MISCmedia for 8/22/00
The Brand Called Who?

(NOTE: Due to human error, many of you were unable to access Monday's column. You can still read it at this link.)

BACK ON FRIDAY AND MONDAY, we discussed whether I should "reinvent" myself and my written/published/posted work, according to the principles of Seth Godin's business book Unleashing the Ideavirus.

That book claims the key to success in business today is to have a strong, easy-to-understand, and easily-spread idea.

Other business guides, including Tom Peters's The Brand Called You and Rick Haskins's "Branding Yourself" courses, insist that individuals have to start thinking about themselves as if they were products, and devise brand images and marketing strategies thusly.

My problem with that is my "product," comprising the words you read here, is difficult to define in a sound bite or a Hollywood "pitch line." The points of view expressed within these words are also hard to succinctly summarize.

So: How to accomplish this "self-branding" thang? (And doesn't that sound too much like a scarification fetish?)

1. I've got a slogan already. "Popular Culture in Seattle and Beyond." But that's deliberately broad and vague.

2. The Seattle side of the premise is comparatively easy to explain. We're chronicling the ongoing evolution (and, in some aspects, devolution) of one of North America's great cities--particularly as these changes affect the arts-'n'-entertainment scenes and assorted "youth" and "alternative" cultures.

3. The national pop-cult topics discussed here are more nebulous, but potentially could become more popular than the local parts (due to this 'Net thang being so borderless and all). The MISCmedia title accurately implies a melange of many culture-and-media related topics.

But a little bit of all sorts of things is precisely what these "branding" experts warn their readers against. The well-branded enterprise or individual has to be about one really simple thing.

4. But much of the cultural philosophy expressed in these cyber-pages involves rants against too-simple thinking.

5. This insistence upon the value of complexity might actually be the most apt "simple idea" with which to describe this ongoing work. As the back cover blurb of The Big Book of MISC. says,

"Confused by today's ever-morphing, ever-bifurcating, ever-weirder culture?
Good.
Get used to it.
Learn to love the chaos."

Maybe my next book oughta be a manifesto specifically about the transition to a more "Misc." world, and why that's nothing to fear. (Unfortunately, the phrase "Chaos Culture" has already been in use, by commentators specifically discussing rave-party culture or trends in conceptual art. But other, equally-appropriate slogans are surely out there.)

TOMORROW: The greatest Northwest reference book ever written.

IN OTHER NEWS: The great Josie and the Pussycats creator's-rights lawsuit.

ELSEWHERE:

• Al Gore, Jeffersonian intellectual?...
• It's not "America's only indigenous art form." It's just hot music, and there's lots of it at Jazz Steps....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Should I reinvent myself for easier branding?
• Is there a cure for the Ideavirus?
• Pondering, again, this little venture's future.
• Nudists aren't really as 'weird' as a couple of magazines claim.
• One "grass roots movement" wants to save the Monorail Initiative; another wants to kill all public transit.
• In defense of political conventions.
• A new fiction anthology goes to the edge.
• What's really the matter with you kids these days.
• Go ahead--become a walking billboard.
• What e-books might be good for.
• My sordid past with John Carlson.
• The He-Man Woman-Lover's Club.
• Yeah, I still like Seafair. Wanna make something of it?
• Surviving Survivor.
• Does a potential future 'Post-Corporate World' have to be one of those baby-boomer utopias of mandatory mellowness?
• Learning to love the cacophany that is Digital cable TV.
• De-mall-ishing the suburbs.
• Ballard Avenue, the next Pioneer Square?
• Parts one and two of existence in moving purgatory.
• Abandoning Belltown to the Ucking Fupscale.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• The origin and future of MISCmedia

ALSO AT MISCMEDIA.COM:

CLARK'S CULTURE CORRAL

CURRENTLY FEATURED:

SONGS IN THE KEY OF Z
Various-artists companion CD to the Irwin Chusid book described yesterday in this space. Twenty "outsider music" classics (and a few lovable less-than-classics) from the Shaggs, Tiny Tim, Daniel Johnson, Wesley Willis, Joe Meek, Captain Beefheart, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Shooby Taylor ("The Human Horn"), and more.

Books Popular Music Classical Music Video

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