So How Does It Feel to Be A Global Micro-brand?

I received an email from someone writing a feature on marketing innovations and global microbrands.  I answered the writer's email questions while I watch tonight's The Apprentice. (TV is rare for me, but concentration isn't a problem as I learned to do homework in a household that adored TV sets in every room.)

Donald Trump is having lunch with the winning team. He's asked (gushingly):

How does it feel to be a brand?

Trump (I'm paraphrasing):  I don't think about it. It puts too much pressure on you... When you look at people dying every day in India or hungry in Africa, what we're doing isn't that important.

Hmmm. Trump gets a few brownie points on my end.

The writer's questions had me re-evaluate the value of blogging. I'm not sure I'd have realized that there were so many business people that shared my interests without this blog. Sometimes I think I'm really going out on a limb and I need to reel it back in and discuss Technorati rankings and Web 2.0 and Techcrunch parties. Precisely at those moments an email comes in from a CEO stating his own preference: "I like some of the messages with a deep meaning" or from a financier: "Beautiful. Just exquisite. Thank you."

That's why I keep plugging away.

This is a good time to attempt to answer question #1 publicly. It's still rough:

1. How would you describe your profession/work?  What do you do (for money)?

I'm a freelance marketing consultant and writer. Or I was a consultant.  I'm in the middle of a transition out of a typical consulting role that began after my brush with death and global loss, the Indian Ocean tsunami.

I'm creating (slowly, organically) an affinity group (future: Dwelve.com) that transcends any product or service. One hub spoke of the strategy involves helping international brands that exude spiritual capital -  not in that syrupy jumping-on-the-Zenification-bandwagon but as an authentic expression of the company (and stakeholders) wish to engage in the world rather than succumbing to the escape-to-Tibetan-monastery-virus. (BTW, I think the only way to operate the new and distinct operation is something other than the typical C corp.)

A lot of brand-builders talk about meaning-making. But I'm not talking about anything made or manufactured, but pointing to a deep naturalness, something fundamental, and universally essential yet expressed uniquely. In Mindfulness in Plain English, by Venerable Heenepola Gunaratana, he makes the point that the most basic of things - words like the - are often the most difficult to explain.

For instance, I met an author and poet in Sri Lanka. She hosts a monthly Enlightenment Seekers Study Circle in her home outside Colombo. Her husband works with women's microfinance in Hambantota. I felt I knew the family intimately after two afternoons.

It was only late in our relationship that I even learned her family owned a socially-conscious tea plantation. One son learned yoga on his own from books at thirteen and meditated in a Japanese Zen monastery at 17. Eventually I learned her daughter-in-law (said son's wife) was packaging and selling the tea. Reading the website I saw that their presence, their story simply wasn't coming across at all. It could be any tea company - albeit a high-quality Ceylon tea.

Tea is sold by auction in Sri Lanka. Taste enters the equation, but essentially plucking tea leaves and selling them in bulk is awfully close to a commodity.  There "value-added" export means bagging the tea leaves.

The real value-add, IMHO? (A great cup of tea is expected, a given these days.) Value add is caring about and wanting to support the people and mission behind and beyond the tea product.

FYI, the list of questions. Be curious to hear responses. I can send you my answers via email (I didn't ask for permission to post):

1. How would you describe your profession/work? What do you do (for money)?
2. Hugh MacLeod mentioned you in his rant on a “global microbrand”. What does the term "global microbrand" mean to you?
3. Is your blog a personal “global microbrand”? If so, how? And how successful has it been?
4. What is the difference between marketing by blogs for small business, and large  corporate b-blogs?
5. In such a saturated blogosphere (where most blogs have relatively few hits), how does marketing by blogs reach out to customers?
6. In the world of blogs, where entries become obsolete within a matter of hours, is marketing by blogs sustainable?
7. How do you think marketing by blogs will change the way people perceive of marketing/advertising?

Comments

[Steve Sherlock]

welcome back... FYI - the dwelve link is broken, apparently it takes you to a site to buy the domain as it has expired.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks Steve. The domain is still held, but I accidentally let it lapse while I was gone. Nothing there yet anyway. Hatchling at dwelve.wordpress.com. Basic theme is: Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

I got an email about someone using their blog to build a personal brand that prompted me to clarify. I'm with the Donald. If I am or am not a brand is besides the point.

"Building a brand" should never be the object or end-goal or it's hollow for all of us.

Heck, everyone is unique anyway so by all rights we're brands if we don't go around mimicking everyone else and trying to be other than who we are. To your own self your uniqueness is quite ordinary so you contort yourself to some image... Stop trying and fall back into yourself. Start there.

Here's part of my answer to #3.

My blog is more than a brand-building device. I'm trying to make a bigger impact - it's subversive in many ways - than simply getting business. You could call it changing the world one post at a time. And it's more of a learning device. I also use it to express ideas I am developing since the writing process itself crystallizes half-formed concepts. It's like hearing yourself think aloud. Plus the feedback, the give-and-take yields new insight and new directions.

