Selective Amnesia There was a point to this. But I forgot.

Personal Brands – Post 2 (a) of 2

As I was saying, Be the suave seducer of the stock-market, on the web. And how does one do it? The same rules apply, as in products. Ok, here I am going to go all sermon-y and preachy. That makes this post read easier. So bear with me. Yes, I am talking to you.

Identify one thing only you can do, and no one else can. Let’s say you can puke, funnily, like Nilu does. So that’s your brand. And you stick to it. Or perhaps you can write in measured, calm tones with logic permeating every word, like Ravikiran. Or do the exact opposite, like a certain muse of mine.
Perhaps being the Bleeding Heart of the Blogosphere’s your brand. Whatever it be, be it.
Start by assuming that nobody knows your brand and that you need to put it in consumer’s (blog-hoppers, in this case) mind. Get yourself seen. Use your identity and what little of your brain you (or I) have to be seen where you (or I) can be seen the most. Take up popular projects on the ‘sphere – like the Blog Mela, or the cause of the trodden, and go to town on it.

This method is usually the right way to go about building brands. You have a good product on hand. But as I’ve said before, a good product doesn’t always translate to a good brand. To be a good brand, you need to get under the consumer’s skin. And that can be done only by staying consistent within the premise of your brand and strengthening it at every possible opportunity.

If illogic and ranting is your premise, be as illogical and rant-like as you can be. If on the other hand, you decide that logic and facts are yours to own, be true. If Socialism and state-control and reservations are what you most believe in, talk as often as you can, till you actually do believe in it. Don’t be selective.

One way of building brands – rather uncharitably called the Hindustan Lever Way – is to bombard your product’s claim in the media constantly, till it hijacks your brain. It works. It works because it is so banal and consistent. Take for example the old Surf ads featuring Lalitaji. She was a practical woman, and a smart shopper. No one would call her beautiful or sexy or creative. Yet, she persisted and persisted, hacking away at our brains till she found a niche for herself.

A similar example on blogosphere would be Amit Varma. With one major difference. The guy is creative. He writes daily, makes practical and useful posts, has rightfully claimed his throne at the top. His brand was built with hard-work and perseverance. By doing good quality stuff regularly, by putting himself on a shelf, to be seen and registered. And sure enough, he is the first brand people think of when talking of bloggers and Indians in the same paragraph.

Another way is to treat your consumers as friends and talk to them…not shout. One example of that on the blogosphere is Kingsley. He talks to you, if you notice, through every one of his posts. His tone of voice is cheeky, intelligent and sarcastic, for he knows his readers (including I) are people intelligent as he is. A few others who chat with you on the blogosphere are Karthik, Megha, Aadisht and Dilip. Yes, Dilip does speak to you. Only his choice of subject you don’t agree with. Thankfully.

Then there are the people who decide that they don’t want none of the adulation and the worship. These people build a brand by keeping themselves above the common denominator. The Stella Artois of the blogosphere. And these people make a very clever, bold move that could backfire on them easily. The fact it hasn’t is just a measure of how good these two are.

Then there’s the Mountain Dew kind of branding. Loud, attention seeking, flashy, irreverently bold ads that hide a great product. One example of Mountain Dew-y blogger, people tell me, is I. Thinking of it, it does seem true. Most my posts are calculated to draw some kind of attention, are loud and flashy. But there’s usually an underlying theme to it.

That’s pretty much what I want to say. Go brand yourself. Personal Brands, Post 2 (b) of 2 to follow

Technorati Tages: Brands, Bloggers & India

Personal Brands – Post 1 of 2

A long, long time ago, I was just a dude with a way with words. I used to prater around at school, and then UG, writing stuff up for the in-house rag, beating people up silly with verbal jokes and having a ball of a time.

I loved words. I love them still. The principal reason why I became a copywriter is I love words and love their ability to strike a chord with people. (Persist with me here please. I swear this is going somewhere worthwhile. ) I stuck through the first 1.5 years of being an underpaid, overworked trainee/junior copywriter because I was happy (yes, Happy…unconditionally) about the job I was doing. Along the way, I also learnt. A 1000 small and big lessons that no school can teach. On marketing, on economics, on HR, on managing.

One lesson I continue to learn is Branding. The wrong way, the right way, the grey area between that the majority of brands adopt. The constant-reminder way, the good-idea-neatly-executed way, the song-and-dance-into-consumer’s-heart way. And ad nauseum. (Yes, yes, we shall come to the title presently)

I also learnt of people as brands. Big-shit CEOs, the dude in the corner office. The suave seducer of the stock-market. The playboys and the rag-picker-turned-richie-riches.
That’s when I knew I too could become the big-brand, no pun on my physique. True. I knew I could be popular if I set my heart and my words to it.

Enter Selective Amnesia. As Kingsley puts it:

This is the future of the blogosphere folks – the endless quest, not for ad revenues as some would have you believe, but for Internet celebrity. All you have to do is be a purple cow. Own your niche. Blog your heart out. Do not wait patiently for the get-famous-quick salesmen to show up – become one yourself and ’sploit the bubble. Get up on the Internet and blog, dammit! Cuz sticks and stones may break your bones but links can never hurt you.

I was an amateur code-jock. Writing up silly scripts and half-decent HTML3.0 code on Tripod and GeoCities and Hypermart.com. Tripod gave me a little introduction to this whole blog thing.
In October of 2002, I clicked on a link in Tripod that said “Add blogs to your homepages” or some such shit. I did, not knowing what a blog was. But I learnt. And I was hooked. Here was the writer’s wet-dream. Something that lets you write your heart out and get people to read it.

Show me the dotted line baby. Yes, yes, I still haven’t touched upon the real topic.

Here, let me put it simply. Brand yourself. Be the suave seducer of the stock-market, on the web. And how does one do it? The same rules apply, as in products.

More, tomorrow. I swear.

Technorati Tages: Brands, Bloggers & India