Category Archives: commentary

I’m getting worried about Nike.

I’m getting worried about Nike.

A little holiday shopping led to this observation: There’s too much Nike at Nordstrom’s (hey I don’t spend all my time at Walmart).

While Julie tried on shoes it occurred to me that Nike is proving that it is possible to over-emphasize the new. They are competing as a fashion brand, and letting that agenda cloud their core message. C’mon, what do frilly purple boots and UGG knock-offs have to do with “Just Do It”?

Fashion is Nike’s differentiator in a field of athletic wear, but function has always come first. The function is the promise. Once upon a time a waffle-iron inspired a brilliant innovation: a better tread for better performance. A brand was born. It was a beacon. But when fashion eclipses function, the message just gets foggy, and a recession will punish foggy brands.

Do they have the DNA to become a fashion house? Can they build it or buy it? If not, they should throw out the fuzzy boots and get back to making moves that fit the focus of the brand (like this idea).

Nike means victory – on the athletic field, not the runway.

Disclosure: no positions

Full disclosure: Julie bought the UGGs.

Also posted in branding, Branding Thoughts, mad scribblings | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Twitter goes mainstream – will it survive?

Just an observation: Twitter is in the the process of “crossing the chasm”.   Once accused of being the playground of narcissists and navel-gazers, the popular micro-blogging service is now going mainstream.  How do I know?  Well a few months back I used Twitter’s contact feature to see if there were any Twitter users in my Google contacts that I  was not already following.  There were three.  I did the same thing again a couple of minutes ago and there were now 120! And these weren’t techies, new adopters, and geeks.  All of my friends that fit those categories were already on the service and had been for some time now.  No, these folks are financial planners, real estate agents, business owners, interior designers, consultants, bankers, etc.

So my question is why?  Is it because the usefulness of Twitter has suddenly become widely understood and embraced by the majority?  I’d like to say yes, but somehow I doubt it.  I think the sudden rise in Twitter popularity is due mostly to CNN and the election coverage – and this is why I ask the question, will it survive?  Twitter’s ranks are filling, but will the new users add value or just consume resources?  Will they find a useful means of communication and embrace some kind of monetization of the system, or will the fail-whale dominate the site in between massive doses of sales pitches and self-serving links to personal and company websites?

Twitter, I’m rooting for you, but I think the jury is still out.

Also posted in blogging, branding, mad scribblings, tools | Tagged , , | Comments closed

DavidCohen.com and being a small business

Did you know that I’m a futurist?  Well I was in a futurists club for a while.  I like future-y things like blogs, and websites, and personal branding, and I want you to like them too.  I want you to like them because they are really now things, and they can help your career and your business.

Yes, I’ll confess that even futurists like me occasionally indulge in old-fashioned habits like nestling deep into the sofa with an actual, non-virtual, magazine and of course, a cat.  I enjoy the tactile quality of riffling through the printed pages, and the cat seems to enjoy sitting on my chest. It is her way of reassuring me that despite all the changes and stresses of the information age she still cares for me deeply, even more deeply when it is drafty on the floor.

Generally this sidestepping of the digital now works out quite well for naps (for me and the cat) and it is certainly better for uninterrupted reading than trying to plow through an online document with Ms. Trixie padding restlessly back and forth across the keyboard of my laptop – cats are so helpful. However, avoiding the now is not better for business.

So, as I hinted, I was on the sofa beginning to get drowsy-eyed under the influence of all the feline warmth and non-digital purring when my gaze alit upon a quote. The quote comes from Reid Hoffman, creator of LinkedIn, from a tangible article in Business Week, now well-riffled in my hands. “Essentially,” Mr. Hoffman says, “every individual is a small business.”

Yes at first glance it may seem to be a modest quote.  Certainly brief. In fact it failed to impress the cat, but Trixie is not known for her business acumen.  I, on the other hand have a reputation to think of, and I quite like the quote – first off, it begins with “Essentially” and secondly, it is a sentiment that has been presaged by some of my favorite business thinkers, like Seth Godin and Tom Peters:  The reality of our collective now is that today you may work for somebody else, but first and foremost you are in the business of being you.

As some have said, you are CEO of Brand You Inc. A thought that the cat found most perturbing as it was inspiring enough to get me up off the couch (disrupting her carefully kneaded perch) and over to the computer so that I might compose this post.  You don’t think these new-fangled blogs just appear out of thin air do you?

So what does all of this have to do with DavidCohen.com? Well if you are the CEO of Brand You Inc., then I am the CEO of Brand Me.  And as CEO of my own brand I figured I should own the company website.   Fortunately for me that thought first occurred to me about 14 years ago, when davidcohen.com was still an available domain. My new friend, Nadia Bilchik, was quite impressed by this. Nadia is a dynamic individual, a speaker, trainer, and news anchor (you may have seen her on CNN).  She is also the CEO of the brand Nadia Bilchik so naturally she has the domain nadiabilchik.com – Her domain was a more recent acquisition than mine, but she admits there was less competition to get the name. FYI “David Cohen” is a common name, the jewish equivalent of “John Smith”. “Nadia Bilchik” is about as common as, well, “Nadia Bilchik”.

