I am old enough to remember when brand had a different connotation. Back then, one smoker would ask another “What’s your brand?” As I never smoked, I never understood the devoted loyalty to one brand or another. And as an adult, I don’t understand the emphasis on branding yourself.

No- I don’t mean physically branding yourself with a hot iron, but I guess tattoo’s are a sort of branding….but anyway…

Yesterday I was talking to Sorryless, and our conversation turned to this oft used 21st century phrase. Brand- who you are, what you represent, who should follow you and why. We joked around with a few adjectives that would be included in our statement and then I thought about something: Isn’t you “About” section essentially your brand? And then I thought about a  recent conversation with Claudette, where she wrote about About….and yeah…the blogging community comes through again.

So today, I decided to work on my Brand, aka, About. Here’s what I came up with:

  1. Talks too much
  2. Opinionated
  3. Makes lists for everything
  4. Contradictory just to inspire conversation
  5. Morning Person
  6. Likes food way too much
  7. Always about to start, in the middle of, or just finished a book
  8. Reads everything
  9. Anglophile
  10. Drinks way too much tea
  11. Can’t stand hypocrisy
  12. Never talks about her daughter or the college experience
  13. Believer is beauty products
  14. Has been on a diet since 1980
  15. Hates shopping for clothes
  16. Loves browsing in Container Store
  17. Has a tiny obsession with movies
  18. Hasn’t met a cozy mystery she doesn’t like
  19. Guilty pleasure is watching Catfish (oops- cats out of the bag now)
  20. Met Fan (perhaps that should be my guilty pleasure)
  21. Loves organizing, hates cleaning (and yes- there is a difference)
  22. Loves Impressionism and doesn’t care if it’s trite
  23. Loves Bach and doesn’t care that it’s trite either
  24. Will travel for the perfect cheeseburger and fries
  25. Cats and dogs- especially kittens and puppies
  26. Lousy at Words With Friends
  27. Always has a camera
  28. Fixated with Botanic Gardens
  29. Has a little thing about ghost tours and visiting cemeteries at night
  30. A wee bit sarcastic
  31. hates too hot, also hates too cold
  32. Proud to be a New Yorker
  33. Tennis. Love.
  34. Dyes her hair blonde though she used to totally mock blondes and originated many of the blonde jokes you hear
  35. Doesn’t talk politics or anything that is totally based on one’s opinion
  36. Needs glasses to see distance, but doesn’t need them close up which means glasses are usually on top of head
  37. Cries at movies and commercials
  38. Will see any live performance
  39. Popcorn with butter
  40. two flavors: spicy or spicier
  41. Cooking yes; baking no
  42. music, music, music, except anything with misogynistic lyrics or screaming banging
  43. sucker for 80’s rock ballads- or really anything 80’s
  44. baths
  45. Pink starburst
  46. Milk chocolate
  47. Strawberry short cake
  48. hot fudge sundaes
  49. Gingerbread cookies, soft- never hard
  50. believer in signs and patterns
  51. lousy speller and hates autocorrect
  52. Grammar? Who cares…..
  53. Hates being late- thanks Claudette…..

Ok- there you go:

So what do you think? Additions or subtractions?

What’s you brand?

70 thoughts on “What’s Your Brand”

  2. I like the reference to Claudette’s blog because I hate being late also and of course, being on a diet since 1980.Proud to be from New York and have lived in New York City. Always a stickler for grammar when writing but not when blogging. Thanks for sharing. You are a morning person!

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  3. I just have a few generalized paragraphs to tell everyone ABOUT me… now I feel rather inadequate. Perhaps if I re-brand myself I will get more of those likes & follows we talked of yesterday… 😉

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  4. The cemetery thing was news to me. I used to live next door to a cemetery (one of my first apartments, my favorite too, in Toronto’s Beaches back in my single life)…best neighbours I ever had! lol

    I also loved going to the cemetery as a girl in Switzerland. There, it looked more like a botanical garden. It was incredibly tidy, incredibly colourful and had paths and trees and birds and it was quiet….lovely. Nothing scary about it, but then, I didn’t go there at night (I was under 11 at the time).

    It’s a great list!

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    1. Thank you! I just love the history in a cemetery, especially the old ones in Williamsburg, Charleston and Boston. The stories they could tell, what they lived through….magical

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  5. Number 3 is totally appropriate. 11 and 12 are quite the pair. That is a long, fun list! But yes, a brand needs to be a little more brief, I think. I guess in light of my blog, I would just say I’m a history and travel buff, with an eye out for family connections.

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    1. Yeah…I knew the wording was off. Ok. I think there are opinions and beliefs. I can give my opinion on a subject and discuss something if I know the other person is willing to listen. Beliefs….I don’t get involved with because people can’t discuss some things rationally. They are in one lane and they’re not moving. I will argue why one movie is better than another, but you will never hear me discuss one candidate vs another

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      1. OK, I get it. Sorta. So opinions and beliefs, for you, are not synonymous? Please, LA, don’t think this nitpicking.

        You write; 35 “ Doesn’t talk politics or anything that is totally based on one’s opinion?” In my opinion, LA, that’s just not true. In a recent post concerning Historical Fiction, you took the genre and certain authors to task, calling our their work as crap in a pointedly political and cultural way. And it’s my belief, you were absolutely correct in doing so.

        That’s the why of my confusion. If you state you won’t discuss “electoral politics,” that’s understandable. But if preclude any expression of the cultural/political goings on of the day, you can’t help but to mislead your readers, and maybe more importantly, cede social media cred , writ large, to the idealogical shit posters whose lane most people want to stay the hell out of.

