Brands are everywhere taking your money, ideas and possibly souls. Want a drink? 52% of you actually heard “Get a Coke”. Need some trainers? 32% heard “Where are your Nikes?” Gum? 27% “Wrigleys”. etc
Now despite the fact that I’ve made up those figures completely off the top of my head, most of you were probably thinking either: “52% seems low” or “huh, so… someone actually bothered to do that research?” Either way you have been lulled into the fuzzy comfortable feeling you get from what are now jocularly called “SuperBrands” which causes you to forget all general reason and just plump for a name that you have a vague feeling will be better. Spoiler alert: SuperBrands are not better. There are numerous examples of unbranded or niche products crushing SuperBrands in double-blind tests designed to ascertain efficacy and even more examples of SuperBrands (such as Starbucks) being total dicks to everyone and their brother. But people trust the name, so they buy the branded crap. Like it or not, this is the situation we all want to be in.
But how can you and your paltry tininess hope to cash in on this trust epidemic? Well, you need to become a brand.
Positioning yourself
I’m into being awesome at science. Specifically Physics, and specificallier; Astrophysics relating to trajectories. I want to be the dude that you come to when you need some complex stuff done with your supraorbital missile platform as you’re having trouble fending off all the double-O agents, what with the Lagrangian 1 and 2 points being so damned easy to parallax.
This is not easy as their are some pretty big players in this field; NASA, ESA, CNSA and the hilarious ROSCOSMOS to name but a few and those guys have all kinds of spaceships, competent employees, billions of quid and other vaguely important stuff. I have a cocky attitude and a top ten high score on Portal 2 so the gap initially looks pretty huge. However I have had nearly 14 years of experience and exactly zero fatalities as a result of my work whereas all of the other brands have killed a variety of people and animals in a variety of unusual ways.
I’ve also got a more streamlined process; you tell me what you want, I do it. At NASA they probably have to get it signed off by Jesus before they start thinking about doing a preliminary feasibility study of the possibility of constructing an outline proposal. I’m also cheaper – ROSCOSMOS are famous for spending billions on things that the Tsar of ROSCOSMOS (really, how do they keep a straight face in that office) thought would be a good idea at the time.
So what I do is take all of the things that I can do but they can’t or don’t and pretend that these are the only things that matter:
Awesome Space©: We won’t kill you, we just save you time & money. Or; Awesome Space©: Not getting people killed since 1982.
Now people who see this are probably thinking: “Wait, does that mean my current spaceship provider DOES kill people? Ooooh and they’re cheaper.”
So basically you need to check out your competitors and make sure your unique selling points are the principle thrust of your marketing.
Putting on weight
The perfect company is vast and yet infinitely personal to your needs, so you need to get away from the image of the grotty, working-from-bed freelance troll that perpetuates in the general contractor mythology and start to look more like the armour-clad flaxen-haired demi-god that wields a huge sword (this is all a metaphor, please don’t tell me about your huge sword).
This is not easy when your website (surely you have a website?) was built in 1962, you have an address that starts “Flat 34….”, there is no phone number (because you don’t want your mobile on the internet) and the email address you use for contact is hob_goblin3241@yahoo.com.
Take a look at this site; SpookStudios. That is two guys and a dog in a shed in Brighton Station (I think platform 4 if you want to visit) and yet if rocks so hard it makes visitors seasick. Here’s another from Freelancer Advisor’s good pal Leif. Notice he has all the important stuff and it looks shiny and nice. I think you are getting the idea. If you look like a million quid, then people will value your work accordingly. If you look like a pile of canine faeces, you will not be invited to pitch for BBC work.
The point being that the internet allows you to look like a god damned huge behemoth of a company when you are just an individual so work that code!
Stay tuned for part two about marketing and social media coming…. well let’s say ‘soonish’.
