#think: should you be a brand?

Brands and people seem to have more and more in common these days.
Brands have become personalities to survive the impact of the web, while at the same time personalities have become brands to strive in the web.
Why?
See the biggest blogers, twitterers, influencers. To make themselves famous, to 'market' themselves, to be followed; they have adopted classic marketing tactics of large mulitnational brands:
a name that becomes a signature. Hollycow for Guy Kawasaki for example. Darkplanner in our advertising world. 'Et si' for Nicolas Bordas. These names are themes, they are marketed, repeated and repeated. They flavour the way that these people will talk to the web world, the language they will use, the subjects they will choose, the forums in which they will appear.

And while that was happening brands took the reverse route. Doing all possible to 'incarnate' themselves. To find a language that could find its way from the pack to the ads to the shop to the web. Apple says hello, gives you the genius bar, tells you why you're not a pc. Never has it been easier to make one of these famous 'chinese portraits'. Brands that are personalities are brands you can start to talk to, or with, they are brands you can love or hate. They are brands that you know what to expect from, brands that you can talk to your friends about without feeling like a paid for advertisement. And they are also brands that you can recognise, in the streets or wherever you will face them. They have a look, not just an advertising look. A flavour.

Is this good or bad? Well that's not the point. Just a demonstration that today's success is a mixture of a dose of humanity and a dose of marketing. And that when it's well done, we're all happy to jump on the bandwagon.

Posted via email from #think: Freddie's posterous