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Art, people and personal brands

by Bill on April 5, 2009

People are like art in a number of ways. I’m currently thinking of one way in particular. (Please forgive the pseudo-egghead moment and indulge me.) A work of art exists in three states simultaneously.

What the artist perceives it to be
What it objectively is
What people other than the artist perceive it to be

That’s also how people exist. There is what we think we are, there is what we are objectively and there is what others perceive us to be. The second, whether it be a work of art or a person, that objective existence, is more or less irrelevant practically speaking since no one can ever truly see something (or someone) objectively. It’s always conditioned by who we are and where we view something from.

When we start talking about personal brands, we are primarily talking about the third state: how others perceive us. But when we use the term brand, especially in this sense, we’re really talking about who we are, our identity. When we concentrate on, and try to develop, a “personal brand” what we are really doing is trying to fashion who others perceive us to be. As Kurt Vonnegut has said, “We are what we pretend to be.” He adds, given that, you better be careful about what you pretend you are.*

I prefer not to talk about a personal brand because the term is divorced from any human quality. It’s like seeing yourself as a product, which some people think is fine and that’s fine for them, I guess. But I’d rather think of my “identity,” though even that may not be the best terminology. (I would say “human being” but when I do I sense the earnestness of the original Star Trek and Doctor McCoy’s, “But dammit, Jim, we’re human!”)

It’s a bit odd that we talk about ourselves as brands when, at the same time, we also talk about conversations, a personal voice and community. Those are all very human but “brand” is a box of soap. I know some will disagree but that’s how I see it and I don’t want to be a soap, a cereal, a line of cars. I want to be a human being. I want to be who I am, for good or ill.

That’s why there are posts in my blogs that, were I thinking in terms of a personal brand, I would not have published or, having published, would have deleted them. (Example? See my silly post, Forget newspapers – everything is dead!) But it’s who I am, even if that’s an idiot. I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything salacious or rude (like pictures of a frat party or something) and I think I’ve avoided ever mentioning employers I’ve had, though I certainly would have liked to rant every now and again.

There is thinking that says you need to be careful of what you post in a blog and usually extreme examples are given. A potential employer could Google you and find out who you really are. Well, if you’re posting nude pictures of yourself or others, or using constant profanity, or ranting against current employers, the world’s better off not hiring you anyway. Keep posting.

In my case I’ve posted some self-indulgent rants – maybe about music, or a film, a story in the news or an election. But I don’t mind that a potential employer sees them because, if the employer is worth working for, they’ve also seen my other posts and will see that I’ve a passion for what I do and, as with any passionate human being, sometimes I write something moronic. I’m a human being.

Would you really want to work for an employer who is only looking for a perfect automaton? Someone who has a “brand” but no personal identity? A cog to fit in their wheel?

The best employers look for the best people and the best people have quirks, off the map moments, and a passion for what they do. You get ideas from people like that. From a personal brand, you get whatever rubbish maintains the status quo.

I’m not saying you should rant and rave in your blog. I’m just saying don’t hide who you are.

Don’t be a brand. Be a person.

* In Vonnegut’s book Mother Night an American spy, during World War II, pretends to be a Nazi, acting as a propagandist, spewing hate about Jews and others. But after the war, on trial for war crimes, he realizes he was so good at pretending to be a Nazi that, for all intents and purposes, he was a Nazi.

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Monetizing meaning: What is content anyway?

by Bill on March 27, 2009

If you follow discussions about social media, journalism, “Web 2.0″ and all that other related “stuff,” a number of terms pop up over and over. Content. Value. Monetization.

There is also a lot of “what if” that goes on. I kind of like that sort of thing. It’s fun to imagine how change will be manifest. (I grew up reading, and loving, science fiction and that’s all about “what if.”)

But as with all things, sometimes you want to call a timeout because it becomes excessive. Sometimes you get so caught up in imagining and speculating about one thing, you forget to think about another. In this case, I think the thing that’s missed is meaning.

Content

We refer to content but, when we do, we refer to it as a product. As if it is a number in a column in a spreadsheet that will be in a formula (probably the formula that allows us to determine “value”). While for cost purposes I suppose that’s a good way to look at it, that isn’t what content is. The term “content” is probably not a very good one to use because it is one that is, psychologically and emotionally, divorced from what actually constitutes “content.” As terms go, it is a kind of dispassionate third party.

