During my visit to Paris I attempted a meeting of opportunity to see if hugh at gapingvoid dot com would be available (since he recently relocated there for an underdetermined amount of time). Beyond just a normal "hey, we're two bloggers in the same general area we should probably get together for some reason" sorta stuff, his thoughts on the demise of branding and how that might influence me, my project at work, and my company are very interesting.
Unfortunately it didn't pan out.
If customers don't know you and your personality isn't coming through to them directly, I'm convinced they will assign one to you. It may not be flattering. For many customers and anti-customers, the personality assigned to Microsoft has been far from flattering. That definitely seemed to be the state we were in when I joined Microsoft a little over four years ago. And I was pretty anti-Windows, anti-Microsoft as well when I joined.
More recently with the community revolution here, that is changing. We're letting individuals have more direct access both directions, where Microsofties can interact and let their personalities be known directly to customers and customers have more access to more Microsofties. This means that for more of our customers, the personality (or personalities) they associate with the company are based on the conversations (as hugh would put it).
The alternative is the customers assigning us personalities based on random experiences, good or bad, with the software that have for whatever reason made a particular impression, or based on wacky corporate moves where it is pretty much impossible to have all the context without having been the decision maker themselves.
You may not be able to get as clear of a handle on my personality based on this blog as you can with Scoble based on his (for example), but it is infinitely more accurate than if you had no access to any of my thoughts at all. I hope it helps, please drop me an email if there's ever something specific you'd like me to talk about or questions you'd like me to answer, I'll talk about what I can and answer questions as I have the expertise and time.
Oops, I burned the bacon I was cooking while writing this...
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