are hundreds of beautiful places in italy that are far enough south to be warm in april. but there are very few that have a garden. well, at least there are very few that let me know they had a garden… i wanted a garden because a lot of what i desired from the trip was renewal. not just rest and relaxation. rest and renewal. gardening has that affect on me. the simple luxury truth for the hospitality industry? on the big pass, people search with their desire. listen.

the drive from rome fiumicino to positano takes about 3 hours. i slept for part of it, and talked with the driver for the other part. the driver, a young man from positano, asked if i’d like to stop at the rest stop. i’d opted for “sleep” rather than “be woken for breakfast” so we stopped. nothing looked that good and he kept noodging me away from things until finally we settled on an espresso and that he would share a snack he had in the car. he got out organic cookies and proceeded to tell me about his garden. turns out he was the strong young back for his grandmother, and that one day the garden would be his. it struck me that for such a hipster he was very passionate about the garden, a bit like williamsburg hipsters, and then i got to positano and saw that every inch of land was working. growing food, herbs, flowers and the ever present lemons. and the food garden is at the five star heart of villa tres ville and li galli (and places i’ve not yet written about).

but this driver, the experience with him underscored an instinct i had been having about the next wave of luxury. i have this sense that the long recession will lead to a generational leap frog. it seems clear that as the economy revives, the glamorous euro luxury of the early 2000s is being replaced by a passionate love affair with growing food, and all of the literal and metaphorical accoutrement that goes with it.

i posed the question and then stepped back. here’s something that caught my eye. in nowness, xander zhou’s collection in london.

sunrise in positano is delicate. the boats are quiet, the air is misty and the roosters though raucous are somehow distant, a bit like a waft of coffee. li galli translates as the roosters (or more comically, literally translates as ‘them cocks’). it’s an archipelago with a pedigree. homer made it famous as the sirens that tempted ulysses on his way home, millennia later nureyev bought it after another famous russian renovated it, and franco zeffirelli had a direct sight line from his villa on the cliff.

today the two are luxury hotel sisters, and have just sold (the buyer has yet to be announced). so, the truth i offer the new owners is a simple luxury truth: it’s nice to be invited. there’s so much history, so much story, that feeling like a guest, not a tourist, will require more depth than a financial transaction.

the image below, taken from the tower studio, is of villa tres ville, zeffirelli’s infamous villa.

i fell in love with a perfumery in positano. it was at the top of the climb from my tower to the street so i walked by it every time i left or came home, but i didn’t go in until the last night i was there. it was just at sunset, and gennaro, who owns profumi di positano, was next door visiting with the woman who ran the pottery shop… he was happy to interrupt his conversation to show me around his tiny shop.  i sniffed everything, and on his advice i tried on my favorite scent for a road test while i finished my errands. the scent warmed with me, climbing stairs, adding bags, drinking wine, saying good bye to new friends. when i returned, sure of the scent, he continued the story of his family’s shop, the innovations he planned, how it came to be that he was the one to take the lead for his generation, and the fact that it was the smells of positano that had soothed him as he said a long good-bye to his father. it was a beautiful reminder of a basic brand truth: story matters.

the scent that i warmed to is ‘li galli’ fig leaf and flowers, freesia petal, gardenia petal, peach flowers, orange flowers, violet, sea breeze, fig wood, cedar wood and wood moss. li galli is the small archipelago in the image below. more on that later.

i lived in italy in april and may, a final stint of recuperation after a series of eye surgeries that had pretty much broken my spirit. i lived in an ancient watch tower on the amalfi coast, i swam in my own saltwater pool in an outrageously luxurious enclave of beach cottages on the tuscan coast, and in a castle commune on the mountain range that divides tuscany and umbria i lounged by a travertine pool and curled up in front of a fireplace larger than my first manhattan apartment. and now i get to call it work. i’m thinking of it as having done a refresher course on theories that i preach in meetings.

for instance: “it’s a drag to be in your dream place with the wrong tribe”. the brands and places that won my heart were the ones that were genuine in what they offered and overt with details that helped me self-select. in other words, it’s powerful for a brand to know it is the wrong choice for some people, and to help them know it.