Branding: The New Self Improvement
It may have been Michael Jordan who started it all.
Or, perhaps, Madonna.
Paris Hilton has certainly made the most of it with the least cachet. Unless you consider the bluster of Rush — need I write his last name? — to be of social consequence.
It’s everywhere in the world of sports these days. Think Tiger. Think LeBron. Think Starbury. When John Calipari was named head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, he spoke of it when promising to repair UK’s stature in the world of college hoops. Which sounded eerily similar to words uttered earlier at arch-rival Louisville by arch-rival coach Rick Pitino.
Of course, it exists in the entertainment world. Just read an article about Jessica Simpson and how she’s figuring out — with the help of her father/ manager — how to reinvent herself after falling off the charts, musically speaking, and up the charts, avoirdupois speaking.
Branding. It’s from Olde English, of Germanic origin, meaning “to burn.”
It’s all the rage these days as people and companies and teams and organizations are all trying to find a visible niche, a sense of self, an identity, a spot to call their own in our increasingly oversaturated, overstimulated, harum scarum cybergalactic world.
How appropriate that culture turns to commercial terminology in an age when multinational corporations are the new nation states. Whodathunk we’d aspire to be Kleenex?
It is at once a reprehensible trend, the self promotion, self aggrandizement, self merchandising. And, on the other hand, it’s a recognizable plausibility in an era when only those totally comfortable in their own skin don’t feel the need to somehow seek validation.
So, as appalled as I am by the trend — and especially the nomenclature — uh, well, Branding, C’est moi.
Looking for some inexpensive way to increase traffic here at culturemaven.com and at my sports blog, score.leoweekly.com, I consulted my web guru.
“Facebook,” he said, “Twitter. You wanna be the Culture Maven, you have to market yourself.”
At least he didn’t use the “B” word. But that’s what is, isn’t it?
So, I’m thinkin’: “Burn, baby, burn into the hearts and minds of all who might or could or would care.” All the while hating myself, sort of, for throwing myself in the middle of this trend.
I wanna be Wheaties.
Does that make me a bad person?
Or just another acolyte sagely following the career arc of Paris Hilton?
– c d k
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