Branding Yourself

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“Personal branding is something I get a lot of questions about. People often ask me what they should do in order to get an established name out there and be seen as a major influencer in their industry. The reason they want this is because the second you accomplish this, the opportunities will come your way and you’d be amazed at the kind of business or money that just lands in your lap.” — Neil Patel at Pronet Advertising

I don’t remember hearing much about “personal branding” before blogs and podcasting. But if there is an “smays brand,” you’ll find it here.

I had lunch today with Chuck Zimmerman and it would be hard to find a better example of this concept. He and his wife Cindy work too hard to say the money “just lands in (their) lap,” but they’ve certainly created a unique brand in the world of agriculture marketing. I’d love to share some of Chuck’s amazing success stories but before he pays for lunch, he makes me sign an NDA.

What’s your brand?

The Basement Diaries. Deleted.

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“The Basement Summer was 1968. Some of us had been off to college for a year or two but gravitated back to Kennett, Missouri, as young people from small towns often do. This web site is about those people and that time. This would have been a lot easier if I had actually kept a diary or journal thirty years ago. But I didn’t, so the only record I have is a few thousand photographs and a lot of fuzzy memories. The time frame is roughly 1966 -1976. If you were there, no further explanation is necessary… if you were not, none is possible.”

Backup!That was the intro to one of the first websites I created (March, 1998). I say was because this morning I deleted the entire site. How I managed to do this is of no consequence. I believe I have a back-up in our safe deposit box, but can’t find a copy among the countless CD’s and external hard-drives that clutter my home office.

Given the sentimental importance of this site, I’m surprised by how calmly I’m dealing with this. I spent hundreds of hours creating the site but I didn’t know what I was doing in those early days and the tools weren’t very good. And the resulting site looked like what it was, an early effort by an amateur.

And I have all of the images. Digital and prints. I can do a much better job the second time around. I don’t think I could/would recreate the copy. So I’m hoping I have that back-up. And I feel bad for anyone that might have linked to the original site. Those links are dead. If you were among those immortalized in The Basement Diaries, watch this space for updates.

Update: Seems I did have the foresight to tuck a copy away at the bank. I’ll start rebuilding immediately.

This Perfect Day

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If you’re familiar with Ira Levin at all, it’s probably through some of the movies based on his novels (Rosemary’s Baby, The Boys from Brazil, The Stepford Wives, Sliver). My favorite Levin novel, This Perfect Day, hasn’t (to my knowledge) made it to the big screen. It describes a scary future:

“Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called “The Family”. There are only four personal names for men, and four corresponding names for women. Instead of surnames, individuals are distinguished by a nine-character alphanumeric code. Everyone eats “totalcakes”, drinks “cokes” and wears exactly the same thing – every day.

The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp which has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as humans. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce, and which job they will be trained for. Everyone is assigned a counselor who acts somewhat like a mentor, confessor, and parole agent; violations against ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ by themselves and others are expected to be reported at a monthly confession.”

I read This Perfect Day in 1970 (the year it was published). The telecomps used by counselors to remotely connect with UniComp sound remarkably like wi-fi enabled laptops. Fortunately, instead of connecting with a single all-powerful computer, we’re connecting with lots of little ones…and each other.

On a more metaphysical plane, This Perfect Day poses the question: Are we really as “awake” and “conscious” as we think we are? My latest re-read reminds me –once again– trust yourself, don’t trust governments.

Ira Glass on storytelling

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Thanks to David for pointing me to this series of interviews (YouTube) with Ira Glass. His weekly program, This American Life, is the best example of what radio can and should be. But that doesn’t sound quite right to me any longer, since I began listening to the program via podcast.

So let’s call it the best example of what storytelling can and should be. “Radio” makes it about the medium. And it never was, not really.

My take-away from the first segment of the interview is that it takes as much time to find a good story, as it does to write and produce the story. He says the TAL team spends about half of their time searching for that good story to tell.

PS: I had never seen Ira Glass and he looks exactly like he sounds.

NBA taps into Second Life

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“The NBA has launched an elaborate series of interactive milieus in the popular online virtual world Second Life, including a 3D NBA store, a mock NBA arena and even a press center where Web users can roam and play using video-game-like avatars.

Second Life, which claims close to six million registered users worldwide and is visited by more than a million or so every two months, has increasingly become a testing ground for marketers and media companies. The new NBA Headquarters in Second Life is the first such exploration of the virtual world phenomenon by the league.”

[MediaWeek.com]