Your Brand

[sus]

I was reading Blackbird Spyplane this morning which is basically a consumerism column for New York neohipsters. They have a feature called V.I.P. R.A.D.A.R.,” ie. "Vibey Illustrious People with Rare And Dope Ass Recon." Basically they interview scenesters and ask for clothing/scent/furniture recommendations.

I've also heard Pinterest is coming back in a big way. See a lot more ads, user numbers are up. All about moodboarding a collage of aesthetic signifiers and cultural objects that constellate you.

What is your brand how do you cultivate it (do you cultivate it?) Are you a guy who only drinks Scotch are you a guy who collects Japanese vinyl what is your aesthetic-ideological niche in the cultural matrix and how do you feel about it?

 

[sus]

Also I've been traveling through rural Mexico which is nice because no one has ever seen an American before and I don't get immediately pegged and pigeonholed. People ask me where I'm from and look confused when I say New York. I've been considering a new background story. Nico is very racially ambiguous everyone she meets thinks she is their race, Koreans think she is Korean and Iranians think she is Iranian and here Latinos think she's Latina. But we clearly aren't "from around here" based on accents and subfluency in Spanish. So we are very illegible and that's nice and I think in some ways my brand has always been squirming out of whatever brand I start acquiring. On the other hand my American friends tell me I feel like a very All American boy so I am not sure what to think.

These are not the best or most relevant thread-setting thoughts, but they are what is in my working memory cache right now

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah legibility/antilegibility is an interesting quality re brands, pretty sure you've made some posts about it in the past here. Especially when your brand is has commercial dimensions and you're relying on it to some extent to make money, as in my case.

In cases like that, anti-legibility is normally seen as a liability (e.g. viewers of your website should immediately know what you offer, and should have their basic questions answered almost before they know what those questions are, i.e. ambiguity is a liability). But anti-legibility can also, maybe, be utilized as a cryptic form of exclusivity, as if to say that only certain people will be able to understand this, and that is the audience being addressed.

 

[Clinamenic]

This is my avatar in most of my online activities, an abstract version of my signature, which is my initials, SSC:

 

[Clinamenic]

It is a fun opportunity to expand your identity into a full-on aesthetic framework, what with signature colors and motifs and whatnot.

Speaking of pinterest! I was using this before was able to make my own portfolio page with basic CSS:

 

[Clinamenic]

I think in some ways my brand has always been squirming out of whatever brand I start acquiring. On the other hand my American friends tell me I feel like a very All American boy so I am not sure what to think.

Actually sus I'm curious what you think of this, given this comment. I'm very interested in this idea of a protean brand that keeps riffing on itself, and ends up evolving or iterating away from its original shape. Again it kinda seems to go against conventional marketing strategy, but in a more avant-garde sense I think its very interesting.

 

[Clinamenic]

Craner's laughing at my brand. Ouch.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I don't get immediately pegged

¡Ay caramba!

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Applying corporate brand strategy to personal brand is often inappropriate as for the latter there is great scope for personalisation depending on the immediate market. For instance, when I meet someone for whom I would generally be somewhat off brand I can tailor my product to their brand requirements very closely and within 5 minutes they've fallen into the trap of deciding that they like my brand and that that is my deep brand, in the same way that a company's surface branding is meant to reveal a purported underlying attitude. The imprinting is so effective that I can then go off brand subsequently and take them with me, at the least the original manipulation hinders them from realising that I'm actually a

 

[sus]

Yeah legibility/antilegibility is an interesting quality re brands, pretty sure you've made some posts about it in the past here. Especially when your brand is has commercial dimensions and you're relying on it to some extent to make money, as in my case.

In cases like that, anti-legibility is normally seen as a liability (e.g. viewers of your website should immediately know what you offer, and should have their basic questions answered almost before they know what those questions are, i.e. ambiguity is a liability). But anti-legibility can also, maybe, be utilized as a cryptic form of exclusivity, as if to say that only certain people will be able to understand this, and that is the audience being addressed.

