January 5, 2006
global microbranding etc.
Interesting article by Millioniare Socialite:
“Divergent means of building a global microbrand.“
Option 1. “Microbranding by strategic aggregation.“[“This is what I like, isn’t it cool?”]
Option 2. “Microbranding by relative market engagement.” [“This is what I do, isn’t it cool?”]
Frankly, I think you’re better off going with the latter. Unless of course, you’re The Manolo.
[Bonus Link:] Millionaire Socialite’s Greatest Hits.
"Hugh's Daily Cartoon" Newsletter.
A new cartoon sent out every weekday morning to your inbox [RSS version here.].
A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
Yep. If you’re indulging your intellectual pretensions (as I do. lots.) you’d say that the aggregation strategy is what you do if you want to differentiate yourself from other consumers — to sell other people
Sounds like youthful narcissism to me
Fortunately, I won’t begin to think that I’m wrong until the next decade, which should plenty of time to get things done
I mean, and I know I’m sounding like a prick, who else will? Your blog is pretty brilliant, as is Seth’s, but I don’t see anyone tying progressive marketing into broader cultural currents.
Madison Ave is still struggling to catch up with postmodernism (Sony & graff), and cultivating a microbrand still feels pretty ‘90s. Spear-style “you’re as cool as what you consume” is effective, but it doesn’t enrich the communities it appropriates.
Other disaffected creative communites have already begun working out the future (the new sincerity movement in poetry is my favorite example). Let’s do it too.
Actually, I think tying broader cultural currents into progressive marketing (i.e. vice versa) is more like it.
Only shallow people think marketing is shallow.
Right. I should have revised that, but editing takes time, and then I wouldn’t be young anymore
The questions are still out there — Which communities have faced similar issues, what can we learn from their experience, and where do we go once everyone’s on the hughtrain?
As a starting point, I highly recommend reading Mikhail Epstein’s essay “The place of postmodernism in postmodernity”. Much what he writes is hughtrain-evocative.
“Post-postmodernism witnesses the re-birth of utopia after its own death, after its subjection to postmodernism’s severe scepticism, relativism and its anti-utopian consciousness. Here is what several Moscow artists and art scholars of the post-Conceptual wave have said about the subject: “It is crucial that the problem of the universal be raised as a contemporary issue. I understand that it is a utopia. It is done completely consciously, yes, utopia is dead, so long live utopia. Utopia endows the individual with a more significant and a wider horizon” (Viktor Miziano). “The future of contemporary art is in the will to utopia, in the break-through into reality through a membrane of quotations, it is in sincerity and pathos” (Anatolii Osmolovsky). The subject here is the resurrection of utopia after the death of utopia, no longer as a social project with claims to transforming the world, but as a new intensity of life experience and a broader horizon for the individual.“
http://www.websher.net/yale/rl/trends/opera-new/lit-epstein-postmodernism.html
Doesn’t it sort of break down according to whether you can create interesting content?
If you leave out the whole problem of defining a “weblog” I think small/personal sites (that get any traffic) are more and more segregating into:
A) Original content sites.
B) Sites that help you find A)
HomeStar is A), BoingBoing is B). Manolo is mostly A) with a little B), GapingVoid is somewhere in the middle, etc etc etc.
I’m sure this is oversimplified, but still in thinking about a microbrand there’s one big question I keep coming back to:
Would you rather compete with Hollywood or with Google?
(Hint: whose products suck less?)
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