The Ebb & Flow Of Your Personal Brand

Changing a logo before the Web used to be hard. But changing a logo in the networked world is a b*tch of untold proportions. When I was at McCann and we changed the identity of Rogers Cable, one of the tasks we were given as the Interactive group was "find" Rogers old logo on the Internet and make sure it was changed. I actually had someone work for 2 weeks straight surfing the Web looking for random logos that were all over hell and gone, printing the pages out, noting the URL all in an attempt to get what they "owned", their brand identity changed.

Well, now we are all media. And just like big media found out, we are being disintermediated as our personal brands get exported amongst all these different social networks and services. Friendfeed, our blogs, twitter...with the distribution of our identities, we also lose centralized control. People save a link to my blog and converse about it where I can't hear (and maybe don't even know) and I now, like big media, have to deal with a growing lack of control over all those things I once thought I owned.

But this is the new reality. This is what flow is all about. Ecosystems don't have borders and boundaries but the good news is that as the system changes, we as members do as well. While it frustrates some, IMO it's the new networked order that we may not like, but are going to have to get used to.