“You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your f-ing Khakis. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”

You are not a personal brand.

If Fight Club was written today, I imagine that famous Tyler Durden monologue might include a simple reminder for us that we are not, in fact, personal brands. As so often happens, the marketing world has latched on to this idea of people becoming their own brands. On the surface, it sounds simple enough. But if you dig a bit deeper, the concept of a personal brand becomes something much different than what most people actually want from their lives.

Brands require promotion. So, if you consider yourself a personal brand, that means you have to spend time promoting yourself. Like any brand, if you do something good, you need to tell as many people as you can, as many times as you can.

A brand has to advertise, be written about, have a large following, and be patronized in order to be significant. But the most significant people are those who go about their work without fanfare and praise from people they don’t know.

The people that matter - your parents, your husband or wife, your kids, your friends, your colleagues - these people don’t give a shit about your brand. They care about what you do and how you treat people.

We already have the right word for personal brand. It’s reputation. Your reputation is built by doing good things, caring about people and your community, and working hard.

Reputations are built by what you do. Personal brands are built by what you say.

Now, this may sound like arguing over semantics. But I think there is an important distinction here. If you view yourself as a brand, even a personal one, you end up acting like a brand. Instead of doing something for your community because you feel it’s the right thing to do, you do it because it’s a mini, personal PR stunt.

You are a person. You are not a brand, no matter how hard someone tries to convince you that you need to be.

He was famous for these stories. Or perhaps infamous is the right word. There was never a family dinner that did not end with a 20-minute story about his life or a tale about a long-deceased family member.

As a young child, I remember being fascinated by these stories and playing them out in my head as he spoke, picturing every vivid scene and thinking about these stories long after he was done telling them. As I got a bit older, as so many of us do, I grew low on patience and was anxious to leave the table and do whatever it was I wanted to do. I guess, in my mind, I had more interesting things to do than listen to old stories.

I’m not sure quite when it was, but maybe 7 or 8 years ago, I was sitting at that same table listening to my grandfather tell the story of losing his mother when he was still a very young man. There was something about the humility and emotion with which he told this story, more than 60 years after it happened, that I just had not experienced before.

My grandfather was not a soft man. Most of his stories sounded like they could have been the basis for an epic Hollywood action movie. Thomas Walbert was born to a middle-class family in Western Maryland, but soon found himself the man of the house when his father left the family before his 10th birthday and amidst the Great Depression. At this young age he quit school and began working to support his mother and younger sister. Before his 18th birthday, my grandfather was traveling the country as a professional boxer. A few years later, as an Army Ranger, he stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

These were the stories that I had heard so many times throughout my childhood and I admired my grandfather for living such a brave and amazing life. But it was the story about the death of his mother that captivated me like none of the others.

Like I said, my grandfather became a professional boxer at the age of 16. One night, he was fighting in Detroit and after the fight, his manager told him to get back to Maryland as fast as he could. His mother was on her deathbed and did not have much longer to live. He told us, this with tears in his eyes, how he raced home as fast as he could, and was able to tell his mother goodbye just before she passed.

It was this story that really made me appreciate the gift of storytelling that he possessed. From that day on, I listened intently to every story he told and prodded him to tell more. And it’s through many of my grandfather’s stories that I learned not only about my family and where I came from, but about the desires within myself to live a life worthy of great stories.

My grandfather would not have been able to tell these stories if he had not lived the way he did. You cannot tell a story of bravery unless you have acted bravely. You cannot tell a story of loss unless you have suffered it. And, you cannot tell a story of love unless you have experienced it completely.

Bucky Walbert, as he was known to his friends and family, passed away on Saturday at the age of 90. While we cannot possibly remember every detail of every story, I will always remember the lessons these stories taught me and will continue to be inspired by them to live a life worthy of great stories.

But you can never gain one thing without losing something else. The web experience at large may benefit significantly from this, but it will be at the peril of the actual Facebook experience.

First, let’s look at who comprises the majority of a typical person’s Facebook friends. Most of our friends lists include not just family and good friends, but also former and current coworkers, some people we went to high school with, and a few random people who snuck through our approved friend requests. Whatever the reason, we are connected to these people because we, at least on some level, know them.

