weblog/wEssays     archives     home
 

My Brand Management Stinks   (June 22 & 23, 2006)


reload this page to see this animated ad again. One of the hottest trends in business management circles is "brand management." Now that my modest little blog is attracting 30,000 unique visitors a month, I reckoned I needed some brand management pixie dust.

So I hired management consulting gurus NAND Corporation, based in Santa Monica, Calif., my birthplace. (Yes, they do keep surfboards in the lobby so the highly paid gurus can catch a wave and be sittin' on top of the world during breaks.)

The wizards at NAND were rather harsh in their assessment of my current aimless brand. They said my topic selection was all over the map, from a Friday quiz for readers to movie reviews to macro-economic analysis to sophomoric, hokey ad parodies.

They recommended tightening my focus onto a lucrative subfield of Blogland: "innovation transformation." Once I carved out a niche in the hot field of fostering, provoking and engineering innovation, I could count on my site becoming a "must see" site for CEOs--and be able to sell ads to Google, Yahoo and a host of other advertising giants.

They provided me with an example of the kind of entry I would need to start writing that set my mind reeling:
The ethnography of the cosmopolitan is the new core competence ... as offshore outsourcing moves to a greater focus on skill building arbitrage, we see a shift to "fifth generation" outsourcing... Trendalyzer is the essential new software package for benchmarking metrics in innovation....
Rather than write tripe like that and sell ads which annoy readers, I've decided to annoy readers myself by keeping the all-over-the-map "unfocus" of the current site.

So my brand is no brand: a generally annoying mix of an annoyingly wide range of topics, unfettered by outside ads. I know you all miss having banner ads, click-through links and all the other fun stuff that makes ad-choked sites the darlings of the Internet, but it's part of my "no-brand" "unfocus" to avoid brands--unless they're paying me huge bucks on deep background.

Instead of selling irritating ads, I've aggressively pursued some new "deep background" sponsors for the site.

Everyone knows that I pocket a hefty fee monthly for pitching Kroika! Cookies from time to time (please see the links on the left under "Kroika! Chronicles"), and based on the singular success of that partnership I've added Jank Coffee (I did some design work for them in the past), and Cervantes Beer, home of the visually witty "Pancho and the Windmill" ad campaign.

As for Astra Zastra, whose ears I've pinned several times here regarding their massive ad campaigns to sell side-effect-riddled drugs (Zombiestra) for made-up diseases (Quatro-Polar Disorder)--well, the folks over at AZ made me an offer I couldn't quite refuse, and no, it wasn't a free supply of Zombiestra.

Of course the deal is the same I have with Kroika: by trashing the company and its products, just as I've always done, then my site retains that magic credibility which their ads can never attain.

It's ironic, isn't it, getting paid to do what I already do--mock worthless ad campaigns and consumer products. Somehow the corporate handlers figure that the mention on a credible site more than offsets the mocking--go figure. I am just a dumb writer, so what do I know? Please welcome this site's new corporate sponsors: Jank Coffee, Cervantes Beer, and Astra Zastra Pharmaceuticals.

I promise their huge fees to me and occasional appearance as objects of derision will be lost in the "no brand" mix of unfocused stuff which is, sadly, my brand.


NOTE: As I will be "away from my desk" through Sunday, here is the Friday "where is this?" Quiz somewhat in advance of Friday. There will be no Saturday entry.

buy my book now at The Kaleidoscope independent bookstore online Friendship gets short shrift in our culture. Yes, friendship does make brief appearances in popular culture, but only as a precursor to romance, or as an obstacle to romance which is overcome in some comedic fashion.

But friendship takes romance any day. Friends are who you turn to when romance sours, as the two young guys in my little novel
I-State Lines find when each of their romantic dreams dissolves into a painfully transparent cloud of dust. Friends are who find you jobs (as Daz does for Alex and himself), and they're who you can travel with without killing each other (although you may get close).

And friendship between guys and gals is a beautiful thing. It isn't vulnerable to the vissitudes of romance, and it works on the magic similarities and differences between the sexes. All those romantic comedies got it wrong: it's when there is no promise (or dread) of romance that friendships between guys and gals can truly blossom into lifetime bonds.

OK, here's the part where I pitch my little novel and you wander off to read something else:

You can order my little novel from my favorite online independent bookstore, The Kaleidoscope: Our Focus Is You .

Or if you have an open order at amazon.com, you can of course add I-State Lines to your current purchase.

Be the first to identify the specific locale behind me and my beautiful friend, and I'll send you a collector's copy of my book I-State Lines. (Hint: that waterfall falls directly onto an inaccessible Pacific coast beach.) So email me!





For more on this subject and a wide array of other topics, please visit my weblog.

                                                           


copyright © 2006 Charles Hugh Smith. All rights reserved in all media.

I would be honored if you linked this wEssay to your site, or printed a copy for your own use.

                                                           


 
  weblog/wEssays     home