ReBranding Required

There I was thinking about having a nice quiet relaxing do nothing Easter and.... well I am sure I will get some rest at some point. I am working on a bigger piece that should co-inside with the 50,000 hit on the site but want to discuss imagery and branding. And here is where I am hoping the clubs read this as it is important.

The industry is shooting itself in the foot (and those people who actually know me yes delibrate wording).... we have to stop using the word lapdance and get back to striptease!!!! Okay why you might ask? Well the word lapdance conjures up an image and that image is a boon and a bane. Boon as the marketing is down to selling an image of something that will not take place in a licensed venue in the UK. Bane for exactly the same reason.

A lot is to do with how the industry was and what was brought over from the USA. Pole dancing, table dancing neither of these are as evocative as the words lap dance. The image of bump and grind that people take as the truth because it was in some american film and that must be how it is world wide. The problem is it isn't like that but that is how the public perceive to be. Imagine the term action packed thriller, the film might well be a couple of fights, a gun battle and a car chase but the term action packed sells the image of explosions every 30 seconds.

So we have evocative branding that sells the fantasy to the customers BUT and this is a really big BUT (okay hands up those people who are humming that song) the marketing fantasy is fuelling some of the opposition and giving credence to images that exist in the mind only. Yes if you go to the states totally different but we are not talking about the good ole us of a. We are talking striptease and erotic dancing. To all the dancers out there please when talking about what you do don't ever use the word lap dance. Having been told by Edie that she calls herself a stripper we need dancers to re-assess how they describe themselves.

To the clubs you are not Lap Dancing venues, the brand image is doing more harm than good as it is fuelling beliefs in something that doesn't exist. Your marketing people may want to shoot me but they need to get off their collective backsides and work on the image. Striptease always has been the big sister of burlesque please find a way to work with that or any other ploy that does not play into the hands of the likes of Object.

So now will be spending the day catching up with TV but in the next couple of days I will be putting out a piece on the work of Phil Hubbard including positives and negatives and even a challenge.

TonyN