MysteryShrink Shorts: ‘Brand’ or ‘Person?’
The answer if very important. If you are getting up every day to work on your brand, you must direct your time, energy, in money into going from who you are to ‘who you can become’ in the eyes of others—and we’re talking as many others —though you clickers out there aren’t called people anymore—just prospects, leads, hits, followers—and most of all buyers. In their best case scenario, you are potential debtors at maximum interest rates.
Every day I receive requests to either advertise on MysteryShrink or to ‘guest blog’ (read: advertise) on MysteryShrink. Mostly I get offers from friendly folks who ‘with only my best interests at heart’ want to ‘brand’ me. According to the spiel, these consultants can shake the dust off plain old person-me and turn me into a money-spewing machine called a brand. When I decline their generosity, explaining that, to me, if I indicate to a reader that clicking on MysteryShrink will provide ideas and maybe some laughs, free of charge—and then slap them with an ad or some scheme to put them on an email list so that I can contact them later in order to make a sale—well, I just think that would make me a big fat liar.
Usually, the caller just goes silent when I explain about the liar part. The system of using provocative emails to trick readers onto commercial sites while again collecting your email is as much a respected a way of life as recycling. The branding seller doesn’t even know what I’m talking about.
Branding, Bragging, and the Cost of “Look at me!” Efforts at Self Esteem
“Don’t I want to sell books?” the seller asks? Isn’t that why you wrote books?”
“Hmmm . . . No. I love to write and I believe creativity is important. Also, I’m not nuts. Anyone who would spend that much time and labor writing mysteries to make money is crazy.” And I am crazy because here I sit at midnight at a Sanborn’s counter in Mexico City telling you this story and enjoying the heck out of it.
Who could know that having a means of sticking something in your face without cost (cyber transmission) could turn something inherently beneficial to mankind into a force that takes away much of your freedom. You can mute television commercials, but the come-on lies on the www. combined with pop-ups that stick images and jingles in your face without your permission are the weapons of the envy-based consumer driven market of today.
That’s not freedom, folks. When you take my time and attention without my permission you have taken part of my life I cannot get back.
