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Entries in web2.0 (2)

Thursday

14Jan2010

Cynicism2.0

Thu, January 14, 2010 at 01:53PM

I’ve been driving past a big billboard recently near my local town (Huddersfield) and something about it (even at 30 miles an hour) looked wrong.

It’s of David Cameron and has him staring out, with a slightly far away looks saying something like “I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS." Which is a poor line in that its about “I” not ‘We’ so not a great party line and reads as negative, not commanding or upbeat.

But what struck me most was the stare and also the unsettling plastic look of the photo.

It transpires that it was heavily airbrushed (actually digitally reworked but that old school term still applies).

Pretty much all public / fashion / Advertising portraits will be cleaned up in some way, of course.. But this looks like it could be Dave’s 2^nd Life Avatar.

I’m not Tory bashing here (ok, a bit), the thing I wanted to note was that with social media and quick-to-build web technology what would have stayed within the realm of dismissive articles in the Press, the chip wrappers of tomorrow, has taken on a viral life with the launch of http://www.mydavidcameron.com/.

The Original Poster

One of the Spoofs created on mydavidcameron - this one by the very funny http://www.bbdo.co.uk/blog/

Satirizing pompous or ill-judged political grand standing or false portrayal (literally) isn’t new but now you don’t just laugh once, you laugh at every new user (citizen) ‘s take on the subject and for much longer.
The democracy of scorn, as a cynical Brit I’m all for it.

Mark |

About Me (Me, Me, Me)

Mon, September 7, 2009 at 01:34PM

I just read this interesting article by Dan Schawbel on Personal Branding

and the balance to be struck between being too humble in this self-publicising age and being too strident / self-centered in your digital output

get your personal branding foghorn at emergencysupplyresource.com This blog and what I want it to be, what kind of 'angle ' to take, e.g to make it more than just a list of news links or quick views , has been on my mind for a while.
To be clear (disclaimer time!) I'm not looking to set up as a consultant so my 'personal brand' for me is less about selling myself and more about substantiating the insight / experience as the base of what I write - that means anything you read from me hopefully has some semblance of credibility in it .

That said, my wife has just come back onto the job market (as a recently made-redundant designer) and my brother is setting up a private child psychotherapy practice so 'personal brand' will be important to both of them. And Dan's site seems to have a lot of really useful material on it. Which I will use as a check list for them both I think.

And he has 41,000 followers on twitter which is , err, a few more than my profile / brand has. Also, none of us are too old to learn about self promotion, even from a man that looks (sorry Dan) about 16 ;-)

Back to his point about being Humble not being useful in a web2.0 world. I go along with that to an extent and I'm out there re: twitter, linkedin, facebook and this blog.
But there's a balance to be had between self-promoting and self-aggrandising and between having confidence and being shouty and boastful. I think Dan has the same view actually and I agree with him that networking and collaborating (including re-tweets, links to other's work etc) helps you build contacts - don't be afraid to share your knowledge, it isn't all about you and all that good stuff.

Mark |