Branding

It's taken a while to internalize what I've learned from really smart people like Seth Godin; I think it crystallized for me when I was at Podcamp last Saturday. I was talking to someone about branding and I said something (to a marketer) to the effect of:

I disagree with you when you say everything is going to change, that everything is new and different. It's not. Branding is the same. It's trust and identity. That's all branding is and that's all branding will ever be. The how will change, but the why will stay the same because people don't change. We'll always be wet and squishy. So, as long as you can create trust and identity, you'll be fine.

Cleaning out the pipes

There are a ton of draft posts here. I'll publish the ones that I can salvage in the next few days and dump the rest.

Prediction: Unions

Within 30 years, the majority of private sector union members will vote Republican, not Democrat.

The one and only Other

A great article at Love as a Found Object: No Other

This article gets at the heart, the very heart of progressivism. The evil in the world, if I were sufficiently intolerant to call it that, is merely a manifestation of the separation between people caused by powerful institutions and the people vested in them. Once there is unity and everyone thinks and believes as one, there will truly be freedom, equality and brotherhood.

Of course, when it's written down or said out loud, it ends up sounding creepy and Orwellian, but that's kind of the point.