20:48, 28/09/2005

Personal branding - weblogs as belief systems

Well, I'd been fermenting a thought in my head about weblogs as places where one interrogates oneself with a community of interested witnesses. I was going to make it concrete by having my Second Life avatar, Kei Mars, interview me, with a selection of questions from you, my friends, as well.

But, clever tranny that she is, Siobhan beat me to the punch with her own, highly skilful auto-interview, which made many of the points I was going to raise. I especially (and predictably given my liking for a social drink) jibed with her comments about blogging being like having a conversation with a circle of friends in your favourite pub.

So I'm not going to do that. But it did make me think some more.

I've been working today on some corporate identity for a client - logos, type, colour schemes and usage examples. You know what I mean. Corporate identity is the most outward visual representation of an organisation's brand. In a real sense a brand is a promise to the customer.

When Apple (tagline: "Think Different") puts their mark on an iPod, or a Powerbook, or the iTunes store interface, they're saying, "look. We believe this product is so well designed and so beautiful that we'll put our signature on it, because that's what we stand for. We're asking you to believe and trust our promise and be our customer". As a consumer, you'll either believe in that promise or you won't and that will influence 100% how well a company performs. Branding is totally at the heart of everything a company does.

You can also turn it around and say that a brand is a company's promise to itself. It's almost like a belief system. Brand belief is at the heart of a company's success and how well it does.

You can't sell it if you don't believe in it.

The problem is that in this increasingly fragmented corporate landscape, and in a day and age when trust in brands is at an all time low, for so many reasons (globalisation, Enron and mistrust of government relations with businesses, the mistrust of media owner brands like Fox / Sky who are seen to be pushing murky agendas) we don't know where to turn for brands we can trust any more. Even home spun successes like flickr and Blogger are soon gobbled up by juggernaut corporations and lose their sanctified nature.

Whose brand do you believe in when there's a crisis of faith?

Well, the only thing left is yourself.

This is where weblogging comes in and I believe it's one of the foremost proponents of what has been termed "personal branding". Personal branding's all about leveraging your own belief in what you can do with the skills you're given. It's all about building up microcommunities of shared interest who are passionate about the same things you're passionate about, be it music, birdwatching, books, technology or transvestism.

And the Internet's full of it. The web is inherently brilliant at allowing personal brands to start up, because the social and interactive tools are built in to the networks via the protocols (http, smtp, ftp etc) that we take for granted. Quite quickly one to one can become many to many and that's why sites like flickr, eBay, LiveJournal are so successful. Services like CaféPress have been quick to exploit the unique nature of personal branding so that we can all have our own merchandising department at a low, risk-free price point.

So this weblog you're reading is actually the online community of brand Miss K (tagline: "transgendered z-list celebrity"). It's part of a loose federation of sister brands including the better established tranniefesto (tagline: "a crossdressing adventure" or, in certain applications, "I'm a bloke in a dress, but it's a very nice dress"), Becky's Web ("home of transgendered inactivist Becky EnVérité" - love that one) and Joanna's Diary ("may contain nuts"). All really skilful bits of copywriting and evidence of serious intent by their owners. And of course there's many many more.

Siobhan's wonderful tranniesphere visualisation was a first pass map of this federation of transgendered personal brands. Brands that exist because we believe in ourselves and we believe in our natures and interests.

It's all about belief. See you in November.

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In /musings
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16:54, 27/09/2005

OMG, like, make-up tips!

I once bravely declared sometime in the prehistory of my old non-blog site that Miss K's draGnet would contain "no make up tips". I think that was actually the tagline once. Quite apart from the fact that "transgendered z-list celebrity" is actually a much better and more satisfying tagline, I now ironically find myself giving you some make-up tips. Must be my advanced age. Those brain cells never come back, you know...

Er.. Where was I...? Oh yes. So this is how Miss K is constructed. Pay attention at the back please.

