We're making news! Well, not quite, but we are increasingly in the news. I was quoted several times lately on the topic of Millennials and automobiles in articles in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Business Week and Mediapost.c om. Judy has a bi-weekly column on Retail Customer Experience magazine's website, retailcustomerexperience.com, and is a featured columnist in the print version and a member of the publication's Advisory Panel.

The best news we can share is news of clients' success. Next month, we plan to bring you some case histories next month. Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy our new whitepaper, our latest toolkit, and our thoughts on why the need for customer insights is 'recession-proof'.

Several recent client projects caused us to think hard about how to reconcile innovation and branding when money is tight. Brian Christian, innovation expert and founder of Daso Consulting, collaborated with us to come to this surprising conclusion: The key to making them work together is to ignore the brand (at first) while articulating a strategy for growing the business. Once the best opportunities are identified, it's much easier to make strategic brand decisions about architecture, positioning and investment priorities.

"Innovation and Branding in a Down Market"

In fact, 2009 may be a good time for getting back to marketing basics. Much as our government has decided to spend on infrastructure (how fast can we really spend $900 Billion?), many of our clients are investing in a deeper customer understanding, asking questions like:

Who really matters to our business and why?

What makes loyal customers different from switchers and lapsed users?

What can we stop doing because no one cares about it?

What is our competition doing that our customers really like?

Insights like these can form the basis of business strategies that really make a difference, in good times and in bad. Clients are increasingly seeing value in investing in new ways and new places to listen to customers and prospects. According to Kim Dedeker, market research VP for Procter & Gamble "market researchers need to shift their focus toward listening and developing ideas better on the front end and away from 'feeding the metrics monster'." We couldn't agree more. Now is the best of all possible times to listen to your customers and develop and test new ideas. After all, if not now, when?

While customers may be hunkering down, smart marketers are seizing the moment. That way of thinking has led our fast food client to conduct research to understand switchers and get a bigger share of their wallet. A retail client is looking into what drives market baset size. And an apparel client is exploring the needs and attitudes of new target segments.

What are you learning now to prepare your brand for growth when the economic storm has passed?

Try these tests: Do you have a 'master brand' strategy? How do you use 'sub brands' in your portfolio? Is there an opportunity to turn one or more of your brands into a 'distinguisher'? Do you have a 'house of brands' or a 'branded house'? Does anyone? Just where does architecture fit in the strategic process? How do you generate and evaluate sound architecture alternatives?

To move the conversation forward, we offer our latest 'strategy toolkit'. This one is devoted to clarifying some of the concepts and rationale underlying brand architecture. We don't claim to have all the answers or even a lot of original thinking. Instead, we offer definitions, frameworks, processes, examples and a point of view on when and why to use this important strategy tool. We hope you find it useful.

Brand Architecture: Optimizing the 'Face' of Your Business