April 7, 2005
post-hughtrain
Thanks, Brian, fot the lovely post. I hope you won’t begrudge me posting it here in its entirety:
How Does Your Global Microbrand Grow?
Take one savvy tailor in the UK. Niche the offering. Niche it again. Mix one manic, disaffected dreamer as marketing instigator. Fold one open-to-happenstance PR type in NYC. Drop crumbs along the way.
Yield one midnight reader/writer in Louisiana, who, against all odds, knows the value offered by said English tailor, who only a few months ago made the counter-intuitive move to take to the IntarWeb.
Flatearth? I’d call it NowTime.
The Hughtrain was all about advertising and branding. As I was holding down an advertising job when I wrote it, that’s not surprising.
“Post-Hughtrain” is slightly different. Post-Hughtrain is all about building what I call a “Global Microbrand”.
Three things things triggered this evolution.
1. The bitter emptiness and economic unfeasibility of being just one more semi-desperate marketing evangelist schmuck with a “new exciting” marketing schpiel needing to be sold to the usual aspiring-corpses-corporate-numpties. Snake Oil? Perhaps. I prefer Monosodium Glutame as the metaphor.
2. Working with English Cut, obviously.
3. A letter I wrote a couple of months back to Doc Searls. Hughtrain was all about “Smarter Conversations”. Post-Hughtrain is about “The Smartest Conversation”, which to me is what English Cut is all about. Go read the letter.
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A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
Here is a post-hughtrain believer. A couple in Springfield, MO have been busy trying to open an independent cinema. They have a funny quirky blog that has brought them supporters from across the globe. They ran into money problems and turned to their readers for help. The readers suggested auctioning off the naming rights to the concession stand. The readers are also busy pushing this story everywhere they can;) People who will never set foot in this theatre are invested in its success because the owners are sharing and talking.
blog.moxiecinema.com
Hugh, I don’t know about you but I think the title “marketing instigator” is just great.
Being a microbrand is fun! It’s real weird being in a hospital waiting room and having someone you don’t know tell you “you’re the Scobleizer, aren’t you?” It’s a weird life, that’s for sure.
What was really weird was he was listening to Adam Curry on his cell phone.
I bet that he reads here too.
The Dwelve Journey in Business Speak
I’m back from the Advance. It was hard to get back to computers yesterday. And, uh, I don’t think I can tackle describing the experience in words quite yet. To bring the Dwelve process home in business terms, it provides