Brand new Brand YOU
"Personal branding reflected in the zeitgeist. Watching the pros in entertainment, politics, business. And now you. What makes YOU different?"

It’s certainly not easy to be in prison. But it’s certainly more difficult to brand oneself while being in prison. Even Martha Stewart is somehow taken down from her former fame now as a prisioner. But if you are living with a bad boy image, it will just push your career. Like C-Murder, whose is in for murder. No matter if he killed a 16-year-old in 2003 or not, he already seems to be working on his comeback. What else would be more fitting than a “real” prison video clip? So I’m waiting for the new clip “Y’all Heard of Me”, in his orange prison suit and telling the world the “truth.” Looks like it’s not a great idea, but if he stays on this image, it’s certainly good promotion material.

Well, Ronald seems to be not cool enough. Now we have Ronalda. Probably it’s an attempt of McDonald’s to go viral. Like BK’s Dancing Chicken. If not, it’s amazing how the lady draws her fame as a copy of McDonald’s Personal Brand.

Like every year, all the award shows reach their climax at the end of February with the Oscars. To target the younger, urban people this year, Chris Rock will host this event. His promotion seems to be making statements like “only gay men watch the oscars” (the latest update is, as far as I know “the only men watching the oscars, who aren’t in the entertainment industry, are gay”… whatever). He even complained about the 5 sec time delay that is meant to prevent “scandals” like Janet Jackson’s Nipplegate or Michael Moore spreading his political “visions.”

Reporting on Rock’s remarks, Reuters observed Monday that the Oscar show’s producers “are getting what they paid for when they hired … [Rock] — a bit of pre-show controversy that could boost TV ratings.”

ShowBizData

Good to know. At least Chris Rock understands what he is payed for. Looks like he could be a safe promotion bank for any new movie…

It’s eerie news. Tom Cruise provided a Scientology tent at his new Movie “War of the Worlds.” A minister is based in the tent and provides “help” to the crew members. I’m wondering how Scientology managed to get so many celebrities to give testimonials. I really can’t imagine any reason. Is it the thing to be “different” and not just Jewish or Catholic? Strange..
Source

Somehow, Paris Hilton amazes me. She is probably one of the most bizarre personality brands out there. Paris has absolutely no background in performing arts, and her celebrity status is just based on having a kind of sex movie out (and, of course, being the daughter “Conrad Hilton is Paris’ great-grandfater / Thank You colonnaj107 ” of Conrad Hilton, the founder of the hotel empire). Well, after some more or less successful TV stories out, she seems not to have had another strange story released. That is, until her cell phone account had been hacked and all the numbers were released on some websites. Suprisingly, the numbers seem to be real and some of her “friends” like Vin Diesel and Eminem have to get new ones. Probably it’s all true and she is the victim of some bad hackers. But I’m scratching my head. Both stories (the sex tapes and the phone book story) started by way of the internet. In both cases, no one knows where it all started. In both cases, she seems to be the victim. In both cases, she seems to be very blonde and silly. Well, probably it’s true. Probably not. Probably it’s even all a hoax. Let’s see how the story develops.

I was thinking about audio brands recently. You probably all know from this or that advertisement some special melody which plays over and over again. But one of the longest lasting ones does not come from any advertising at all. It’s definitely “Hail To The Chief”, the Presidents’ hymn. It’s amazing how it has lasted over time. Each time you hear it, you know that the President is the topic. It’s probably even more connected to him than the national anthem.

Ricardo Baca seems to be working for the Denver Post. He has his own blog running on the Denver Post site. Of course, it’s the typical fake blog-a-like, without a comment function, an RSS feed or anything resembling a blog. Just a little more personal writing style than in regular news articles.
Anyhow he wrote a nice review on a party, hosted by P. Diddy. It’s nice to get some insight on how he gets the myth about himself. Celebrity appearances remind me somehow of religious services. It doesn’t change very much over time.
Link

It’s amazing how strong artists aged 50+ are pushed at the moment. Record companies recognized that there are less and less people buying their young and pushy pipe-dream acts. As a consequence, they focus more on an older level of music buyers.
The overwhelming success of Ray Charles was not only a result of his recent death. Washington Times ran a very good story about how Starbucks supported his success and about finding the niche. Not only in relation to the artists personality, but much more on distribution technique.
What’s coming next? Well, I expect a very strong focus on artists like James Brown. I read an interview about half a year ago, where he was whining that he isn’t popular any longer, and that artists who learned off his style, won’t pay him the respect he deserves. Now he was featured at the Grammies with Usher. How about Tom Jones, Paul Anka? Who’s next?

