The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand

Hugh MacLeod

October 11, 2005

the global microbrand rant

Since I first used the term here in Decem­ber of last year, I have been totally besot­ted with the idea of “The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand”.

A small, tiny brand, that “sells” all over the world.

The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand is nothing new; they’ve exis­ted for a while, long before the inter­net was inven­ted. Ima­gine a well-known author or pain­ter, selling his work all over the world. Or a small whisky dis­ti­llery in Scot­land. Or a small cheese maker in rural France, whose pro­duce is expor­ted to Paris, Lon­don, Tokyo etc. Ditto with a vio­lin maker in Italy. A clas­si­cal gui­tar maker in Spain. Or a small English firm making $50,000 shot­guns.

With the inter­net, of course, a glo­bal mic­ro­brand is easier to create than ever before. A com­mer­cial sign maker in New England. Or a sheet metal entre­pre­neur in the U.K.

And with the advent of blogs this was no lon­ger just limi­ted to peo­ple who made pro­ducts. We saw that any ser­vice pro­fes­sio­nal with a bit of talent and something to say could spread their mes­sage far and wide beyond their imme­diate client base and local mar­ket, without nee­ding a high-profile name or the good­will of the mains­tream media. Peo­ple like Jen­ni­fer Rice, John­nie Moore and Evelyn Rodri­guez come to mind. But it’s not just limi­ted to cot­tage indus­tries. The great Tom Peters talks about “Brand You”, a per­so­nal brand that trans­cends your orga­ni­sa­tion or job desc­rip­tion. The grand-daddy of this space is pro­bably Robert Sco­ble, who may work full-time for Mic­ro­soft, but whose brand is much, much lar­ger than any job desc­rip­tion they could give him; that’s worth far more than anything they’re ever likely to pay him. Once I crea­ted my own fled­gling glo­bal mic­ro­brand (i.e. via this weblog) I star­ted hel­ping other peo­ple do the same. A bes­poke Savile Row tai­lor. A Mas­ter Jewe­ler. A small vin­yard in South Africa. It was something I really wan­ted to know about. It was pro­fes­sio­nally the most com­pe­lling idea I had ever come come across. I was hoo­ked. Of course, “The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand” is not con­cep­tual roc­ket science. You don’t need a Nobel Prize in order to unders­tand the idea. What exci­tes me about it is the fact that I now live in a small cot­tage in the English boo­nies, and career­wise I’m get­ting a lot more done than when I lived in a large apart­ment in New York or Lon­don, for a fifth of the overheads. For one fif­tieth of the stress levels. This year I’ve been spen­ding a lot of time in Lon­don. Any more than 2 – 3 days down there I start fee­ling really stres­sed out. For years I thought it was just me. No, actually, ever­yone down there is really stres­sed out. It’s just con­si­de­red nor­mal. And the same applies in all the other big cities I know well. I was tal­king to a friend on the phone about this yes­ter­day. “There’s only two ways to deal with life in the big city,” he says. “Alcohol and high pri­ces. Immer­sing your­self in high rent, luxury items, trendy, over­pri­ced cock­tail bars, flashy res­tau­rants, tall leggy blon­des who don’t give a damn about you, just to act as a buf­fer zone bet­ween you and the abyss.“ “Which you pay a lot for,” I say. “Which you pay a hell of a lot for,” he says. It seems to me a lot of peo­ple of my gene­ra­tion are loc­ked into this high-priced cor­po­rate, urban tread­mill. Sure, they get paid a lot, but their overheads are also off the scale. The minute they stop tap­dan­cing as fast as they can is the minute they are crushed under the wheels of com­merce. You know what? It’s not sus­tai­na­ble. Howe­ver, the Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand is sus­tai­na­ble. With it you are not behol­den to one boss, one com­pany, one cus­to­mer, one local eco­nomy or even one industry. Your brand deve­lops rela­tionships in enough dif­fe­rent pla­ces to where your per­ma­nent address beco­mes almost irre­la­vant. With English Cut, both Tho­mas and I are selling $4000 suits to Ame­ri­cans, Cana­dians, Aus­tra­lians, Euro­peans, Asians, Arabs etc. Neither one of us cares much for the high-maintenance lifestyle. Sure, we tra­vel all over seeing clients and spea­king at con­fe­ren­ces, but the day-to-day is far more low key. We go to the pub twice a week, we go to the local cheap-and-cheerful Chi­nese res­tau­rant once a week, we have dumb hob­bies we like to do, like taking the sail­boat out on the wee­kend, or dra­wing wee car­toons. We both drive second hand cars and pay cheap-as-hell rent. Again, it’s not roc­ket science. But as long as we keep blog­ging, avoid high overheads and keep making the best suits in the world, nobody can take it away from us. And the same prin­ci­ple applies to the other pro­jects I work on. Frankly, it beats the hell out of com­mu­ting every mor­ning to the cor­po­rate glass box in the big city, something I did for many years. Just so I could make enough money to help me for­get that I have to com­mute every mor­ning to the cor­po­rate glass box in the big city. There are thou­sands of rea­sons why peo­ple write blogs. But it seems to me the big­gest rea­son that dri­ves the blog­gers I read the most is, we’re all loo­king for our own per­so­nal glo­bal mic­ro­brand. That is the prize. That is the tic­ket off the tread­mill. And I don’t think it’s a bad one to aim for.