So what am I trying to tell you?  I’m trying to tell you that my friend the energy author, Jon Gordon, has jongordon.com, and my friend Jeff Pulver the godfather of VoIP, has jeffpulver.com, and Melissa Galt, the interior designer who helps people design their lives has, melissagalt.com, and you better believe that personal branding guru Dan Schawbel has danschawbel.com. Want to guess what domains Tom Peters and Seth Godin have? You know who doesn’t have her own domain?  Trixie doesn’t have her own domain, but then again she’s a cat.  Cats can’t type, even though right now she thinks she is doing a great job of helping me write this post.

If you are not a cat, then there is a good chance that you actually work for somebody else, but that doesn’t mean you can’t carve out a little virtual space for yourself. The price of running a website gets cheaper every day, the price of a personal domain is minimal compared to the advantages of having a findable platform where you can position yourself to the rest of the world.  And BTW it is a competitive world, and with all the uncertainty in the economy it is only going to be more so. There is no better time than right now to claim your virtual turf, if for no other reason than to put up your own virtual billboard extolling all the virtues of Brand You.

If you’re lucky and have an uncommon name you might still be able to get something like yourname.com (but it won’t sit around waiting for you), and if you do have a common name don’t be discouraged. Get creative! Try initials, or middle names, or add “Mr” or “Ms”.  And don’t forget about Mr. Reid Hoffman – be sure to visit his site and make your LinkedIn profile and when you do be sure to give the public profile a friendly name, like, um, oh I don’t know, maybe something along the lines of http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidscohen. And don’t be bothered that some David Cohen in London beat you to http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcohen. Really I’m fine with it. It’s only an “s”. No big deal. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Also posted in Branding Thoughts, mad scribblings, personal branding, social media | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

TAG Enterprise 2.0 to host AWS Tech Evangelist – Jinesh Varia

This one might be of interest to some of you barcampers:   The Technology Association of Georgia’s Enterprise 2.0 Society will be hosting a talk by Amazon Web Services’ Technology Evangelist Jinesh Varia.   The talk will be held at the GTRI Conference Center on Wednesday Nov. 5, 2008.  7:30am -9:30am.  The cost is $20 for non-members and free if you are a member of TAG.  You can register here, but as of this writing the page still needs to be updated with the event info (glitch in the system).  You can find out more about TAG’s Enterprise 2.0 society at TAG online or our Ning page.

So right now, I’m still at Barcamp and Loren Norman and a guy I don’t know with a big beard are leading a loose discussion of AWS and cloud computing.  Quote – “S3 is literally a big magic hard drive in space”

Also posted in Barcamp Atlanta, Live event, Other Interests, social media | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

A word about my Barcamp posts

If you know me, then you know that I have both a math and art background.  I used to be a webmaster, and I was a co-founder of a company that did java development for telephony companies and one that built middleware for mobile applications.  So even though I make my living as a brand consultant and usually fill this blog with musings on branding and the occasional mention of an art show, I still consider the Atlanta Internet technology scene to be part of my turf.   Barcamp Atlanta is an extraordinary event that is happening this weekend at Ga Tech’s ATDC building.  It is the secind year in a row, and I did last year what I am doing this year – trying to capture a little flavor of the event by writing some blog entries on the spot.   The writing style is much more extemporaneous than my usual posts, and probably has a higher percentage of typos and grammar crimes.  Forgive me. Indulge me,  I think this is an important event.   It is at place like these that nascent technologies can start to find their foundation, can start to spread to the bright and creative technologists who can turn them into cool companies and even revolutions in how we communicate.  The reportage here is rough around the edges for sure, and woefully incomplete, but if this stuff interests you, seek out the tag barcampatl, or barcampatl08 around the web.   You may find that there is an interesting spirit and some cool concepts floating around this event.

Not in Atlanta?  Then check out barcamp.org and see if there is one happening in a city near you.

Also posted in Barcamp Atlanta, Live event, Other Interests, social media | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Barcamp 2 – Day 2 – Glen Gordon discusses ASP.net MVC

It’s beta.  Michael Ivey says it is cool, and when a merb guy says a msft thing is worth looking at I figure I should check it out.

I’m definitely feeling tired though.  My typings is particularly clumsy today, so you probably have noticed that the last few live blogs have been degrading in quality.  I’ll chock it up to a long week exacerbated by watching too much election coverage. Of course none of that has anything to do with a model-view-controller pattern implemented in ASP, but as it turns out, this wasn’t a presentation, just an overview from Glen Gordon.

That’s the way ball bounces sometimes when you are live-blogging and still half asleep.

Oh, it looks like Glen WILL do an ASP.net MVC presentation this afternoon.  Not sure if I’ll check it out depends on what other presentations are competing for the time slot.

Also posted in Barcamp Atlanta, Live event, Other Interests | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed
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