Bootstrapping, Brand & Branding

Yes, have been in a bunker. Got caught in the tradewinds of bootstrapping last week and had to fly out to Melbourne for the weekend just to recover. Howdy to those of you I saw at the Exhibition Center for the health & lifestyle expo.

Catching up on my RSS feeds is no small task (as I'm sure is the case for most of you serious bloggers out there). But it is necessary to keep up-to-date with all the reading, writing, learning, and arithmetic, especially when you are bootstrappin'. Seth Godin writes in his manifesto that bootstrappers are "in it for the long haul" and I agree with him that "building businesses that will last separates me from the opportunist, and is an investment in my brand and in my future. Surviving is succeeding, and each day that goes by makes it easier still for me to reach my goals."

Then, I weed out the little bit about my Brand. Out of all the two-cents the knowledgeable experts have offered up on the subject, I refer again to Seth's take on it: "the reality is that many many brands are actually monologues, not dialogues. That doesn't mean a conversation won't create a better, more robust, more useful brand. But, alas, most organizations can't handle that truth. So they do their best to do it the old way."

Furthermore, "If we define brand as a shortcut for a set of commercial attributes, emotions, stories, whatever, then any blogger with a following has a brand.

3. There's a difference between brands and branding. Brands exist whether you want them to or not. Brands aren't going to go away any time soon. Brands are a useful shorthand for a complicated asset within an organization. Branding, on the other hand, is a thing you do. And as an activity, branding is problematic. Branding is ill-defined, usually vacuous, often expensive and totally unpredictable. I'm happy to say that you shouldn't grow up to be someone who does branding."

I think it is all fine and dandy for it to be said that marketing, advertising, and, now, branding is dead... but who's telling corporations, SMEs and mom&pop shops out there? The already dead art of branding is still being peddled quite unashamedly in not-so-forefront-of-technology-as-Silicon Valley CBDs like Sydney and Melbourne. For example, I am working alongside an agency at the moment and the first meeting with my client was primarily to explain to him the difference between brand, branding, and how best to position his business from here-on-in. He has an MBA (finished his course back in the early 90s) and majored in Marketing. He also claimed to know his stuff. And, yet, it became immediately obvious that there was disconnect and areas of miscommunication when it came to nutting out an acceptable campaign. My client's expectations on what branding meant was not quite what the agency was used to peddling. I found myself acting as the intermediary or translator, if you will, doing my darnedest to represent my client's best interests whilst knowing at the back of my mind that I talk the agency's language and can respect that their methods were beneficial in the medium-to-long-term.

Which brings me to the subject of blogging... my partner told me yesterday that what he was most happy doing was writing books and being in a band. I replied, I'm a writer and I prefer to blog. Why? My work is ever-evolving and immediately responsive that way. If it is true that one can make or break one's own brand via blogging, then I like knowing I am being kept honest and on my toes that way.