April 30, 2009

putting the “global” into “global microbrand”

4 Comments

murs2a.jpg
For years now, I’ve been rif­fing on “The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand”, something I’ve always wan­ted to create for myself:

A small, tiny brand, that “sells” all over the world…The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand is sus­tai­na­ble. With it you are not behol­den to one boss, one com­pany, one cus­to­mer, one local eco­nomy or even one industry. Your brand deve­lops rela­tionships in enough dif­fe­rent pla­ces to where your per­ma­nent address beco­mes almost irrelevant.

And from what became gla­ringly obvious early on, a lot of my fellow blog­gers had the same idea. To which I’ve always said, “Hurrah!”:
So then the next ques­tion is, when does your mic­ro­brand become TRULY glo­bal? Where is the tip­ping point?
Your guess is as good as mine, it really all depends on your defi­ni­tion of “glo­bal”. Although this blog has had rea­ders from all over the pla­net for many years, most of my actual, paid busi­ness over time has come from the UK and Ame­rica. So it never felt THAT glo­bal to me.
Then last week I ship­ped an order of sig­ned prints to a client in Bra­zil…
And then today, some­body from Main­land China purcha­sed a Pur­ple Cow print. We’re tal­king “Main­land”. Not Hong Kong. Not Tai­wan. Main­land.
Something inte­res­ting is hap­pe­ning, I can feel it…

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4 Responses to “putting the “global” into “global microbrand””

  1. Daniel Edlen says:
    April 30, 2009 at 3:40 PM

    Sweet. It’s fun to think of peo­ple in other coun­tries admi­ring one’s work. Early on a blog in Bra­zil pic­ked up my work brin­ging a LOT of ongoing traf­fic. Then a Ger­man vlog cove­red me and I had to ask a con­tact in Ger­many to tell me what they’d said! A guy in Leba­non got one of my hand­pain­ted stic­kers and another in Italy bought a Springs­teen. Now I just found out that a French tele­vi­sion show fea­tu­red my work.
    Art knows no boun­da­ries.
    Peace.

  2. Ben Rowe says:
    April 30, 2009 at 9:09 PM

    Hugh,
    If you do ever write another book — it should be on glo­bal mic­ro­brands. Definitely.

  3. Elijah Few says:
    May 1, 2009 at 1:09 AM

    Come over to X media lab Aotea­roa !
    we need crazy deran­ged fools!

  4. Sheji Ho says:
    May 2, 2009 at 12:18 AM

    I’m so loo­king for­ward to seeing this Pur­ple Cow print han­ging in my room. Seth’s book and your blog chan­ged my life. I’m very much indeb­ted to you two. Thanks Hugh! Best regards from China (Main­land that is) : )