Product vs. Brand: An Anecdotal Résumé for a Brand Revolutionary

For a rote employment history please view my résumé on LinkedIn. For an anecdotal résumé, please enjoy this post.

Youth was not wasted on the young.

Not in this case, at least. Here are some of my happiest branding memories from the days of yore. (Or my, as it were.)

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The Product: Homemade Cookies



The Work: Sold a big plate of homemade cookies for 50 cents apiece door-to-door at age 6. Made six dollars, paid my sweat shop worker (mom) a dime.

The Brand: Big Brown Eyes

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The Product: Greeting Cards and Stationery



The Work: Sold greeting cards, gifts and stationery for Olympia Sales Club (R.I.P.) during my pre-teens. Again with the door-to-door.

The Brand: Gumption. Strangers were impressed by a young person selling things to them.

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The Product: Money



The Work: Put in my hard time as a telephone fundraiser for powerfully peppy librul organizations. Learned how to sell an idea to a stranger for $270 in under 60 seconds.

The Brand: Peace and Solidarity

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The Product: Art



The Work: Post-college years: Assembled a collective of like-minded (and un-like-minded) artists, musicians, writers and misfits to throw shows and sells zines. (What's a zine?) Afunctionul, as the group was called, was more than just about the art. It was about the movement. It was about the method. It was about the activity itself - especially the marketing.

The Brand: Activity

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The Product: Ad Space

The Work: While at tiny alternative weekly newspaper Pulse of the Twin Cities (now gone the way of Belushi and Cobain, R.I.P.), co-opted behemoth rival City Pages' Minnesota Music Directory and used it to market ad space to musicians. City Pages sales director threatened "legal action" for having "filched" their public list but ended up offering me a job instead.

The Brand: Big brass balls of steel and impudence.

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The Product: Ad Space



The Work: I built a classified advertising section for Pulse from the ground up. Kept it humorous but classy.

The Brand:

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The Product: Street Promotion

The Work: Passed out promotional flyers on the streets of Manhattan. The challenge: Holding a piece of paper in front of a New Yorker is like saying "Here, you throw this away." Solution: target one person and start talking to them a half a block before they reach your position, then lunge with the flyer as if jousting. Score.

The Brand: Pure golden sunshine energy charged in the palm of my hand and released.

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All Grown Up Now...

But I will never forget those formative years. I never knew I was learning the difference between products and brands.

Whatever Happened to the One-Word Brand Game, Hmmm?

This...

(click the image)

...is a "Wordle": a word cloud of all my tweets from Septemeber 2008 through March 2009. Word or tag clouds are intuitive visualizations of a set of words based on frequency. The larger words represent more frequent occurences of those words, the smaller words just the opposite.

You'll notice the most prominent word in my Wordle is "onewordbrand". That's a game I was running a couple months ago where you "brand" your friends in one word and add the hashtag "#onewordbrand". Try it out if you're on Twitter.

I promised participants of the #onewordbrand game a tag cloud of all their one-word brands. That never worked out because I am lazy and because people had a hard time figuring out how to play the game. I guess it was deceptively simple. The questions I received were neverending.

So if you played the game consider this your consolation prize. Go to Wordle.net and make your own word cloud.

There. All-better-now.

Also on the bright side: The #onewordbrand game got you to make more connections and solidify old ones. That's what it's all about, baby.

What is the One Word Brand Game and How Does It Work?

The One Word Brand Game is an ongoing tag cloud formation project exploring the phenomenon of "personal brands".

How Do You Play?

1. Make sure you have a Twitter account. (Sign up here.)
2. Tweet a personal brand for yourself or a friend in one word and tag it #onewordbrand.

Two Examples:

• If entering for yourself: Righteous #onewordbrand 
• If entering for a friend: @TwitterUserFriend = Bunnies #onewordbrand

3. Repeat early and often.

Simple as that. You have to include the hashtag #onewordbrand. You do not have to send the tweet to me, unless you want to. I do enjoy getting tweeted at. Just make sure you tag your entry #onewordbrand so I can find the results. Don't overthink it. Just type it in. You're not going to die, I swear to Bob.

Some frequently asked questions:

1. "What are you going to do with the results?"

I will manually go through all the data and create a tag cloud out of the results. I will make the tag cloud will be available for anyone to embed anywhere as a widget. The tag cloud will look something like the following but much bigger:

bunnies collaboration goofball logic

created at TagCrowd.com

The bigger, darker terms represent more occurrences of the word; the smaller, lighter terms represent less frequent occurences. 

2. "Um, why are you doing this"?

Many reasons:

Games are awesome and participating in this fun project is easy!

Tag clouds are awesome and a great way to visualize massive amounts of data!

 It will be interesting to see and share what the Twittersphere thinks of itself, how common or rare certain personal brands are, and so on.

"Personal branding" is all the rage these days and a topic of great debate. Some people say personal branding is insulting to the human race, as we are not brands, we are people, for cripe sake. Others say personal branding is a necessary evil in this day and age. Others actually enjoy the process of personal branding. I myself am a mix of the latter two, and I suspect many of my readers are too. (What do you think about personal branding in general? Drop a comment and let our friends know how you feel.) 

Your answer here. Why do you think this could be an interesting project? What would you get out of the data? 

3. "I do not believe in branding myself. Let others speak for me."

How about you speak for others then? Enter a One Word Brand for as many Twitter friends as you wish, in the form of: 

@YourFriend=Contagious #onewordbrand 

4. "How many times can I enter?"

You may enter the One Word Brand project an infinite amount of times. In fact, it helps the project to spread virally if you enter as many of your friends as you feel comfortable with. 

5. "Won't multiple entries mess up the data?"

Yes and no. Yes, because it allows more active participants to inject their own creativity into the mix, leaving others underrepresented. No, because continued participation will lead to greater viral spread, which in theory will overpower any one person's ability to dominate. 

6. Can I use compound words, made-up words, etc.?

Yes, yes, and yes. And yes. 

7. "What is the "#" symbol for, how do you use it, and why do you want me to use it?"

The "#" symbol is called a hashtag symbol. Whatever word or phrase appears directly after the "#" symbol is automatically converted into a link to a Twitter search for that word or phrase. For example, when your Tweet contains #onewordbrand, Twitter users can click on #onewordbrand in your tweet to see all tweets containing the keyword "onewordbrand". In fact, it is how I will be gathering all data for the One Word Brand project. That is why you must tag your entry #onewordbrand. 

8. What is the deadline?

I originally imposed a 24-hour deadline, but the implications for this project are bigger than I originally guessed. The deadline is never. Keep entering brands for yourself and your friends, and keep retweeting the news about the project, so we can all learn as much as possible. The tag cloud will be updated accordingly for time to time.

That's about it.

Enter as often as you like, for yourself and your friends, and I will keep you apprised. Make sure you tag your entry #onewordbrand. (Did I repeat myself enough times for this to finally stick?)

Questions? Drop a comment here. I will respond.

Cheers,
Will
@willconley777

P.S. Don't forget to tag your entry #onewordbrand. Lova ya.