Branding Redux

One outcome of this weekend that was mostly frittered away in drinking and laughing with friends (fair enough, eh?) and eating bacon (mmmmm, bacon) was that I had a brain storm of an idea for the elusive branding concept. As I have mentioned before here, the concept of branding your work to establish a clear identity for what you do (no one has any doubt what Nora Roberts' name on a book means, or Stephen King's) has proved challenging for me. So, my latest idea for the apparently 'essential' brand? As the author of Pelzmantel and Unikirja (not to mention stories like "Kerttu," "Wordgeryne" and "Palakainen") my brilliant slogan for my writing is:

Hard to spell; easy to read.

What do you think? Have a lassoed a winner?

Final presentations for the last class tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 8. Then it's all over but the grading and final grading requires no comments. Hurrah. With luck I can send off the essay on medieval magic for Pelz, too. It's been tough trying to balance obscure fascinating facts and an entertaining tone accessible to any reader. Here's hoping.

Social Media Breakfast--Tech Valley

Yesterday morning, much too early, I headed downtown to the Capital Rep Theatre, host of that morning's Social Media Breakfast for the Tech Valley region. The lovely picture is from the CapRep stage: they're currently deep into Shear Madness. Great set, eh?

The featured speaker was Justin R. Levy, a PR/social media maven, who live-tweeted his own wedding. While his experiences were centered in business, there was a lot of useful info for everyone, including the most useful aspects of different social media -- e.g. how building relationships on Twitter is different from doing so on Facebook, but also how you need to use a mix of media not only to cast the widest net, but also to deal with glitches like the recent takedown of Twitter.

And yes, we're back to that sticky issue of branding, again. If you want to make the most of SEO, then you need to know what the search terms are that will lead to your virtual door. Once again I'm stymied by shoehorning my work into some kind of catch phrase. Perhaps one will come to me.

You can see a stream of the event (featuring the back of my head). The lovely Amy Mengel was our hostess and organizer (who's so on the ball she tweeted to tell me there was tea along with the coffee and bagels when I complained on Twitter that there was no tea). While I hold to Wilde's edict about breakfast and brilliance, it was worth getting up early to be there.

Branding: Medievalist

Yes, the third prong of my branding identity, such as it is, has to be me the medievalist. I realise that all of my many attempts at branding only make it clearer that I have weird and esoteric tastes that resist any attempt to brand me for a potential audience. At least "medieval" is surely a more recognizable quantity than "Finnish mythology" I suppose. I do write about popular culture appropriations of the medieval, too, which helps connect this very challenging academic field into the realm of "normal" people (i.e. those who don't find it necessary to study half a dozen or so [okay, ten] dead languages -- although I do find it helpful to intimidate other scholars by listing all of them ;-).

Before I became a medievalist, I thought the same things about the period that most people do: it's all damsels in pointy hats, knights miladying and a lot of plague. Of course, most of what I thought I knew about the Middle Ages was wrong. I wouldn't have discovered that but for taking Stephen Mitchell's class at Harvard where I read Beowulf and Njál's Saga and discovered Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse literature and culture.

It changed everything! I was in love with the languages and had to read more, more, more -- and then I found myself in a PhD program in Medieval Studies and on my way to being an academic.

But it's a hard sell: folks seldom know much of anything about Old Norse and not that much about Anglo-Saxon, apart from Beowulf (and seldom much accurate about that terrific monster story). There's so much fun stuff! Last night at the medieval reading group that the friendly folks at Siena College invited me along for, we were reading riddles. Here's one to give you a taste of this puzzle poetry.

Exeter Book Riddle #9

Mec on þissum dagum deadne ofgeafum
fæder ond modor; ne wæs me feorh þa gen,
ealdor in innan. Þa mec [an] ongon,
welhold mege, wedum þeccan,
heold ond freoþode, hleosceorpe wrah
swa arlice swa hire agen bearn,
oþþæt ic under sceate, swa min gesceapu wæron
ungesibbum wearð eacen gæste.
Mec seo friþemæg fedde siþþan,
oþþæt ic aweox, widdor meahte
siþas asettan. Heo hæfde swæsra þy læs
suna ond dohtra, þy heo swa dyde.

Translation by Craig Williamson:

I was an orphan before I was born--
Cast without breath by both parents
Into a world of brittle death, I found
The comfort of kin in a mother not mine.
She wrapped and robed my subtle skin,
Brooding warm in her guardian gown,
Cherished a changeling as if close kin
In a nest of strange siblings. This
Mother-care quickened my spirit, my natural
Fate to feed, fatten and grow great,
Gorged on love. Bating a fledgeling
Brood, I cast off mother-kin, lifting
Windward wings for the wide road.

Do you know the solution?

Branding: Popular Culture and New Media

I'll blog later about today's class (featuring Texas Chainsaw Massacre and feminist film critique), but for the moment (and that's about all I have) I want to get back to the difficult task of "branding" as we have come to call it. While I'm still resisting the labeling, I am trying to be more conscious of where I might have readers who don't know me yet but might like to do so.

One of my other areas of interest is popular culture; I've been a member of the Popular Culture Association since 1995 and national area chair for Medieval Popular Culture for about five years now. In particular I have an interest in "medievalism" or how popular culture adapts, adopts and re-imagines the medieval, which includes everything from film and television to video games, websites and of course, re-enactments and medieval/renaissance faires.

But I'm also increasingly preoccupied with New Media, particularly its impact on my teaching life. I worry about the lack of engagement with New Media in our curriculum, and with my colleagues Kim Middleton, Catherine Cavanaugh and Fred Antico, helped derive a new minor in Film and New Media Studies. It's a start, but there's so much more to be done. While Twitter, Facebook and so on occupy an important part of the popular media, the impact on our working lives hasn't yet been well articulated -- and I think it needs to be.

But now I have to get back to my class prep, so I'll leave you with a question: what's the impact of New Media on your life?

Branding Myself: Finnish

I'm trying to think about several angles for the "branding" idea, which I must admit still makes me a tad uncomfortable. I revile the forces of capitalist consumption in its may destructive forms, so I rebel at the idea of turning myself or my book into a product. However, I am well aware of the monumental task of finding the readers that are out there for any book, so I steel myself for the task and dive into this project with all the enthusiasm I can muster -- which for this book is a lot.

I'm very proud of my Finnish heritage and the reconnection with my roots that gave birth to this book. The problem, of course, as folks have pointed out, is that most people don't know much about Finland or the people who came from there in the 19th and 20th to settle the northern Midwest. What's the likely thing people think of?

Saunas!

Yes, that's why I chose this picture, which I found hilarious. Saunas are healthy. They're great ways to keep yourself clean. Before modern hospitals, they were the usual place for women to give birth. All kinds of traditions rose up around the sauna, from proper etiquette to magic.

What's that? Magic? Yep -- one of my stories in Unikirja, "Raising Lempi" a group of women practice an old ritual one learned from her grandmother for increasing their sexual attractiveness. I learned about this from my research and was quite intrigued with all the old magic connected with the sauna.

What else do you associate with Finland? Nokia? Lordi? President Halonen looking like Conan O'Brien? (My pal Ulla Suokko was in one of his fake ads!)