Alexia Blogs

There’s a universal truth we’re all subject to, ask us to recommend a service or describe a real-world object and we revert to talking about the emotional impact that they have on us. On that favourite album - a stolen moment somewhere special. That little black dress - the first place you wore it and who you met. You get the idea. Events, people, services, even sources of information are branded in our memories and concentrated as a single idea - One Great Thing. Ask us to articulate and we default to those emotional brands. Recollection of a sensual ideal. Hot-iron buffalo, like. Sans pain and the acrid stench of burning flesh. 

Big companies are built on the back of feeding Johnny Customer emotional messages. Just look at companies with good examplers of One Great Things include Nokia’s “Connecting People”, Coca-Cola’s “Always” and Apple’s “Think Different”. Each of these simply sets out an emotional aspiration or a comfort source as a branding magnet. A personal connection so my Euro its merry way into their pockets.

I have always wondered what it would be like to deconstruct the concept of blog branding. To look at the emotional triggers that hook both bloggers and readers in perpetual cycle of write/read/comment. We all blog to a brand. A fixed emotional formula set by our mission statement - our One Great Thing. While we’re all motivated to express ourselves, at a deeper level, we all seek to sate a gap that blogging fills. These are not negatives, rather emotional spots that help us compose that message. Here are just a few I’ve been playing with:

For business blogs: it’s about shoehorning agenda, spin and self-promotion to gain and retain clients. They play on the disconnectedness of your life and/or business and promise a brighter day. They try to inspire confidence and control, to gain your trust. All in emotional way, of course. The boom-boom message is all about inspiring awe. 

For personal blogs: it’s all about establishing and retaining identity. People don’t want to be lost in a sea of blank faces - readers and writers instinctively know that. Yes, pseudonyms can be used, but the one-to-one connection is unmistakeable. Exposing personal meanderings is all about stamping a spot on the web and building out personal relationships or making them stronger. At the extreme end of the scale, you find that some personal blogs tend to pile on the shock quotient in an effort to distinguish themselves from the rabble. It’s all a matter of personal style, but the fingerprints are sometimes all too visible. The fear of losing identity, the search for acceptance and/or censure is never far behind.

For rights advocacy blogs: here, it’s all about the eternal struggle for rebalancing inequalities. Isolation caused by social exclusion often stalks the writer. Readers look for comfort, acceptance or from a diametric position, a cause to rally  against. In a funny kind of way, I find these some of these blogs tend towards combining shock and awe into a heady mix. They aim to separate readers and ask them questions about personal givens.

Where does your blog fit in? What deep triggers make you blog or return to regular reads? What does this do to your brand and how does it shape your One Great Thing message?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under Blogging, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.