The point here is this - Most people care about the things shared on Facebook not because of the content itself as much as because of who is sharing that content. For example, I don’t necessarily love looking at pictures of babies, but will gladly spend time looking at pictures of my cousins baby because I love her. What I am not interested in, however, is seeing every site my cousin ‘likes’ across the web that features pictures of cute babies.

In the same way, I might enjoy seeing occasional updates from an uncle or former coworker. But what if this guy is a huge Tea Party supporter and bombards his friends’ News Feeds with countless articles about the Tea Party and Glenn Beck clips?

Just because you are friends doesn’t mean you care about the same things. People may argue about this, but Facebook is based on personal relationships, not on shared interests.

The thing is, people don’t want more information, they want more relevant information. In all honesty, most of your Facebook friends don’t care to see all of your Twitter posts or every restaurant you check-in to on Foursquare. If they did, they would follow you on those networks. That’s because different sites serve different purposes. For that reason, people use the sites and networks that they find the most interesting and valuable. Bringing all of your action from the web into one central location may be good for you, but it’s horrible for all of your friends.

As in any group, our Facebook friends break down into a few categories. There is a small group that never post anything, a large group that posts occasionally, and another small group that posts incessantly. Now, Facebook News Feeds will be completely taken over by the friends that feel the need to share everything they see on the web with everyone they know. So instead of the Facebook experience becoming more valuable, it becomes nearly unusable. That one post from your good friend you haven’t seen in a few months is now buried beneath a bevy of hipster pets and Justin Beiber gossip.

The open graph will create tremendous opportunities for developers to make the web much more interesting and personalized. Facebook is trying to do something huge here, and they may succeed. However, if they are not careful about protecting the user experience on Facebook itself, Facebook could be something that is only used on the open web, and no longer at Facebook.com.

A few weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing the new artistic project of another friend. This person has received serious praise for previous artistic endeavors, and for good reason. He is extremely talented and his work has been featured and adored in nationally known and respected publications. His most recent project is just as amazing and has already garnered similar praise.

One critic, apparently not his biggest fan, however, trashed his latest work. My initial reaction was to shrug and say, “Well, who cares what that guy says.” Of course, it wasn’t my hard work that the man was criticizing, so it was much easier for me to have this reaction. The artist, to my surprise, was taking this critique extremely hard and was seemingly devastated by it.

For some reason, this reaction really surprised me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It occurred to me, that it wasn’t only criticism that he took to heart, but praise as well. All of those positive reviews meant a lot to him, perhaps more than they should.

One cannot relish and love praise, without also being devastated by criticism. This is true of us all. See, praise and criticism are intrinsically linked. They both stem from another’s thoughts about us or our work. And placing too much value on another’s opinion of us, whether that opinion be positive or negative, gives that person control over our feelings and self-value.

I don’t want it to seem that I am singling this man out, because I have been guilty of the same thing. This conversation just brought this truth to light for me and made me see the same fault in myself. It is all too easy to love praise, and it usually happens without us even knowing. But we must be careful not to give others the power to determine how we feel about our work or ourselves. We are all flawed and one man’s opinion should never create the value of another.

We hear so much in our culture today about how you have to work hard to be successful. Which is true. However, what usually goes unsaid is the implication that you must succeed at all costs. The end justifies the means. If you need to step on people to get ahead, then that’s just part of the game.

Conan is the first person in the spotlight I have heard in a long time defy that idea. Not only should you work hard, but you also need to treat people with dignity and respect. It sounds simple, but so many people in positions of power don’t hold this belief.

The means matter. How we live and how we treat people matters. Our fortunes will vary and we all will go through good times and tough times. The important thing is to stay true to our beliefs no matter what and to continually treat others with the dignity and respect they deserve.

I am extremely excited about embarking on this adventure. Blueliner is a great agency made up of a lot of smart and interesting people and I know we will do big things in the coming months and years. I’m also really looking forward to living and working in New York. Having spent a good amount of time there in the past year, I know that it is going to be a really amazing life experience.

As I’m sure anyone reading this knows, my girlfriend Lauren and I have been dating long-distance for the past year and a half. We have done amazingly well dealing with long Megabus rides, weeks of not seeing each other, and all of the issues that go along with a long-distance relationship. With that said, I cannot wait to actually live in the same city as her.