Content is meaning. Sometimes as a film, sometimes as a song. Sometimes as a news story, sometimes as an image. Be it a painting, movie, song or whatever – even software – content is always meaning. When we like these things, it is because they mean something to us, even if we can’t articulate it. And vice versa. When we don’t like something it can be because of its meaning or maybe the fact that it has no meaning to us. It’s gibberish. Lack of meaning is itself a kind of meaning.

Value

When we refer to value, it usually concerns how much we (or some group) want something. The demand side of the supply and demand scale. Once again, we speak of it as if it’s a number in a column in a spreadsheet waiting to become an input in a formula. (Or maybe it’s the output of a formula.) As with content, we speak of it dispassionately, as if we can separate it from ourselves and consider it objectively. But like content, value is about meaning. It is not itself meaning (that’s content) but it’s the significance of the meaning to us. If something means a lot, it has a high value. If it doesn’t mean much, it has a lower value.

Value is the significance of something’s meaning to us.

Monetization

The third term, monetization, is related to content and value and is also about meaning, though in a somewhat different way. It’s the conversion of meaning into money. In this context, monetization is what we will pay for meaning based on its value to us.

Monetization is meaning as money.

Meaning

A problem I see with all these terms is their dispassion. Content, value, monetization … they all seem to separate us from the core of what they are about, which is meaning. If you’re like me, you probably feel one way when discussing content and quite another when discussing movies or books or journalism. There is an emotional attachment to the latter; there is an emotional disconnect with the former.

At times this is good but there are also times when it is not very good. I think, currently, when I see these many discussions in blogs and Twitter, it’s not very good because we are so focused on that word “monetization” that we forget what we are talking about monetizing. (All things are already monetized – the discussions are really about monetizing “content” differently.)

By discussing content almost exclusively in business and marketing terms we lose sight of meaning and focus almost exclusively on the money.

Questions

It may be true that the value of content, the significance of its meaning to us, has lessened but, if that’s the case, shouldn’t we wonder why and also wonder about the consequences of that? The current discussions often remind me of discussions of style versus substance (meaning). It strikes me that we are currently heavily focused on style, by which I mean we’re caught up in the means of delivering content, almost to the point that we’re indifferent to what that content might be.

And, oddly for a pretty secular world, we seem to have a blind faith in the idea that “things will work themselves out.” It’s the argument that the market will correct itself. That may be true but we say it and believe it as if no other possibility exists, that that’s simply how it is, end of discussion. Blind faith.

Content will always be generated. Human beings have an infinite capacity for it. That has been an idea behind much of the thinking behind Web 2.0, bloggers and evolving media. The generation of items of meaning is endless. But what happens to the monetization aspect when the value goes down because meaning no longer means much to us anymore? When algorithms and findability (ease of locating content) and cost dilute the significance of meaning?

The money aspect aside, what happens if or when the value of meaning approaches zero and we’re largely indifferent to meaning or, perhaps, lose the capacity to distinguish the value of something because it doesn’t matter anymore?

Put in a vernacular way, what happens when content that might have great significance to us is lost in a haystack of meaningless crap?

I’m not suggesting we install some old school custodial approach to managing content, to preserving someone else’s idea of what has value and place it behind some secure, walled city of “preserved meaning.” I think all protectionist approaches to what is occurring are, to put it bluntly, idiotic.

I am saying I believe we need to spend time discussing what is occurring from something more than the delivery/money side. We should revisit the style vs. substance argument and think equally about both (the delivery of content vs. the significance of the content). How something is said (delivery) is as important as what is said (content). Focusing on one without attention to the other risks conclusions that are unbalanced.

(An aside: With the way Internet technology is evolving and particularly with the way we are using it, could it be that content is no longer about depth but about breadth? And if so, what does that mean? What’s gained; what’s lost?)

Maybe the question I’m asking is, how will we value content in a world where there is so much of it? How will we distinguish what is of value to us and what is not? And how will we ease the nagging problem of not knowing what we don’t know, of never having any sense of assurance that what we have found is what we needed or wanted?

And where will art live in all of this?

My own guess is that old professional classes (journalism would be a good example given the current discussions) will be replaced. But replaced doesn’t mean arbiters will be gone. It means we will have new arbiters. Maybe they’ll be Google algorithms. Maybe it will be “the wisdom of crowds” via various social networks.

Whoever they are, in some quarters there is an assumption they will be better. In other quarters, there is an assumption they will be much worse. Myself, I’m undecided on this. One minute I think one way, the next I think another. While not cynical, I am a skeptic and my worry is best expressed by Pete Towshend:

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

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