the art of the brand

Currently we are watching the final death of a 500 year old concept–plaster the world with broadsheet and someone will care.
As we often tell clients, there are 2 questions, and 2 questions only that someone asks when meeting someone new: Who are you? and Why should i care?
Brand is the answer.
On the basis of the perceived answer, people respond.
In an age of paralysis of choice resulting from information overload, it will become increasingly necessary to find the end customer able to make choice, make choice that the producer desires, and act on that choice.
Each of these is an element of a separate discipline.
The failure to oversee the conflicts within those disciplines becomes heat–waste. Dollars are energy. No more, no less.
The company that sees a “waste of money” is actually seeing internal friction caused by an imabalanced understanding of the real job. The real job has always been building community by enhancing the perceived value of community membership.
the elegant phrase “membership has its advantages” is true not just for American Express, but for flavour preferences in a coffee shop.
When we look at brand building, advertising, marketing, customer acquisition, conversion, upsell, brand loyalty, brand attachment, brand propagation we are actually watching a biologic process.
Nothing will ever replace scattering seeds into the wind as part of an ecology.
But the mammals will increasingly focus on skills for creating a niche ecology in which their own kind has more advantage at less risk.
What does this mean? a house that understands how to build community will get better roi and roa than a house that knows how to broadcast message.
This means developing new metrics.
At bridge solution, we understand that “metrics” is a dinosaur word for “listening.”

Here is the beginning of a concrete description of the forward movement of the current approach to data gathering/deploying as FaceBook rolls out its new “open to everyone” model for convergence.

with the exception of the asterisks, the comments are real, realtime, since november 12. One can make the argument that 9 objections from xyz number of ap users is so low as to be meaningless. or one can use the concept of “pro-active trendsetters” write letters, other don’t, most sleep their way into submission.

if sampling of something like a princess and a genie and a bottle can be moved $1million worth of reworking on the basis of 4 little girls playing with the toys (some will recall the New Yorker’s feature last Christmas about Barbie and her rivals and how they are marketed–others can take my word that a “focus group” is a valuable thing. Now just think if you could get any number of them for free, by having FaceBookers not even knowing they had volunteered?) and being heard, what can we deduce about the line between intrusion and convergence in just this one ap?

What the hell is with those “Person A and Person B are friends on Flickster Movies!” messages… pure spam. No one in the universe could possible want them. Plus, messages about me are showing up on my friend’s news feed without showing up in my mini-feed. That’s just obnoxious.

Application removed and blocked. I’ll find a less obnoxious place to put my movies reviews.

Couldn’t agree more.
This app was great until they started adding more and more spam spam spam spam spam spam spam.

I agree as well, what a load of spam crap. Block and remove for me as well. I see absolutely no reason for the “x is no friends with me on Flixter” on my mini feed. I didn’t take any action.

I haven’t become Friends with “anybody” on Flixster Movies…So why the HELL are they FABRICATING such information about me, on my Friend’s “Mini-Feed”…This is absolutely DISGUSTING…And I HATE this “BULL-SHIT” called Flixster Movies.

Yep spamming marketroid bastards - I deliberately unticked everyone to avoid spamming them and then discovered the app creators decided to spam all of them anyway.

Against my express wishes.

Anyone got a contact for these gits?

Hate spam. Hate this app.

Not only this **** but i’ve started getting e-mails from the *******. somebody should report this **** to facebook and have them sort it out.

this is, imho, the point of the ap. i’ve been blogging about FaceBook for about 6 weeks in terms of violation of trust, and data mining. when u add an ap, ur agreeing to give ur FaceBook data to the ap, and the ap gives back data to Facebook, which then uses it for targeting.
i realize few people keep up with this stuff, but back a month ago Facebook announced it was developing ways of marketing to people online and >>>offline<<< based on the amount and quality of info they were getting. part of getting that data is u giving it up, and then getting drowned with data you don’t want in return–like any other form of marketing.
if you have a couple 100 “friends” you will soon see nothing in the newsfeed but flixster likes coca-cola and mcdonald’s beat burger king in jedi vs sith.

