I’ll Dive on that Intention Grenade

Yesterday I read one of the best posts of the year based of Seth Godin’s new “Brands In Public” site.

Brand in Public was designed to show the world just how much Seth cares about your brand. Yep, he loves you so much that he has sent his team of goblins out to register your Brands in Public company page for you, fill it with scraped content (blog posts, tweets, Google News, Trends, etc) and then lock it down so that you have absolutely no way to touch or control it. Unless you pay him.

Ouch.  That post shows up as #2 for a search on ‘brandjacking.’

But lets, as I do often, take a giant step backwards.  Why are people pissed?  Because they think his intention is off of their values.   His intention (as targeted and publicly formed by articles like this) is to make money off holding ‘ransom’ a brands work, and that sucks.

If he launched it as an opt in service to brands, I would guess the number of complaints would have been about 0%.  That is because his intention could be pointed to want to help brands with this angle of a solution.

See the difference? He could sell it for the same price and not be a punching bag for brand strategists.

Take a guy making baseball bats for little leagues.  If his intention (however you come to that conclusion) is he wanted a better bat for his son, you would support him.  If his intention was to capitalize off an industry where parents will overpay for cheap items, you would not.  Same action, different intention.   Posting economy changes all of this.

Why is this?  Pure intentions result in sustainable companies people can be proud of.

I was just told about the following video, which somehow fits into what I am talking about.  What is the intention of your action, and can people call that lame?

Hilarious stuff, I ride a fixie everyday, because, you know, I like the control over the road.

Part of your job at a startup is to dive on that intention gernade.  Make it clear, show the world your solution to a problem you have and take full responsibility for the product.