Preempting the archivist: https://www.dissensus.com/threads/16667/

 

[sus]

This is my avatar in most of my online activities, an abstract version of my signature, which is my initials, SSC:

View attachment 17701

It's a good avatar, better be careful about those initials being misparsed as Scott Alexander tho

 

[sus]

Applying corporate brand strategy to personal brand is often inappropriate as for the latter there is great scope for personalisation depending on the immediate market. For instance, when I meet someone for whom I would generally be somewhat off brand I can tailor my product to their brand requirements very closely and within 5 minutes they've fallen into the trap of deciding that they like my brand and that that is my deep brand, in the same way that a company's surface branding is meant to reveal a purported underlying attitude. The imprinting is so effective that I can then go off brand subsequently and take them with me, at the least the original manipulation hinders them from realising that I'm actually a

This is true/real but note that corporations do this constantly—regional marketing, different products sold to different countries under different brandnames, different movie and book titles in different languages.

 

[Clinamenic]

It's a good avatar, better be careful about those initials being misparsed as Scott Alexander tho

Huh, never thought about that...

 

[other_life]

View attachment 9453

cf. Spinoza's Ethics (Book 4, Preface, Paragraphs 2-3)

 

[shakahislop]

you're a language guy spendo, why is the corporate world word 'brand' the thing you reach for when you're describing something very fundamental about being alive (how other people perceive you)?

i am definitely on the side of something like authenticity rather than thinking this kind of thing through too much. which is probably an interesting discussion in itself.

 

[other_life]

he's being mediated by the internet is why

 

[WashYourHands]

gave a lift to a young lady who was attending here once, went in for a nose round and couldn't stomach the bs

VCU Brandcenter

Best Graduate Advertising Program in the U.S.

brandcenter.vcu.edu

open plan seminars with marker boards covered in bollocks, flow charts with word meaning variations, gross coffee but top pizza

one of those moments in life where you know you fucked within minutes of opening the door

obscene fees I mean can't you learn all this on YouTube Dissensus?

 

[sus]

you're a language guy spendo, why is the corporate world word 'brand' the thing you reach for when you're describing something very fundamental about being alive (how other people perceive you)?

i am definitely on the side of something like authenticity rather than thinking this kind of thing through too much. which is probably an interesting discussion in itself.

The Goffmanian word would be something like "definition of/presentation of self" but I guess "brand" and "personal aesthetic" feel a bit more contemporary and relevant, I'm not totally sure why.

I think in part because "brand" points to the occupation of a niche in a cultural matrix. A coordination of self in a culturally structured space of possibles.

"[The] Production [of self] is neither freely agentic nor structurally determined, rather, the field constitutes a space of possibles—the potential moves which might be understood by others as moves—from which the artist, according to his disposition and his assessment of the field, selects."

I think that most people who consider themselves (or are considered by others to be) "authentic" are merely offloading this sort of social computation to the unconscious, and perhaps staking out a rarer place in the cultural matrix, that combines aspects not often placed together, aspects which closer track their lasting preferences. That's great, there are advantages for sure, but I think they still end up with a personal brand.

 

[sus]

cf. Spinoza's Ethics (Book 4, Preface, Paragraphs 2-3)

When a man has purposed to make a given thing, and has brought it to perfection, his work will be pronounced perfect, not only by himself, but by everyone who rightly knows, or thinks that he knows, the intention and aim of its author. For instance, suppose anyone sees a work (which I assume to be not yet completed), and knows that the aim of the author of that work is to build a house, he will call the work imperfect; he will, on the other hand, call it perfect, as soon as he sees that it is carried through to the end, which its author had purposed for it. But if a man sees a work, the like whereof he has never seen before, and if he knows not the intention of the artificer, he plainly cannot know, whether that work be perfect or imperfect. Such seems to be the primary meaning of these terms.

But, after men began to form general ideas, to think out types of houses, buildings, towers, &c., and to prefer certain types to others, it came about, that each man called perfect that which he saw agree with the general idea he had formed of the thing in question, and called imperfect that which he saw agree less with his own preconceived type, even though it had evidently been completed in accordance with the idea of its artificer. This seems to be the only reason for calling natural phenomena, which, indeed, are not made with human hands, perfect or imperfect: for men are wont to form general ideas of things natural, no less than of things artificial, and such ideas they hold as types, believing that Nature (who they think does nothing without an object) has them in view, and has set them as types before herself. Therefore, when they behold something in Nature, which does not wholly conform to the preconceived type which they have formed of the thing in question, they say that Nature has fallen short or has blundered, and has left her work incomplete. Thus we see that men are wont to style natural phenomena perfect or imperfect rather from their own prejudices, than from true knowledge of what they pronounce upon.

 

[version]

"You ain't free; you got eaten by your own brand"

I would nominate : K-Punk JME You?

www.dissensus.com