that last”comment” was made by someone who knows the art of the brand…:-)

how, in light of the video (which has now been moved to the bottom of the page to avoid a css error that seemingly won’t resolve any other way), can we see which elements of community building are being produced by the current SocialAd (tm, by..facebook) paradigm.? Can i embed this video into a facebook page? A while back yes. Now the answer is yes, if i agree to surrender data to facebook and youtube which will allow them to get a better fix on my interests.Can a video give personal data? If i have to vote on it, and if the images are human analysed by key-word–an effort being done elsewhere–and it can be converted to a freely solved “touring image” i can not only get the individual data, but have the person performing work that will be meaningful to someone else, for free. Readers are cordially implored to watch the above video, which is about more than FaceBook. Actually it’s not about FaceBook at all–rather, it’s about the system failure in providing life-support for a generation of Americans. From a standpoint of brand competition, market analysis and competitive analysis it may be a video about Star Wars vs world war iii, which will be, as it has been, a battle about access to resources, conversion of resources, and value creation.Here’s an economics question regarding how much to pay workers:Why would I pay them more than the sense of belonging? why would i need to? is there something more valuable?Is there something elsewhere on Maslow’s hierarchy? “self-actualisation,” perhaps a reader might offer. Can an effective brander offer the sense of “self-actualisation” to the brain, which cannot tell the difference? Surely. In fact, one might say that the brain will welcome the help. REaders may recall the political struggle, and Umberto Eco’s comments about the significance of the struggle, when Disney said that people wouldn’t be able to “get” the experience of Gettysburg without Disney interpreting it for them.Is this an approach to branding? Does the growth of a viable economy depend on sorting through the tool sets herein named and finding ways of associating health instead of “perceived value” to a product?A co-founder of Paper Tiger was once cited a price for a rickshaw ride in India. He was quote 47 cents, converted. Since he believed that that quote was based on what the offerer perceived as his willingness to pay, rather than based on the minimum price for doing the work, he rejected the offer. the New Yorker, from which the story comes, identified this as “capitalism 101.” At bridge solution we would identify it as refusal to put liquidity into the system, a failure in any capitalist model.

Actually that’s a moral issue. Because value is always a perception. A perception contaminated by the field of peers, past experience, and, in today’s culture, immediacy and authenticity having been confused for limbic drives.

Brands will join this struggle, on one “side” or the other. People whose egos prevent them from being honest will say “ahh, but these tricks you are talking about are short-lived, ephemeral, and have no underlying impact.” That is the consensus on sub-liminals, since shortly after they became known as tools being used. Of course the public health community fails to notice, except to become part of the noise to signal ratio, the degree to which such sub-liminals can be made pervasive, environmental, and thence normative by the brain itself.

Once somebody has accepted that the price to entry includes being deemed a rat in a maze, they can hardly complain about being fed like a rat, and that” mousy smell” in the air becomes a comfort and a form of self-identification and re-assurance, and not a clue that the system is out of balance.

Is bridge solution opposed to the use of these new and intriguing tools of demographic aggregation? Not at all. The issue, as it has been since Plato’s Republic, is not “what is the answer”, but “who writes the question”.

Between you and your market you need a bridge. The New York Times reports yesterday that computer simulation models that match actual behaviour regarding how ants form bridges of their own bodies to empower the colony have been achieved, as well as providing the demographic environmental clues used by geese forming a flock. Our question is–is that how an ethical company defends it’s brand, or is it how an ethical brand defends itself against predators of the brand’s future–the end customers of 10 years from now?

