But as I read through, it struck me: that’s kinda/sorta what you’re laying out: that as human beings, we have a responsibility to discuss from the Truth, but that perhaps it’s practical to develop some kind of shorthand for easy access.

I’m not entirely comfortable with this “Truth” thing. And that’s why what I expect from actual human beings is willingness to adapt and change. Change one’s canned response, one’s preference, one’s mind, change one’s goals even, in a pinch.

This “Truth” thing, that’s generally a hard row to hoe. Historians, theologians, philosophers, even the smartest ones admit they suck at discovering and limning it, and they’re professionals. What chance have the rest of us got?

A lot of us don’t even know what the word means. The world is more complicated than any model we have of it. Any. Even that one we call “Truth”, and even this one I’m describing now.

So when I see a brand slapped onto something, it’s a guarantee of consistency. Stuff we make to sell, it’s OK to brand it. I really do want the same Vitamin C & E in the big purple shampoo bottle I use next time, and I get pissed off when I can’t find that exact brand on the shelf at the store.

But I’m not expecting an engaging conversation with my shampoo.

The trouble comes, I think, from impatience and laziness. And maybe fear. So much starts (or doesn’t) because of fear. It takes patience and diligence to reveal a persona, or to unearth a brand, and even a little faith. Hell, I’m one of your more recognizable “brands” on the internets, and I had to go to my readers to find out what the hell it was that kept bringing them back to my site.

That was smart.

Oh–and for the record…that thing you joked about–modeling change and the successful bringing-together of disparate forces? That’s what I’m after. And you’re right: there’s precious little money in it.

But great rewards, nonetheless.

You mean the part where I wonder if one can just be nice, interesting and responsive, and still make a living? That joke?

I bristled at the link title; as a sometime identity designer and marketing consultant-type, I make my living excavating truths and gussying them up into parse-able handfuls–what we’ve come to call brands.

But as I read through, it struck me: that’s kinda/sorta what you’re laying out: that as human beings, we have a responsibility to discuss from the Truth, but that perhaps it’s practical to develop some kind of shorthand for easy access.

The trouble comes, I think, from impatience and laziness. And maybe fear. So much starts (or doesn’t) because of fear. It takes patience and diligence to reveal a persona, or to unearth a brand, and even a little faith. Hell, I’m one of your more recognizable “brands” on the internets, and I had to go to my readers to find out what the hell it was that kept bringing them back to my site.

Oh–and for the record…that thing you joked about–modeling change and the successful bringing-together of disparate forces? That’s what I’m after. And you’re right: there’s precious little money in it.

But great rewards, nonetheless.

You can always adjust your E2E (Ego to Engagement) stream along the way with this feedback: “Well, no, that’s not really what I meant,” or “In a comment, a very useful point was raised,” or “X over at Blog Y seems to think something different.…”

Surprisingly, we don’t seem to be burdened with many “How to Manage a Civil and Productive Conversation” mavens, do we? Not online, and not so much in the business world either. Blogging seems to live somewhere in between the Epistolary Novel and a Pub Regulars’ conversation, and on larger blogs this degenerates into a kind of Town Hall two-sided catfight mentality. Stuff of sociology and anthropology, really.

Of course companies and large-scale institutions don’t have conversations. They don’t really adapt well on the time-scales people have to, when they want to remain engaging and useful to one another face to face.

So maybe companies—and even little teeny brands—can’t do that at all.

(Which may save us all as individuals, in the long term. “Consistency”, “identity”… “purity”. Hmmm.)

There doesn’t seem to be an explicit marketing model out there making millions for its proponents (and maybe its followers, but that’s not necessary), in which you (a) try to be a good and helpful person/institution, (b) engage interesting people/institutions and bring them together, and © show that you’re listening and learning by changing what you are, what you think, in response.

Pity.

In the other corner, the goal of rigor, starting with statistics and precise metrics and conversion funnels and ending up with the goal to always test, always measure, always change just as much as you’re able to measure which change is the better one. Marketing is the new finance, and so personal marketing must be the new personal finance, right?

So then the question, the obligation really: when you do something on the net that reflects on yourself, you should always test and measure and be prepared to undo it if it doesn’t give an appropriate return on ego investment (ROEI) (I just made that up).

Dead people can be brands, I suppose. Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Chaplin.

They can be undilutedly famous for things they’re not changing. They have no new tricks to pull.