Through Bob Baker’s Independent Music Promotion Blog, I came across a brilliant article, written by Ritch Esra (former A&R at Arista Records) and Stephen Trumbull. It’s a really long, long article but highly informative for anyone interested in the entertainment industry. It deals with the changes in the music industry and music marketing that are going on.

One of the major points is the importance of personality. Throughout music history, it has been important for people to connect with an artist or even identify with one.

“And, as most of us have known for years, the market is far far broader (yes, people between the ages of 30-50 WILL BUY MUSIC when presented with Artists that they can connect with) than the Major Labels ever cared to acknowledge. How else could Ray Charles sell two million copies of a CD via a coffee chain or James Taylor sell over one million Christmas CD’s via Hallmark without his CD even being available at retail?”

The authors show a few examples of how a solid artist branding and marketing can be set up. Stand-outs are, in their view:

Damien Rice by Ken Levitan (Vector Management)
Dave Matthews by Coran Capsahw (Red Light Management)
Jamie Cullum by Martin Kirkup & Steve Jensen (Direct Management)

“Careers are not supposed to be events that have huge a build-up and then are over like The Super Bowl. As we all know, the best careers (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Neil Young, U2) are long journeys that have been built on solid and viable foundations that can (and do) sustain a wide array of paths and experiences. “

Later on, they hit on a very controversial subject. It’s about if an artist can be over-exposed or not. There are still a lot of promotors out there who believe that there is never enough promotion going on. But the thing is, as stronger an artist is unique, the easier the promotion. For someone who is provocative, or is some kind of vanguard and has a unique style, the word about him is spread faster than he even can talk, or the best promotion strategy will work.

“More than ever, today’s youth culture is looking for something real, something it can feel a genuine connection with, not something it’s oversold on!”

Read more on their website: http://www.musicregistry.com/main.html

Not revolutionary, but at least a very nice idea. The London based designer Anya Hindmarch has “invented” the “Be A Bag” Idea. You can upload and send her any picture you like, and choose a kind of bag, from a mini wash bag to a trolly, and get the picture printed on its surface. It costs about £75.00 to £495.00. Certainly not really cheap, but it’s certainly THE eye-catcher, much more than the 1001 Louis Vuitton knock-offs (where you have to look at it for 10 minutes to find out if it’s fake or not).
Anya’s Website

I just came across a great, great posting by Darren Johnson. In his blog, he writes about a meeting with Warren Buffet. Just to quote two excerpts:

#1 “He told of the Founder of the Nebraska Furniture Mart, one of his companies, and how she came from a poor Jewish family and couldn’t read, write or speak English.”
“She told Warren at one point that the way she evaluated people was simple: She simply asked herself, ‘Would they hide me?’ What a great way to judge your instincts about whether to trust someone or not.”

And one more related to this blog:

#2 He said to “never do something that doesn’t excite you or that you dislike.”

More to read on his blog

To me, Howard Dean is a great, great visionary. Even more than Karl Rove. Dean understood how to create a personality based on the web. There is an amazing story based on this article here. It is almost exclusively about how to build a strong “supporter base” or so-called “customer evangelists.” How to get people who support you, to spread out the word. How to get through the web to the key people who promote you in the “real” world. How to break it down to the local level, supporting them with blogs and local meet-ups (meetup.com). It all resulted in more then 100,000 comments on his blog, millions of dollars for his campaign, and popularity like no other candidate. Whether or not you like him, he is straight and authentic. That is what will make him probably one of the next US presidents.

Again, a very obscure story. Some news sites reported that the first American soldier was captured in Iraq. Well, so far not a big surprise. Sooner or later this had to have happened. But already a day or so later, the news came out, that the “captured” soldier was just a toy figure. It is just a crazy story, that our media today can’t decide if a picture is just a real person or a toy.

This makes any stories brought to our homes every day very suspect. What is real and what is just fake? Is the face you are looking at a real one, a computerized one, or even just a toy? It reminds us that we are living more an more in an unreal world. This demands even more from all of us to be as unique as possible and to get our own brand of life going in the right direction. Keeping it authentic, unique, and keeping it up every day, without becoming a puppet, and just being your unique brand.

By the way, the toy is sold on eBay for $100-$250 now.

Source

About 19 years ago, Russell Christoff did a photo shoot. This picture, done in 1986, had been used without his knowledge by Nestle for one of its coffee flavours. American law says a company has to pay a certain percentage of the profit to the model. Because Nestle didn’t do this, the now 58 year-old receives $15.6m, about 5 % of Nestle’s profits, earned by the product.
The guy is quoted for having said, “Our image is our product, whether it’s our face or our talent.” A great quote, in my view. He understood very well, how much money is hidden in a face if it’s used in the right way.

Source