Facebook can tell that in a specific 5 digit zip women who went to Catholic schools and have more male than female friends who are members of service organisations; and are recognised by more than 200 people by face, and those 200 people feel a value reward from saying they can make that recognition with its attendant association and may therefore likely to be higher earners in 5 years prefer Tom Cruise before or after public bouts of scientology, or more/less in movies where a 4wd vehicle is featured…and whether someone that woman knows bragged about acquiring a 4wd in the last 60 days, or what per cent of the inner sphere originated in 5 digit zips where 4wds are considered viable. Through the use of something a little more subtle than the vaunted “keyword”, but through what black hat guys might call Baynesian associators, FaceBook can presently position further lab tests and “suggestions” within its maze. This maze is beocming ever more hypnotic, strress relieving and addictive with the addition of more and more aps which are providers of data on relationships, preferences, and ways of selling any message to anyone. And it is in fact “message” that gets sold. Consumer goods and services in the USA carry a premium based purely on the associated message, and sense of belonging. That’s branding 099, lets alone 101.

The key issue is the degree of trust. Facebook built itself on the basis of privacy, security, and a non-hostile sandbox, unlike MySpace, which, due to defective platforming was a freeforall bar fight waiting to happen. Nobody is more than aggravated when their MySpace is hacked. Nobody understands what is being hacked at FaceBook, or the potential for social engineering it is creating.

Mammal branders–those ready to steal the dinosaur eggs and prosper–will be looking at approaches to FaceBook. The future, which these days means 18 months out, will be changing rapidly for those who can run, and those who can no longer hide.

According to Adam Bain, of MySpace, of Fox of Murdoch, MySpace has the ability to begin refining the endless puddles and tsunamis of demographic information towards targeted sales.
“It’s looking at what they say, what they do and what they say they do. It’s not keyword-based, so they don’t have to mention Tom Cruise for us to know they’re a fan,”Bain told Reuters. “We’re smart enough to understand the movies they list have Tom Cruise in them.”  At least this is as much as what he told Reuters.

Since bridge solution has been following FaceBook, as noted here in past entries,
let’s make some projections:
Facebook is positioned to do more than say someone is a Tom Cruise fan. Facebook can tell that in a 5 digit zip women who went to catholic schools and have more male tha female friends who are members of service organisations, and are recognised by more than 200 people by face and may therefore likely to be higher earners in 5 years prefer tom cruise before or after Nicole Kidman,  or more/less in movies where a 4wd vehicle is featured…and that someone that woman considers as having alpha traits  bought a 4wd in the last 60 days. Facebook aps, if properly integrated, can relate mood swings to music taste, and log problem solving approaches of that same person, the “shell density” of each layer of social sphere, and diurnal rhythms.Facebook knows what other online media sources offer attractive content, and the nature of the content, from which it can infer the nature of the attraction. Facebook can, by defining random choices within quizzes, begin determination of the bounds of a demographic, rather than merely map them.
In fact, with a little work, evidences of which are already apparent, FaceBook can begin the process of guiding the face that someone “wants” booked.

Last night I was privileged to attend the Halloween concert at University of Louisville–and saw a lesson on branding. In the humerous skits done by various sections of the orchestra as a warmup for the evening, the theory was posited that the tuba was the first musical instrument–loud, heavy, suitable for attracting a romantically inclined mastodon. It had the inherent flaw of not being user friendly–or, small cave audience friendly.

As a result, cave people invented the bass trombone, and then the trumpet, and then…

When  approaching problems in branding, the all-things-to-all-people approach was also basically the first discovery. Eventually, niche brands developed, as part of empowering individual expression. Even the “big box” retailers now develop internal sub-brands to maintain a focussed consumer who will felt heard.

When developing a brand strategy, from less-then-white-hate seo all the way back to identifying the meaning of the brand, a good ad or brand house will constatnly be looknig to hear the grace notes in the market, and not try to drown out competition with noise.

Even “A Night on Bald Mountain” resolves into quiet, purposed, individual discussiond amongst the instruments, leading to a meaningful closure.

