I used to work for NW Ayer, one of America’s oldest advertising agencies. Ayer was responsible for many memorable campaigns, including AT&T’s “Reach out and touch someone.” Of course, that was back in the day when AT&T was synonymous with the landline telephone (and when you didn’t have to use the word “landline” to describe it).

How far we’ve come. Through three decades of turbulent change, today’s AT&T still has 30 million landline customers. Incredibly, however, the company’s wireless customer base is more than two-and-a-half times as large, at 77 million. If there ever was an example of an industry experiencing changing dynamics (see Chapter 3 of When Growth Stalls) this is it.

The challenge facing AT&T’s current management is staying relevant in an increasingly changing marketplace. That’s why their exclusive partnership with Apple on the iPhone was such a boon to subscriber growth. But nobody’s sitting still in this industry, and growth is never guaranteed. Especially in turbulent times.

A company named Systemax has petitioned the U.S. bankruptcy court to purchase the Circuit City name (and associated intangible assets) for $6.5 million, plus a small percentage of any revenue generated by the brand for the next two+ years. Rights to the name will be sold at auction in early May, so the price could go higher.

It’s not the first time Systemax has pursued such a strategy (having purchased the rights to the CompUSA name last year), nor is Systemax the only company in the business of rejuvenating defunct brands. These companies understand that names like CompUSA and Circuit City have real economic value beyond the bricks, mortar, employees and inventory with which they were once associated.

It’s easy to dismiss “brand equity” as nothing more than a convenient term for some fuzzy essence of goodwill in the marketplace. But Systemax and companies like it are opportunistic, not sentimental. Their rational, arms-length offers to reclaim once-proud names that for one reason or another have gone dormant demonstrates that brands are real assets with real value that grows (or declines) over time.

When times are tough, the valuation of most corporate assets–from real estate to receivables–tends to be in decline. But there’s no reason why any company can’t continue to enhance its brand equity in spite of the economy. In some ways, the opportunity may be better than ever.

I was speaking to a group of CEOs the other day about the importance of the consensus and consistency principles in When Growth Stalls. We agreed that the healthiest companies are those in which internal consensus doesn’t just extend through one or two layers of management, but all the way down to street level.

The extent to which an organization’s core competency is understood and embraced by even the lowest-level employees is the extent to which their everyday decisions will be consistent with it. That usually means good things in the marketplace.

There are a handful of companies that might be held up as examples of this principle, including Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton, Apple and Starbucks. But where Southwest and Ritz have demonstrated an institutionalized culture–as evidenced by uninterrupted continuity beyond the founders’ tenure–the jury is still out on Apple and Starbucks. Both companies drifted when their founders stepped away, requiring them to come back and retake the wheel.

What about your company? When you exit (and one way or another you will), will your organization retain its culture and core competency, or are you unconsciously relying on the power of your own gravitational pull?

It’s a question that set all of us in the room that day to pondering, and not everyone liked the answers they came up with. The good news is that, like most things, becoming aware of the problem is the first step toward doing something about it.

Things are still tough out there, and anybody who runs a company has to remain concerned about expense ratios, staffing levels, customer retention, and cash flow (in a time like this, “cash is king, queen and the royal family” says Cisco’s John Chambers). The danger of making a misstep in any one of these areas is enough to keep even the most confident corporate leader up at night.

But there’s another kind of danger lurking around the corner: economic recovery. What challenges will our companies face when things turn around? A recent Wall Street Journal survey discovered that a preponderance of economists expect the recession to end in September. (Disclaimer: I’m not placing a lot of faith in what economists say; they weren’t exactly spot-on in predicting the mess we’re in. Still, sooner or later the economy will heat up again.) While I’m looking forward to that day, I’m also somewhat concerned about it.

Not only will we likely be dealing with inflation (possibly hyperinflation), many companies will experience pent up demand for their services. Demand is a good thing, of course, but to the extent that companies have wrung excess inventory and productive capacity out of their systems, handling the business will stretch them to the limit.

And while the available labor force will theoretically be there (employment tends to lag both recessions and recoveries), there will be strong demand for the best job candidates. Cash–so essential to riding out a storm–will be equally essential to picking up the pieces. As Nomura Securities’ David Resler put it, “It’s like a boxing match. Even if you win the fight, it’s not going to feel as good when you get out of the ring as when you went in.”