1. BaseAARGH. OK, the sensitive may want to avert their eyes now. This (→) is where it starts. The blank canvas. Virgin territory. The undiscovered country. Tabula rasa. The hideous truth. Fear and Awe. Steptoe and Son. No it's not safe to look yet...

So, at this stage you will already have cleansed, toned, moisturised, shaved closely and plucked the brows. You can't make a girlie girl out of a dirty, hairy monkey.

Enticing though that idea is.

2. FaceIf there's one thing to splurge money on, it's foundation (→). Make up is expensive and it's tempting to skimp on cost. By all means buy cheap eye makeup and lip stuff, but never short change yourself on your face. There's nothing worse than your face falling off during an evening out. Except perhaps your face falling off during an evening out with Michael Winner. I normally use MAC Full Coverage, which is great. Matt, opaque and dries like a coat of plaster.

For these photos, though, I used a nice one by Clinique, called Superbalanced Makeup which is really great, slightly translucent and it blots oil which is helpful for me with my greasy skin. It's not industrial like the MAC one but feels really light and nice on.

For added consistency, apply two coats with a coat of powder in between. You'll never get it off. Powder wise I prefer Clinique's impressive Superpowder. It works!

3. EyesSo now (→) it's time for some smoky eyes. I use cheap eye makeup - usually just 17 from Boots - I don't find it benefits me to spend loads on expensive eye slap.

I start off by brushing on black eyeshadow. You should always have black eyeshadow. It's your friend. For the smoky look, go for it. Slap loads on, under the eyes as well. Use a trowel. Spend a while to blend it out so that you have a nice feathered edge, not too hard. Blending is your friend, just like black shadow.

4. HighlightsNext (→), I like to do a bit of sculpting on the eyes. I selectively blend in some midnight blue shadow around the edges, then use some white shadow on the upper lid to create some lustre. Blend well. Blending is everything. A cotton bud comes in useful here. I also dust some of the white on the bony part under the eyebrows. I wipe a bit of hair gel on the eyebrows to sleek them down and make sure they keep their shape, and finish off with some black liquid liner to outline the eyes and some dark blue waterproof mascara, two coats. This stuff is all from Boots 17.

5. LipsI like to splurge a little on lipstick. With smoky eyes, pale lips (→) work really well, and here I used Pervette, a lovely two tone pink shade from MAC. Great shade name too. And the matching nail polish is great. With lips, I do the opposite of what most people say and lip pencil an outline afterwards. Dunno why. Maybe I'm backwards. Make sure the shades of lipstick and pencil aren't too different - the pencil should be marginally darker - or you'll end up looking like a Neapolitan hooker (well, you may want to do that, I dunno). Two coats of lipstick, blot in between and after. Done.

Like black eyeshadow, clear lipgloss is your friend too. I use Boots 17 again. Cheap and effective, finally a bit of blusher - careful as you don't want to look like you've been slapped. On the cheekbones, not below. And you're done (↓):

six
the results!

Next: how to put up shelves and assembling a simple root irrigation system out of egg boxes and pipe cleaners.

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In /perusings
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01:22, 08/09/2005

Rock news

Electric Shocks - me on the rightMy band, Electric Shocks are playing tomorrow night (Tuesday) at Artrocker Club in Highbury and Islington, London and this is an invitation to come down and enjoy some rock and rolling fun.

The club is run weekly at the Buffalo Bar, right next to Highbury and Islington station and is the best showcase in London for up and coming "alternative" rock bands. It's £5 entry but you can get in Free if you join Artrocker by emailing info@artrocker.com. Joining is free and they'll make up a laminate pass for you that you pick up the first time you go to the club. There's no catch. It's all free!

The pass gives you free entry to the club every week and reduced entry to lots of gigs around town that Artrocker promote. More info at Artrocker's website (they're also our record label)

We're onstage about 9.30 (we're the middle of a three band line up) more info at www.theelectricshocks.com/gigs.html.

Our album and two singles are now available for download from mperia.com. We've been busy recording our second album this summer and I hope to showcase some early mixes here soon.

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In /music/shocks
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