When a brand is getting Google slapped, fighting advanced market competition, or fighting off detractors, getting a house who can tell the brand story from stone age to info age is a critical part of the picture.

This week, as we approach Halloween, the federal government got closer to entrenching the Web–that odd term to describe a new kind of web, other than rivers, railroads, roads, theInterstate system–as the preferred route of commercial travel.

In what appears to be a 7 year offset of any taxes on net traffic, congress instead acknowledged, tacitly, that if the net replaces the traditional telephone system, it is taxable.
Congress prevented the establishment of postal fees–an email tax–largely because no one is willing to pay for the bulk mail. Once upon a time, people looked forward to the sears catalog arriving in the mail. That was too long ago to even make sense anymore. Sears as a the mega corp faded away in partbecuase it could no longer sustain the business cost of the catalog going through the Postal Service. The only real solution anyone has offered to spam is to allow Microsoft or somebody like it to collect a tax thatspammers would not pay, but would be paid by the owner of the mailbox.
Congressa also came closer to locking in a situation in which net access will be so critival to daily living that taxes on it will be unavoidable.
Highways are paid for by fuel taxes.
Your access to them are paid for by local property taxes.
How do we tax our accessd to the world when the passage is non-physcial? No one can yet determine a matric. But if the math gets solved, a packet tax–as I said 10 years ago–will arrive. Logically, a kw tax will come. The total cost of the electricity needed to power the net, divided among the users, with no regard forwherther the energy gets burned emptying email boxes or downloading family pictures. With a standard deduction per household, and a credit against a minimum bill, the systemwouls be approximately “fair”–at least as fair as current IRS law, and would further drive energy conservation, carbon footprint and related issues.
Congress in theory has no entitlement to the wallets of america.
America, in theory and reality, has no entitlement to a free lunch.

The invitation, sent to the ad agencies of new york, and the principal corporate advertisers, arrived carved onto a Lucite brick:

“You are invited to a discussion with Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook executive team as we unveil a new way of advertising online.”
Since the days when the great jerry del femina talked about some strategies in “how to sell the world” (does anybody remember that story?) by introducing images of power, safety and security to the begining of a pitch, a certain per centage of corporate angel money has gone to efforts to fertilise natural cultures, and then harvest the resulting crop.

Facebook has an enormous database of people’s demographics, relationships, likes and dislikes. All were provided with a tiny announcement that installing an application, for a social wheel, to share games, to identify people in pictures, to give personal data, to get branded with preferences and specialised interests, all were provided on the basis of an assumed privacy policy, a culture of protection and care, which will evidently now be used be used for targeted advertising on and >>off <<the site. I wrote about this about a month ago–that the photo id feature of facebook would turn into a stalker’s paradise as soon as facebook’s monetary greed reached critical mass.

Several of my associates said i was being paranoid, that facebook would lose its user base as soon as people realised any risk. I know how far people will go on on the basis of a promise or a trust given. And how much they will deny the level of pain that may come. Ask anyone who owned Enron, Global Crossing, or, this season, a mortgage based hedge.

I don’t thinkFaceBook will lose following based on the knowledge that a noose is closing. The current demographic has been handed that message since middle school, and is numb to it.
As a deep believer in convergence theory–that we are in the middle of a social evolution into a world where the false authorities of “isms” will die, and a culture of understanding the ecological reality of unity will appear, i know that tools like Facebook will continue to emerge.

I also recognise the shape of promises about to be broken. Facebook has moved from being a safe place for people in schools to expand their networks without the attendant garbage that MySpace was bound to turn into, and is probably about to become as much a source of violation as the “view my webcam” starving artists of MySpace. It will excuse itself for this by saying that its intrusions are being done by the right kind of people. People approved by committees, who thought very carefully about al l the data they had collected over years of observation, before making assignments.