        Regards,

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      2. Ok you’re right. First off, never nitpicking. I actually ask people to define words that they’re using not because I’m being pedantic but because I want to understand their perspective. And yes. You’re right. I guess I’m ok with the theory of political thought as a hole, I just don’t engage on a more specific level. I tend to view it more as a theoretical vs practical debate. Does that make more sense?

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  9. These are the kinds of things that if I had to do for myself would drive me up the wall because my things ALWAYS change and are hugely influenced by my mood. Sure, I have some standards that are fixed (being a parent) and those are what I choose to use in my about section, but I find myself going in on a regular basis to change and revamp it to fix some of those smaller areas that are always in flux.

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    1. I think I’ve always been the majority of these things, I don’t buy now have the confidence to own it. I used to worry what people thought if my choices. Now I. D.o.n.t care

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  13. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever really reads the About. Your “branding” covers such a wide range of things that you should have a million followers. I’ll have to go and read my own now to see if I am really all about what I say I am.

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  16. LOL. I used to have a brand like yours. Then I started talking Tics and Tourettes, hence “Happily Ticked Off.” I tried to keep it on that to sell books and get a following. Then I decided I was bored with that and couldn’t keep doing it since my boy was getting older. So then I decided “Happily Ticked Off” was still a brand for me – learning to accept what pisses us off and being happy with what IS working. In there is some spirituality and writing, too, along with parenting. My audience is parents, women, spiritually minded and people who want to transform themselves. I just decided yesterday to be more focused with my blog: Writing less but being more aimed at what I said above. It will keep me blogging less but it will give me time to work on my other writing projects. And then hopefully what I DO write will be more in tuned with what people are looking for. And if not, that’s okay, too. For now I’m not trying to make money on my blog, but if TV doesn’t happen, then it’s book time for me and it’ll be good to have a steady readership. So there you go. (I suppose the fact that I wrote a novel of a comment must mean I’m excited about having direction. Thanks for reading and thanks for writing! I read you for all you listed! 🙂 )

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    1. Yay to a new direction!! I’m looking forward to seeing what you roll out and such! Though I love everything you write, so yeah…

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  18. This list kept me smiling the whole way through! 😉
    I definitely ain’t the grammar police!
    My kids used to watch Catfish! 🙂
    And then there is 7,13,30 and 37 that I all identify with!
    Adding one more thing I love my blankets! If I am on the couch reading or watching TV I have a blanket around me, no matter the season. In bed I have a fan going and blankets. 🙂

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  19. I’m confused about this whole concept of branding. To me, having a brand is like attempting to put your essence into one sentence and I don’t think anyone can be reduced to just that. I have always seen myself as entirely multi faceted. Even Down to how I dress. I’ll wake up one day in 70’s mood and I’ll grab embroidered jeans, funky earrings, and rock a groovy fashion look. Another day I’ll be in Breakfast at Tiffany’s mood and it’s pearls. I’m a writer, a teacher, a former rocker chick, an artist, a calligrapher, and an actress. I suppose having played so many parts when I acted, branding was never something one in the theatre wanted to do. Diversity was/is what it’s all about. I’ve always been political and protested for equality and women’s rights. So I’m a feminist. An environmentalist…How on earth could I brand myself? And there is so much more I want to do. I’m a collector, a mother, a grandmother and a tech nut. I dunno…Maybe it’s because of my age that I don’t understand branding. It feels too much like an obituary. I’ve had to write three obituaries. One for each parent and one for my husband. I Had to encapsulate a life into a paragraph or two. How crazy is that? It’s impossible. So…I just don’t get this branding thing.
    You know, every year when I judge poetry for our state “Louder Than A Bomb Fl Poetry competition, they say a blurb about each judge. Every year I share something different about myself. I don’t want more than a sentence or two but I want the audience to understand a little bit about who I am and why I was asked to judge. (It’s not easy to brand an enigma.) This year because of “me too” I mentioned being in the first all girls rock band in Fl in 1968. (After a line about being a writing teacher). But the rocker chick thing really resonated and all the teenage girls in the audience jumped up and hooted and hollowed and applauded. It was very cool. BTW, one of the schools I judged was Marjory Stoneman Douglas. At the end of a two week competition MSD won the entire state competition . Some incredibly Powerful writers!

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    2. I think I’ve been, to a certain degree, all the things on the list. I’m pretty consistent with who I am. But…I totally don’t get the branding thing. It’s ok if you’re consistent, and it’s ok if you’re omnisonething, but why box yourself in so tight, especially when you’re young? I don’t t get it

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  22. Imagine if all those things on your list were put in a can and you had to come up with a brand that in one or two words gave people a pretty good idea about what was inside.. 🤔

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  24. 🤔 Hmm. Is there such a thing as drinking too much tea? I happen to be a hardcore tea-lover.

    If I were to brand myself, I would say, “I am a blogger who is fond of reading and writing and possesses a penchant for things of a technological and spiritual nature.”

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    1. There is nothing better than tea!! It’s funny…I’m reading a rom com that takes place in Australia, and they actually have a tearoom in the office. I love that!! Perfect brand too. Part of me wants to condense mine, but I don’t know…I sort of like being multi faceted

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  27. Glad to read about the cemeteries. On my list of things to visit whenever I get to Buenos Aires is the Recoleta Cemetery. My husband can’t understand why a cemetery would be in my top three list. Lol. Maybe not all cemeteries… but I really want to do that one.
    And I can’t even begin to start thinking about what I’d write for a brand. Too much introspection at the moment!

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