gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

turning the hughtrain into a global microbrand

Though I've been mostly silent on it, these last weeks I've been working on a really interesting project:

"Turning The Hughtrain into a global microbrand."

Been looking at ways to commercially extend The Hughtrain into markets in London, Europe, Asia, the US West Coast and the US East Coast.

Successful? Depends who you ask. Right now it's spreading me pretty thin. I'm doing it for ZERO money. Hell, I wouldn't even call it "Shoestring". "Second-hand Dental Floss" would be more accurate.

But it's WORKING.

There are 3 conversations in the US. There are 3 conversations in Europe, and there is 1 or 2 conversations in Asia. Add to that, there's about 6 conversations to do with the whole cartoon-merch-publishing thing. Besides that, there's a whole sea of B-List conversations happening as well. My fingers are numb from writing so many e-mails.

You can divide the B-List into two distict categories:

1. Here's how we can help you.
2. Call us when you've got lots of money and we'll be pleased to take great chunks of it away from you in exchange for doing bugger-all.

Guess which one works best for me?

As always, it's about deliverables.

The standard Ad Agency biz model doesn't work for this. Nor does the standard Knowledge Management model. And yes, the "Blogs are really cool, please can we build you one and you pay us" model is pretty bloody awful, as well. Methinks the action is elsewhere.

What I'm seeing is a massive disconnect between the cultural and technological, between the internal and the external markets.

Very few people outside the blogosphere know what the hell I'm talking about. They get it in theory, but invariably they've been working for too long in specialised industries that actively discourage seeing the big picture. Too busy guarding their own patch to be anything other than secretly hostile.

Right now I'm using a blog and some drawings to impose my ideas upon the world. Soon I hope to be upgrading to much heavier artillery.

Much heavier.

(Email me: hugh at gapingvoid etc.)

Posted by hugh macleod at December 27, 2004 11:47 AM | TrackBack