For those readers with some background, here is some of the plotline:
Facebook has already announced that it would
1.target users based on profile details such as political affiliation, work network and keyword.
2.target advertising to users even when they’re not on Facebook.
3.On Sept. 24, Facebook trademarked the term SocialAds, described as “advertising and information distribution services, namely, providing advertising space via the global computer network [and] promoting the goods and services of others over the internet.” and..the biggie..the real point:
4. during financial discussions, Facebook is being held out as being worth $15 billion. About 2 years ago many thought Rupert Murdoch crazy for the apx $9 a pair of eyeballs for MySpace, but Microsoft, which knows something about how to make money agrees that $15 billion is about right for FaceBook’s knowledge base of its members, and the ability to grow that membership and the amount of personal knowledge obtained, and made usable for whatever purposes can be devised.

How will Facebook justify that valuation?? Yeah. If you are a mammal, you have a clue: a machine to eat the eggs and the young, nimbly, quietly, without the birds noticing the change in what’s in the nest. Which is fine if the birds are Y&R or other other world wide data houses, and not so fine if the eggs eaten are the eagles and songbirds of tomorrow.

People who work in communication or community building–and I would ask readers to note that the root is the same for both words–may possibly not be technically oriented.

There is in fact a continual battle between i/t and “people skills” mentalities, usually over the issue of “why would you want to do that? ”

Recently, in fact today, I received an email from what pretends to be a content aggregator service while actually being the pre-alpha for an mlm that the content here, from someone who has been quoted twice in Ad Age magazine, and twice in the Wall Street Journal doesn’t meet the quality control standards for the “aggregator.”

That’s an interesting thing to be told over the 2nd cup of coffee for the day.

As I reviewed the possibilities I noticed that when a badly trained tech–me–had changed out a wordpress theme after after having to fire a site manager for failure to update graphics, that the archived site material was missing. This might make the blog look “too new” for the aggregator.

This returns us to the question of “value” on which so incredibly much hype and occasional substance is built.

I’m not knocking wordpress here. It’s an intruguing concept, that has taken off about as well as radio once did. I don’t mean radio buttons, I mean radio. (Back in dinosaur days, there was a thing, now pretty much gone, that was the beginning of interactivity on the web. A reader had a choice between clicking a or b, and the next page loaded on the basis of the equivalent of blackening in a circle on an ACT test. This was also the beginning of binary minds taking control of media. It was called a “radio button.”)

So, to be specific about the aggregator, John Reese, and his plan to create a huge mlm to be called Income.com, which will compete with tons of other such “learning programs” already on the market, I can only say this for now: he overplayed his hand. The blog created for people to comment on his updates of his tech and implementation shows 2 classes of people. Functionally, spammers and people who believe spam and hype,  people trying to make an honest living without enough time having banged heads with tech people to understand a back end at any level. This means the distribution network for Income.com will be made from people who will be either useless, or dependent on the thinking of John Reese and his allies, and then dependent on handing them money if they have any hope of making progress in their business model. That means the business model for Income.com will be selling rhe same, tired material to a new class of tired and frustrated entrepreneurs.

It’s a wildly unethical, wildly “net bubble” construct for a business model. As a result, it will probably succeed, as the last net bubble did, for the people in early. Given the pre-alpha, that means if you are reading this, it’s already too late.

  There’s been a lot of talk lately about the battle between msft and goog for what is basically “world control”.  Stupidly enough, people take sides in this battle instead of making sure they don;t get trampled. A mammal strategy is to ignore the stock market implications and build effexctive seo that leverages both search paradigms and both ad network paradigms,  into the use of the the survivor of the last epoch of evolution–yahoo.

In the background is chaos maker rupert murdoch’s myspace as an ad medium that thus far has only benefitted some majors and some scammers.  Using MySpace as an effective brand tool is complicated, tricky, and peril prone. But that’s how mammals survive.

Getting an effective brand to seo to market strategy isn;t about taking any sides except your own, and finding partners with real common interests.