reputation - TheWayoftheWeb

How’s this for underlining your credentials?

June 27, 2011 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Videogames are a massive industry, and as a flagship title for the Playstation brand, Gran Turismo games take years to develop, millions of dollars of funding, and huge marketing campaigns for when they launch.

But there are two key activities which really underline the amazing credentials of the brand.

The GT Academy is amazing:

The GT Academy recently won a Cannes Lion for the best use of branded content. It’s an online racing competition which whittles down Gran Turismo players around the world to a small group who compete in real motorsport training and competition with the eventual winner getting the chance to race professionally.

Which is quite nice, but the real value? Previous winner Lucas Ordonez and his team finished in second place in the LMP2 class at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Let me run that by you again.

A 23-year-old who had never raced cars spent a lot of time playing Gran Turismo, and by being one of the fastest at a videogame, he was given the chance to race professionally and has now finished on the podium at the most prestigious 24-hour race on the planet.

That’s pretty compelling considering how many car fans have at least a passing interest in motorsport, or even the slightest dream that they could have been a racer if only they’d had the time and money.

Living the product:

If that isn’t enough, the original creator and father of Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi, who continues his obsessive quest to make it the best racing game available, is also a talented racing driver.

As a case in point, he’s just finished first-in-class at the Nurburgring 24 Hour race.

How much does it reinforce the Gran Turismo brand when you know the man with an obsession for authentic racing simulation is also quick enough to be a professional racing driver?

The closest non-videogame comparisons are probably films icons like Steve McQueen. His films may have been of varying quality, but there were few stars able to maintain the money he was able to charge. And so much of that was down to the ‘personal brand’ he’d built, including being a talented racer of cars and motorcycles.

I guess that’s why I’m so keen to build up my own websites alongside my client projects. I don’t want to just be able to refer to successful campaigns I’ve run or been involved with which benefitted from existing brand strength, or huge marketing budgets. I also want to be able to show I can do it from scratch with no investment, no hidden funds, and just time and skill.

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Filed Under: Branding, marketing Tagged With: brand, eating your own dog food, personal branding, reinforcing your brand, reputation

Could the internet make us all nicer people?

June 22, 2010 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

Social networks, blogs and online identities have given rise to a lot of discussion and concerns on the best way to manage how you’re seen by other people (I’m trying to avoid using the words ‘personal brand’). And you’ll regularly see examples of people failing to realise that what they do online could get them fired, for example.

But is this carrying over to the offline world?

I commute every day on busy trains, and quite often encounter people who, for whatever reason, appear to be rude and inconsiderate, and sometimes selfish or offensive.

And 10 years ago, the only option was to either ignore it or confront them.

But with the rise of mobile phones and mobile computing, I end up hearing some of their conversations, and can end up accidentally catching a glimpse of their details if they’re sat next to me.

Now I’m not alone in this – so I’m wondering how long before we see more people being regularly embarrassed by photos, video and reports being uploaded? And how long before those uploads start being linked back to that individual – not only if they search, but also via friends, family, and employers?

Could this mean we start to see people act a little nicer in their everyday life because they’re conscious any transgression could end up on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Flickr, and how will this impact on the way we live our lives? Will it lead to a more pleasant environment, or will it end up like a bad reality show as the pressure of the crowdsourced surveillance becomes too much?

And should it become normal to presume that any public space will put you under the watch of the wider digital world as well as those around you and the existing Governmental cameras?

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Filed Under: Digital Culture, Privacy Tagged With: digital, manners, mob culture, online embarrassment, personal brand, reputation, surveillance

Why I hate the use of ‘personal brands’

March 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton 19 Comments

I’ve recently experienced the benefits of banning myself from using the word ‘brand’ in a business context after joining an experiment by Mark Earls.

As a result, I’ve been a lot more specific about what I really mean – awareness, reputation, tradition, logos, content, tone of voice etc. But at least in a business context, I can see it’s excusable to use the term sometimes, rather than listing out everything it could mean.

But ‘personal brand’ – that’s just silly.

Branded by powerbooktrance (CC Licence)

Because at the end of the day, a ‘personal brand’ surely means just three things? (Although I’m open to disagreements/suggestions for additions).

Awareness: Have people heard of you?

Reputation: Do people think you deliver?

Revenue: Are you able to make money from your awareness and reputation?

And I’d suspect much of the rise in ‘personal brands’ comes from people really wanting to build ‘personal revenues’ as a main source of income, or as security in case of redundancy.