I once wrote: I'm not developing a brand, I'm developing my self. The clearer I am about who I am, the more that's reflected clearly. And that's where I focus. What you think you see as quote branding unquote is simply a side-effect.

[Mary Schmidt]

Evelyn, I'd be very interested in knowing your answers to the above questions. I found my self nodding emphatic agreement while reading this post. I, too, have an element of subversion in my blogging - love the "change the world one post at a time." And, I often get the best/most response from the "non-business" posts - from business people.

I can't give people the magic profit generator and I certainly can't solve all their problems in a blog post. But, if I make them smile or give them a glimmer of an idea, I've delivered value.

[Craig Elimeliah]

The microbrand... Trump lies through his teeth, he is a brand and he loves it! I recently wrote an article over at AIGA about personal branding of designers in the ad world ill paste it here i think you will enjoy it...

The Web, Express.

How many dimensions are there to the internet? It seems to me that more and more companies are recognizing the expansiveness of the web and realizing that it is probably the most powerful marketing tool in the media realm today. Having designed and produced hundreds of websites I am glad to see that more and more of the projects that I am producing are using the web in more creative ways. The internet seems to find its way into every aspect of our daily lives, kiosks, environmental installations, ATMs, automobiles, video games and cell phones have all become popular venues for implementing creative and viral content driven by the internet. We are "plugged in" to the internet from every angle. I am excited to see new out of the box ideas popping up that utilize the immediate impact that the internet gives us to send and receive information almost anywhere we go.

Retailers are always looking for new ways to use the web to get people to shop more creatively, retain customers using personalization and to engage them by creating a digital experience based around the products and services they are offering that is beyond the traditional website. Imagine a world where you can walk into a restaurant and get a menu printed out for you based on your pre-selected preferences, you will only see the foods you like, the drinks you drink and even have the chef prepare the food based on certain diet issues you may have. Think of how easy a trip to Ikea would be if you were led to items that matched your home's color scheme and complimentary products that worked well with what you have already entered into your universal profile. What if you were able to scan your entire body and be able to find perfectly fitted clothing based on your shape and size? Using the web as a means of sharing your preferences with providers of products and services as well as finding schools, houses and jobs is something we have all become accustomed to but what if the experience didn't end on your computer screen? What if those preferences followed you everywhere you went, perhaps a card you carry or the extreme would be an embedded chip under the skin! That time is now and its already beginning to effect everything you do.

Many companies understand that the push for personalization, customization and availability of a vast amount of unique products is the only way to survive in today's fast paced economy, being able to service each customer as if they were their only customer is what will give companies the competitive edge to constantly wow and deliver products that their customers want. The internet has not only opened the door to new and exciting products but it has drastically defined demographics way beyond our wildest dreams. We know pretty much everything about the people who are buying products, we know their buying patterns and even bad shopping habits (like spending rent money on a new PSP) this gives retailers the ability to deliver precisely what the customer wants when they want it and even base it on certain specific times not just traditional holidays. The big question I have is, is this good for us? Is it good to have the exact shirt, the customized shoes, the color coordinated phone, iPod, handheld gaming console, sox and tie? My mind says yes but my heart is kind of teetering towards no. Perhaps I am not accustomed to always getting the exact product that fits my lifestyle, I remember when i would go buy a tee shirt and customize it myself, rub in some dye, wash it a hundred times, bleach it fifty times, then put it under my mattress for a month before I would wear it to get that exact look I was going for, my mother would kill me when I would take the $80 Champion sweatshirt that were predominant in the late 80s and early 90s and make small tears, fray the elastic, bleach and dye the hood different colors all to get that exact effect. I had been known in my high school as the guy who painted pictures on his shoes, I custom designed my Doc Martins with various pop art that was big at the time like Keith Haring's figures and some graffiti along with my own original art, I was the envy and the freak of my neighborhood and I loved it.

Seems like today that whole experience is watered down, now you can simply log onto the Nike website and order a pair of shoes to your exact specifications, Puma and their funky Mongolian BBQ is pretty cool but kind of takes away from the whole do it yourself experience I loved as a kid. Today's brands can no longer exist as a one dimensional logo anymore, it must be an entire experience that embodies the brand and the genre it serves. The brand needs to know the needs and the wants of its consumers and deliver it fast or else the next newest website to pop up will do it better and take away sales. Its a level playing field out there folks. Now that I have made my point regarding brands and experience I want to shift gears and talk about designers. Today, like a brand, a designer cannot simply design, there has to be an experience based around that designer, a blog, a personal portfolio as good as if not better than their professional work, tattoos, funky friends, networks of other designers, and so much more. Today a designer needs to embody the very personality they create when they design for a brand or a particular product, as consumers are getting more exacting in their needs, so are the advertisers and interactive agencies when looking for designers who will help embody the types of brands that their firm represents. So next time your racking your brain trying to figure out how to build a brand experience around your next client take some time and think about your own "experience" that you give over to people who know you and love your work. A musician needs an instrument to work, until his hands touch the guitar or the horn he cannot express himself, an artist is his own instrument, your eyes, your ears, etc... is a walking experience just waiting to attract some attention.