Tag: Branding

What is Slop?

This is a fantastic post from Garbage Day (a newsletter I always enjoy) on the concept of “slop.” If you haven’t already, you will probably hear that term in various contexts soon (if you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably encountered “AI Slop” from weirdly generated pictures of Jesus at a poker match with dogs, etc).

The basic concept is that we’re all doing the work of content production as once mainstreamed media continues to crumble and (d)evolve as studios, businesses, influencers, and record labels struggle for relevancy. However, your 100 posts that are fully SEO friendly with the right hashtags and AI-generated thoughts to promote your new business or side hustle are just… noise.

“Slop,” if you will. Like Taylor Swift Slop when she churns out alternative versions of her songs.

Slop isn’t inherently negative, but it’s not doing much to further the discovery or memory of your brand (whether you’re marketing a business or posting images from your vacation on your Reels). 

Intentional Marketing will be a buzzword as we lurch towards election season and the Fall here in the USA if not well into 2025. Don’t post more. Post better and consume intentionally to decrease the slop effect.

More slop for the void:

The fix for all of this seems obvious and, unfortunately, impossible, at least right now. It has to come from us, the user, the viewer, the consumer, and there’s a lot of us now. We have to be the ones to demand that we all make less, aim smaller, be more deliberate about what we consume, and find new ways of funding — and distributing — what we do make.

Personal Branding (Not Selling Out)

I’m not a huge fan of the “personal brand” phrase, but I do appreciate how David Bowie (a constructed name and a series of constructed personas) was a “personal brand” of sorts and never in a band (besides those three Tin Machine albums in the early ’90s that we won’t talk about here). Same with Prince. Madonna. Elvis.

It’s a big leap, but creating your space and persona online is more possible than ever:

Your personal brand statement consists of 3 key elements:

• Your target audience: The specific market or people that you serve.

• The value you offer: How you help your target market.

• What makes you unique: Why people choose you over the competition.

— Read on www.shopify.com/blog/116266245-personal-branding-how-to-market-yourself-without-selling-out

Branding on Twitter Study

Jeremiah Owyang continues his insightful series on branding and Twitter with this piece about how brands are succeeding on the Twitter platform.

If you’re at all interested in how microblogging will shape the future of direct performance marketing (it will) and corporate communications (it will), make sure to read this:

Web Strategy: The Evolution of Brands on Twitter: “Last week, I listed out 9 reasons Why Brands Are Unsuccessful In Twitter, and other microblogging technologies. Companies are caught between the minutia of the discussions and their willingness to be human or add value to the conversations. Although a one-sided view of what’s going wrong, now let’s focus on what’s going right.”

It’s amazing to see how much the perception of Twitter has changed in 2 short years. So many people I speak to now see the business application of Twitter (or microblogging in general) whereas a year ago, I was being laughed at for bringing Twitter up in such conversations!