But does an individual person really come up with explicit rules for their tone of voice in all communications? And is that ever sustainable? Do you really aspire to becoming Me Inc, rather than real person?

Personally, I don’t see Scobleizer or Louis Gray as brands. I see them as people who simply have particular personalities that might mean they absorb and share information at a high rate, or that might lend them to networking more, etc. They’ve built awareness and their reputations, but unless they’ve been branded like cattle, I struggle to see why we need to label them with a term that should really be retired with traditional media.

And the new breed of people chasing a personal brand appear to be missing part of the point.

Geoff Livingston has a great post which sums up a lot of the pitfalls of concentrating totally on building a personal brand.

But at the same time, I totally agree with much of what Chris Brogan recommends in Personal Branding.

Paradoxical?

There’s nothing wrong with building awareness and reputation by marketing yourself. But trying to build a ‘personal brand’ isn’t necessarily the right thing to do if you want to be successful in a large company. It’s better to be part of success, and then reference it.
Claiming a ‘personal brand’ could make you believe that you don’t need to work as hard on your latest project, because your ‘personal brand’ will save you – when you’re only as good as your latest project.
Personal branding actually contradicts Chris when he talks about being more than just one thing – after all successful branding normally relies on a core message.

And most importantly, the second you start thinking about yourself as a ‘personal brand’, you run a huge risk of sounding like a tool:

Cartoon by Hugh McLeod (gapingvoid.com)

Promote yourself. Use the same avatar everywhere. Build a strong reputation based on great work. Interact everywhere you can. Choose Life. Just don’t call it a ‘personal brand’ unless you’ve tattooed your personal logo on your personal forehead!

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Filed Under: social media marketing Tagged With: awareness, brand, building a personal brand, Business, marketing, marketing yourself, personal brand, personal branding, personalities, reputation, revenue, social media marketing, success

The Bankruptcy of the Non-Descript

January 6, 2009 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

So far we’ve lost Woolworths, MFI and Zavvi, while Whittards has been bought by a private equity firm after going into administration.

At least MFI and Zavvi still have websites notifying people of their current status – Woolworths has: ‘Our site is currently undergoing essential maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Please check back later.’

What’s interesting is that there are various reasons for the first three disappearing – the problems with the music industry, the downturn in the housing market, a drop in consumer spending etc. And despite the possibility of a buyer for Woolworths, there’s nothing happening fast. Meanwhile Whittards was snapped up quickly.

Which makes me think this could be the start of something I’m going to call:

The Bankruptcy of the Non-Descript:

In Case of Bankruptcy, Please Help Yourself - by Noaz. on Flickr

Put simply, Woolies, Zavvi and MFI all had a problem, in that they didn’t have a clear belief and description. Woolies started as an American ‘five and dime‘ store – but mutated over the years, leaving Poundland as the modern equivalent. (I’m not linking to the Poundland site due to the annoying auto-playing explosion that just burst my eardrums!). In the end, Woolies was a strange amalgamation of Pic’n'mix sweets, entertainment, soft furnishings etc.

Zavvi came out of a management buy-out of former Virgin Megastores, and at the time left a lot of people asking friends what had happened. Apparently the aim was to be different from competitors by having ‘exclusive and limited edition products in the future’. An aim buried in a wikipedia entry, and an interview in industry publication MCV.

MFI had all sorts of problems, but most importantly, look at who it’s up against – Ikea. I’d guess most people already know what the Swedish success story stands for, but if not, try here, and here. Functional, well -designed furniture that everyone can afford, with Swedish names, Swedish food stores, and bargain hotdogs at the end of the trip. My girlfriend has been known to forcibly demand Ikea trips to placate her homesickness for Sweden!

I may have had similar excitement at the sight of a Marks and Spencers are months without a sausage roll or pork pie in the U.S, but can you imagine curing your homesickness with a trip to Zavvi or MFI? Even Woolworths?

This isn’t about having a national identity – it’s about having a distinct belief and identity that everyone can clearly understand, and that people can align themselves with.

This isn’t an absolute rule:

I’m not going to say that having a belief will ensure success, or that you won’t make it through 2009 without one – there are far too many other factors involved, from changes in consumer spending to Government bailouts.

But I do think that within each industry and category, we’ll see a greater survival rate for the companies we can believe in.

So I’m going to start tracking what happens, and I’d appreciate your help. It may become a wiki page, but for the moment I’d just ask you to let me know in the comments if you see companies going under, and whether they had a clear belief or not.

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