One of the most destructive internal dynamics in When Growth Stalls is the loss of nerve that tends to accompany stalled growth. While all of us need to be careful to “preserve the core” (as Jim Collins might put it), we also have to keep in mind what lies ahead and plan accordingly. If we don’t, the cure could be as deadly as the disease.

Various reports are indicating that a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is back in the works. But it’s not an acquisition. According to MarketWatch, “Rather than a full merger, the two companies are discussing ways to work together on selling both online search and display advertising…”

Does the phrase “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” mean anything to these companies? All a reciprocal ad deal would do is help them both milk their current assets–not a bad thing, to be sure, but certainly nothing that could be labeled a strategic innovation. Both Microsoft and Yahoo are getting their clocks cleaned by Google, and now Facebook and Twitter are looking increasingly menacing in terms of their potential game-changing impact on the search market.

A marriage between the Redmond and Sunnyvale clans may or may not have worked, but it’s hard to see how simply dancing around each other is going to change anything. It may simply be a distraction to both companies, neither of which can afford to be anything but focused on innovation.

“S&P Warns on GM, Chrysler Debt”

–The Wall Street Journal

Interesting note in the bottom right corner of page B4 of Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. It says that Audi, currently a distant third in luxury automobile market share, wants to become the world leader by 2015.

My prediction? BMW will be difficult to overtake, but Audi could easily pass Mercedes-Benz, given both companies’ recent history. Audi is simply out-executing Mercedes. Of course, marketing will play a key role.

Hopefully the folks at Audi will pick up a copy of When Growth Stalls, which features the company prominently. Along with some pretty good advice.

“The goal is to be in business the next day.”

Runners up: “Build things slowly” and “This is no time to be a hero.”

–Jackson and Warren Stephens of the investment firm Stephens, Inc., in Holman Jenkins’ WSJ column.

Sun Microsystems’ board is meeting today to discuss the failed acquisition talks with IBM. I have one word of advice: Sell.

Why? Well, the most obvious reason is that this could be Microsoft-Yahoo all over again. IBM knows it’s in the catbird seat and that Sun doesn’t have a lot of options. More important, however, is what seems to be happening inside of Sun when you read between the lines of the news reports. The company appears to be suffering from at least two of the destructive internal dynamics I spell out in When Growth Stalls.

–Lack of Consensus. CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Chairman Scott McNealy are reported to have taken opposing sides in evaluating the wisdom of a deal. That’s not a minor disagreement, and it reveals deeper issues about how each views the company and its challenges. All is not well in Sun Microland.

–Loss of Focus. Sun has always been a hardware company. Schwartz has of late tried to shift the company’s focus towards software. At this point it appears to be caught in between while having to endure a very unforgiving economic environment.

When a company loses its focus and has issues in the boardroom–and then becomes a runaway bride–you have to wonder if what’s going on inside is worse than it appears. Especially when the company issues a statement that it’s “committed to its leadership team, growth strategy and building value for its shareholders.” Methinks they doth protest too much.

That said, if I was to counsel IBM, my advice would be to walk away and not turn back. As When Growth Stalls makes clear, acquisitions are usually a bad idea, especially if there’s dissent within the walls of the target company.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at Sun’s board meeting today. If I was, I’d do everything I could to create a buzz in favor of selling. The company doesn’t have a lot of good options, but in my mind that’s the best one for shareholders.

In the wake of the wakes for the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, newspapers may finally be awakening to the fact that for too long they’ve been in the railroad business while a host of new transportation options have sprung up around them.

Newspapers do have a number of unique advantages–local newsrooms, longstanding reputations, deep-rooted community contacts–but as long as they insist on an outmoded distribution model they’re going to continue to shrink.

That said, their task is not as easy as simply porting their cargo over to a different vehicle (namely, the web). It will take repackaging, refreshing and rethinking exactly what “product” they provide, and to whom. That’s why I found comments made by the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz so refreshing. He says, “For years, publishers and editors have asked the wrong question: Will people pay to access my newspaper content on the Web? The right question is: What kind of journalism can my staff produce that is different and valuable enough that people will pay for it online?”

For too long the Fourth Estate has thought itself immune to the laws of commerce. Alas, as the newspapers above (and the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and dozens of others) are discovering, people seeking news, analysis and enlightenment have more options than ever.

While it may pain them to think of themselves as a (gasp) business, traditional newspapers have tremendous brand equity. As the dynamics of their industry continue to evolve, they can keep watching that equity whither away or take bold steps to remain relevant. “All the news that’s fit to print” is rapidly becoming an anachronism.