This Week’s Top 5 Lifestyle Branding Stories

This Week’s Top 5 Lifestyle Branding Stories

Jenna Lyons Fast Company
Jenna Lyons

1. 16-Year-Old Media Mogul Tavi Gevinson is Expanding Her Empire
Tavi Gevinson has been called everything from the future of fashion to the future of journalism (by Lady Gaga, no less). Pretty heady titles for anybody, especially a blogger who has yet to finish her junior year of high school. But if the media insist on labeling anyone “the future of fill-in-the-blank,” they could do a lot worse than Gevinson. Gevinson created her first blog, The Style Rookie, at age 11. At the time, she didn’t have a grown-up helper or connections in the fashion world or access to designer threads—just a fascination with high-concept design (Comme des Garçons and Rodarte were and still are among her favorites), a gift for writing and the sensibility to turn a thrifted sweater, her mom’s skirt and a pair of oversized sunglasses with the lenses popped out into a full-blown fashion statement.
Read more at ADWEEK

2. How Jenna Lyons Transformed J.Crew Into a Cult Brand
It’s surprising, though comforting, to find out that Lyons is humanly imperfect. Since her coronation as creative head of J.Crew in 2008, the company once known for its preppy Nantucket ancestry has become a force in fashion, with Lyons at the center of its evolution. She has created a high-low look that reflects her own boy-girl style–androgyny with some sequins and a dash of nerdy glasses. Along with annual revenue that has more than tripled to $2.2 billion since 2003, the cult of J.Crew has blossomed like a CMO’s fantasy, with fashion blogs wholly devoted to the brand and a fan base that includes Michelle Obama and Anna Wintour. At Fashion Week this February (J.Crew’s fourth season there, itself a symbol of the retailer’s growing influence), one attendee whispered, as if Lyons were Madonna or Bono, “I am just totally obsessed with Jenna.” Read more at Fast Company

3. Reebok Drops Rick Ross
The groundswell of protests that has apparently forced Reebok to end its relationship with the rapper Rick Ross has focused attention on the feminist group UltraViolet, which harnessed social media and even placed ads on Facebook in a campaign against Mr. Ross after he rapped about drugging a woman and having sex with her without her knowledge. On Friday, a day after Reebok’s decision to sever ties with him, Mr. Ross, who initially denied that his rap described a rape, issued a statement apologizing for the lyrics he performed in the song“U.O.E.N.O.,” by the rapper Rocko. Read more at the New York Times

4. Johnson Out, ex-CEO Ullman in at J.C. Penney
It’s back to the future for troubled retailer J.C. Penney, which announced late Monday that CEO Ron Johnson would be replaced on an interim basis by Mike Ullman, the retailer’s former chief executive.
Johnson, 54, was hired in late 2011 from Apple, where he led the company’s highly successful retail store chain. But his plans to reinvigorate the chain from staid retail dinosaur into a fashion-forward, hipper brand stumbled early when he decided that the chain would abandon sales and coupons for an every day low price strategy – alienating long-time customers. His last few months were marked by slumping holiday sales, a battle with rival Macy’s over home fashion maven Martha Stewart and increasing shareholder unrest over Penney’s slumping stock price. Read more at USA Today

5. The 2013 TIME 100
TIME presents its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, from artists and leaders to pioneers, titans and icons. Read more at TIME Magazine