Wanted: Brand Consultant

In the ongoing efforts to change my life, I’ve been reading up on branding, non-traditional marketing solutions, and Attention.

Recent comments made to me off-blog by several male personages have suggested that my complaints are related in one way or another to the oft-fraught and controversial issue of self-presentation - i.e. “maybe it’s a packaging issue” (exact words). As should be clear by now, Lisa H. always chooses to represent, and not to front. As is evident by the feedback I've received, however, it is worth considering the possibility that I may not be “representing” to my best advantage. Any thoughts or suggestions on this matter are welcome.

On the subject of padded bras: :
ME: “I feel uncomfortable with the idea that at some point someone will discover they’re not real.”
EGIT: “So it’s a matter of false advertising?”
ME: "Yes."
EGIT: “Haven’t you ever ordered something online that turned out to be something different that what you expected? Most people just decide to settle for what they get because it’s too much trouble to return it.”
ME: “I feel uncomfortable with your entire line of reasoning.”

NB – There is a certifiable difference between “lightly lined” and “padded.”

On the subject of jobs:
ME: “The problem isn’t my skills or qualifications; [unnamed contact] says in order to get hired, I have to convince people that I actually want a long-term career in [your field].”
EGIT: “So in other words, he is asking you to learn how to lie.”
ME: “I’m a terrible liar. That is, unless I’m lying to myself.”

NB – To prospective employers – I am willing to want most desperately a career in your field as long as such employment will allow me to exercise my highly specialized niche skills and still be considered "qualified" (without destroying my soul), and pay my living expenses. Also, please don’t ask me what I plan to do about my dissertation: that's private.

On the subject of sex, love, and physical attraction: :
ME: (Reading the July 2005 issue of Esquire’s interview with Billy Bob Thornton that another close colleague saw fit to include in a snail mail communiqué):
BILLY BOB: “Sex doesn’t have to be with a model to be good. As a matter of fact, sometimes with the model, the actress, the ‘sexiest person in the world,’ it may be literally like fucking the couch. Don’t count out the average-looking woman, or even maybe the slightly unattractive woman, or the really unattractive woman. There may be this swarthy little five-foot-two stocky woman why just has sex all over her.” (This excerpt was, thoughtfully, both circled and underlined by my colleague.)
ME: (to colleague, via telephone): “What are you saying, exactly?”
KURT: “I’m just saying there’s hope for you, that’s all”
ME: (Silently) Fuck you.

NB – In an effort to raise my brand-awareness potential by nearly two inches, I bought a pair of red ho boots about four years ago. While I received many compliments from womens, I can’t recall any comments from the mens. Also, they made my feet hurt. I sold them on eBay to a “boot and shoe enthusiast” for a reasonable sum.

I recently re-worked my resume with a friend who is also a marketing and product development specialist (he only agreed to help me if I ceased the daily email barrage of unsolicited psychoanalytic musings on his lifestyle choices, and fart jokes). Fart jokes or no, I am quite satisfied with the revision, which – although multipurpose in nature - helped me reformulate my self-concept and personal brand-awareness in some not unimportant ways. On my first “informational interview” with document in hand, however, I was told that anyone who looked at my resume would think I was gunning for a scrivener’s job in a dead letter office.

My research has suggested that blogging, social software, and tagging are now the most effective means of producing, gaining, and consuming Attention, and therefore, of facilitating (potentially) life-changing developments. Of course, this narrow definition of blogging (perpetuated by elitist A-listers) presupposes that one is willing to document her thoughts, feelings, and responses to the thousands of happenings, incidents, personal experiences and minute neurological sensations occurring every day in the on- and off-blog worlds. I find it quite interesting that, although the trivial meanderings of “ordinary people” and their motivation to broadcast them is what ostensibly produced the democratic information revolution that is the blogging phenomenon, the blogosphere is in fact (in true American democratic tradition) an ad-hoc oligarchy of the Attention-rich and famous, or of those who have anything to say on matters that produce the Attention of the Attention-rich and famous. Second of all, since my blog was originally created by way of a terrible misunderstanding, it has always been about reducing undesirable Attention while appealing for ever more and better Attention to the people who already know me, thereby capitalizing on my base without the risks inherent in over-diversification. (And since nobody else ever comments anyway, the point is effectively moot.) Thirdly, in light of my generally anti-blog sentiments, I can’t believe how often I have used the term “blogosphere,” and how easily it has transformed in these pages from a word overburdened with ironic associations to a meme* of a semi-serious nature. Fourth of all, where does everyone find the time to peruse every blog-of-note, newspapers (electronic editions), Slashdot, bOing bOing, as well as comment and post? Every day, people! It’s taken me nearly 90 minutes and a frozen tamale to write this, not counting the PowerPoint graph, and all of the links and font embellishments I had to code.
Wait – do frozen tamales compromise my positive brand Attention potential?

*in the off-blog sense


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