{"id":265,"date":"2003-10-09T02:07:55","date_gmt":"2003-10-09T09:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=265"},"modified":"2003-10-09T02:07:55","modified_gmt":"2003-10-09T09:07:55","slug":"just-begging-to-differ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/10\/just-begging-to-differ\/","title":{"rendered":"Just begging to differ"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I partook in a half-day consulting workshop with my colleagues at work. Several important fundamentals about branding and positioning were Powerpointed out to us; I was made familiar with m\u00e5lgrupper (target groups), huvudbudskapet (the main message) and kanaler (channels). The entire session did wonders to my Swedish, and I even articulated my own opinioner<\/em> about why webbloggar<\/em> are a great kanal<\/em> to get our huvudbudskap<\/em> to the savvier m\u00e5lgrupper<\/em> out there.<\/p>\n

If only they had kept the whole thing in Swedish. For some reason I cannot fathom, the consultants \u2014 a company specializing in something called brand-focused differentiation strategies \u2014 decided to title their presentation “Dare to Differ!” I was tempted to differ there and then about the suitability of using that slogan in a marketing situation, unless of course you want<\/em> to argue with your customers.<\/p>\n

As the projected slogan illuminated a darkened conference room, my mind wandered to one of my favorite scenes in Woody Allen’s Zelig, where a newly cured Leonard Zelig ends up in fisticuffs with a visiting psychiatrist because he has become too adamant in his opinions. Sort of like the newly minted MemeFirst<\/a>, actually.<\/p>\n

I’m sure that is not what the consultants had in mind. They probably thought their slogan was a clever little riff on Apple’s Think Different campaign. But “differ<\/a>” is an ambiguous word. I can mean to be different<\/em> or to vary<\/em> (“these specifications differ from the norm”), but when agents with free wills are the subject of the verb, to differ implies disagreement. It is usually a subtle shift in emphasis, but in 360-point all-caps on a monday morning it is not.<\/p>\n

I’m now off to London to give Eurof a dressing down for his most recent comment<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I partook in a half-day consulting workshop with my colleagues at work. Several important fundamentals about branding and positioning were Powerpointed out to us; I was made familiar with m\u00e5lgrupper (target groups), huvudbudskapet (the main message) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-4h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}