But with the excitement and anticipation of a new experience undoubtedly comes the downside of leaving the people and places that you know so well. My family and lifelong friends live in Baltimore and I know it’s going to be hard, at times, not being able to drive over to their houses or grab dinner together on a weeknight. Baltimore has always been my home and a city that I love. There is something about Baltimore that cannot be replicated in any other city.

I am also truly going to miss all of the people at Media Works and our amazing clients. I have gained an incredible amount of knowledge over the past 3 years and have developed some really great relationships that I am sure will continue through the years. I owe a special thank you to Jody Berg for giving me the opportunity to be a part of Media Works and for much guidance and support during my time there.

The more I think and talk about the move, though, the more excited I get. Thanks to all of my friends, family, and maybe some strangers who read this blog. I hope you will keep reading and stick with me throughout this next stage of my life. And next time you’re in New York, give me a call.

So, here’s to new challenges and experiences. Stay tuned.

Today I placed my second order with Dogfunk.com. I had already received free 7-14 day shipping , but when I received the confirmation email I noticed the line,

“We know this isn’t your first time. By now you’re practically family, so we bumped your order to the front of the line. Your order will ship free UPS Ground. Most items ship within 24 hours.”

Wow. Talk about an amazing way to engender customer loyalty and surprise your frequent customers with great service.

Well done, Dogfunk.

What is premium content anyway?

Let’s look at an offline example first.

This past Saturday during the blizzard, I watched nearly all of season 3 of The Wire. This is some of the most inspired, well-written, intelligent television ever created. The Wire is premium content at it’s finest. What The Wire was not, however, was quick, easy, or cheap to produce. Additionally, while the show has developed a sizable cult following in recent years, it was not instantly popular or loved by a mass audience. In the same way that The Wire was not easy or quick to produce, it also wasn’t always easy to watch or digest for some people. Watching this show took a desire to pay attention and a certain commitment to be emotionally involved in each episode for a full 60 minutes. It also required a subscription to a premium TV channel.

On the other end of the television content spectrum, are countless garbage shows that millions of people watch every week. But why? Why do we watch these shows? Just like they are cheap and easy to produce and have mass appeal, these shows offer a simple, cheap viewing experience. We don’t become invested in the characters and when the show ends we don’t care what happens to these people. Cheap television gives us a quick laugh, an escape from real life and doesn’t ask anything more from us.

So what does any of this have to do with the web? Well, just like HBO struggled to keep The Wire on air as long as it did, content producers on the web are struggling to monetize their work and keep their sites alive and profitable. Right now there is a chasm developing between sites like WSJ and Reuters who want to charge for premium content and producers like AOL and Demand Media who are focused on churning out cheap content, ad nauseum. And somewhere in the middle are news sites, entertainment sites, and bloggers who are trying to eek out a living based on the ever-eroding CPM.

What do the people want?

As I often tell clients, you can learn a lot about what people are interested in online by their search patterns.

Google Zeitgeist also offers some very interesting insights into the fastest rising and fastest falling searches of the year. Most of the keywords people were searching in 2009 were related to entertainment and gossip, not things that usually lend themselves to premium content.

Does this mean people don’t want premium content online?

No, I don’t believe that is the case. As with any form of media, the mass audience will always gravitate towards simple, cheap, fleeting entertainment. In 2010 and the years to come, however, I believe there will be more niche audiences that will embrace premium content on the web. This won’t just happen on subscription sites like WSJ, but will happen anywhere that great content exists.

Premium content has a future on the web, but it lies in direct opposition to junk content. As more niche sites continue to deliver amazing content, they will win new audiences that have grown tired of the cheap grasping at pageviews by the previous purveyors of premium content.

If you are producing great content, keep doing it. Don’t take the easy, cheap way out. Premium content will be rewarded even if it isn’t beloved by the masses.

My favorite albums of 2009:

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

Wye Oak - The Knot

Husband & Wife - Dark Dark Woods

Built to Spill - There is No Enemy

Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything To Nothing

Dan Deacon - Bromst

M. Ward - Hold Time

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

So, there you have it. My favorite albums of 2009. Agree with some? Disagree with others? Leave a comment and let me know what albums I missed.