By Alex Johnson – ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.’ wrote the Bard in perhaps one of the earliest statements about branding. But would it? The answer is yes. And no.

‘Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks, to “deny (his) father” and instead be “new baptized” as Juliet’s lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play.’

Via enotes.com

My name is Alex Johnson. Alexandra Michalina Johnson, to be exact, but I have a long history of moniker morphing and am about to continue.

When I was born I was meant to be called Zofia. My parents had planned their family for a long time, had discussed and settled on girl/boy names in advance. However, day of my arrival, my Dad exuberant, exhausted and full of champagne at his first born he forgot girl name and went with boy name: Alexander. Actually, it was meant to be Aleksander (given my Polish roots) but we shouldn’t be too tough on the old guy. And so it was.

My Mom forgave him – eventually – and so growing up I was know as Ola, or Olenka – the Polish-ization of Alex. I didn’t like being the foreign sounding kid so insisted on being called Poppy. There are many versions of why, but let’s just say my family are inventive with the familiar pseudonyms – there’s Mum: “Musel’ (real name Baska), Dad: “Old Rolf” (Mike), and brothers “Tassel” (Tomasz) and LSO (Little shitty one)/Kevin (from Home Alone)/Zabba (Polish for frog) – (Stefan) – all so very Wes Anderson.

So in school I was Poppy, on all my school records I was Poppy, even on 80s national TV I was Poppy (see below – yes I was a dork). Then I hit my teens and it wasn’t so, ahem, cool. And I reverted back to Alex via the same stubborn method: refusing to answer to anything else. My childhood friends still call me Poppy-Alex though, and my family, Pops.

When I started my fanzine at 14 I called it Parasite – oh so cool to be Emo and ironic about my place in the music industry food chain. I was Alex Parasite on guest lists and that name stuck in that scene with promoters, PR people, record labels, readers and fans. When I joined a Teen-C band at 16, unbeknownst to me, the lead singer gave out my name to journalists as Alex Paradise thinking Parasite was too mean, and that stuck too.

Disco Pistol in NME, 1997

When I started dating a fellow Alex at 18, we had a large group of mutual friends. Soon I was Girl Alex, and he Boy Alex, even if the other were not around. When we split, again the name stuck.

But when I got to 25 and got taken on as a creative at The Hospital I started to think about my brand as a filmmaker. However googling Alex Johnson resulted in something similar to this:

and this:

So I pondered for a while, and decided to change it. However, watching the difficulties Sally Potter went through when traveling to conferences and film festivals (she was born under a slightly different name but never changed it officially) I determined to go whole hog and go through the process via deed poll.

Initially I planned to revert to my mother’s maiden name: Preslakowska, but Producer Lucie Weinegerova – speaking from experience – talked me out of it. It’s too ethnic she said (at that point Eastern Europeans were only considered for bar work in the UK), will work against you on your resume and you’ll never be able to tell people how to spell it. So I chose Alex Presla, a shortening and Anglicization: perfect I thought, it’s unique and still mine – until that plan was quashed by pandering to my Dad’s hurt feelings and I decided to stay Alex Johnson.

And now? Now I find myself talking about the importance of name and identity online pretty consistently. I ask a lot of questions, but the problem is: I don’t have one. The conversation came up with friend and fellow strategist, Micki Krimmel aka Mickipedia during a recent trip to LA:

‘You’re “Alexjohnson100” on platforms and have “alexjohnsononline.com” as your website?’ She gasped.

‘Yes, I registered as alexjohnson100 on hotmail (back in the day) – it’s easier to remember than 54 or 78 – and stuck with it for other uses’

‘But you take up half my letters on twitter, it’s impersonal and no one can find you.’

‘On the first point’, I replied, ‘so does JasonCalcacanis but yes, I agree. Question is, what would you do in my situation? I’m not quite Sarah Smith, but I’m close.’

‘That’s a tough one’ she replied. ‘Let me think on it.

Post panel at Filmmaker Forum, having left my business cards back in NYC after a rushed pack, I found myself laboriously spelling my website for those wishing to contact me, while Micki, having run out of cards said “just Google: if you don’t find me, I’m not doing my job correctly.” Something, clearly, was not right. Or was it?

I understand brands. I get paid for it. As an Interactive Planner at Deep Focus it was my responsibility to protect some major clients online through correct recommendations. I navigate others’ projects with ease and success, as I do with my own creative project work also. But when it comes to myself, me, Alex it’s a little different. There’s no outside perspective, no third eye, no distance on something so personal, and (semi) permanent.

Back home I looked up the Google listings for strategists or filmmakers I admire or had worked with: Mike Arauz, Bud Caddell, Lance Weiler and Arin Crumley and there they all were: loud and clear. But then I looked up the commonality of their names and found an interesting result: There was just one of each (and two of Lance). Contrarily there were 1,447 of me – and that’s just in the US.

CREATING A HANDLE

So when I interviewed Micki for the Being series I pressed her on the importance of a name as part of our discussion. Why is it important to have a name that stands out online? It’s about being instantly recognizable, being able to technically register for social media platforms, services and tools, creating a personality online and findability – a combination of and result of all of the above.

Micki was actually born Michelle Krimmel and replaced her online persona of Micki Krimmel with Mickipedia a few years ago:

‘Mickipedia is my online alter ego’ she said, ‘I am her and she is me. With the Wickipedia play it simultaneously shows that I belong on the web and I understand it, but also that I have fun with things, that I don’t take myself too seriously.’ As such it serves as brand and utility. ‘I also believe that you grow to encompass and become your name and it influences your personality back’.

This concept of an online handle intrigued me but presented a few issues when applied to filmmakers. Here’s a few rhetorical questions:

IN FRONT OF VS BEHIND THE CAMERA

Micki has built her brand by being transparent about her life and personality – a life in front of the camera, essentially. But what about those behind the camera, that brand through their work? For a filmmaker their name is essentially their currency and one that travels with them.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE

Do you want to be fun and pop, or dark and edgy? Does good branding translate as trustworthy author? What works in one world does not necessarily work in the other. Since coining the self-moniker McG from his mother’s maiden name McGinty, the director has had to work extra hard to prove that he is more substance than flash.

Above: McG with Charlie’s Angels & his ‘trademark’: fast cars

PROJECTS VS PEOPLE

Can you find a name that works across work roles and projects? Personally I’m a Digital Strategist and a Filmmaker: contradictory stances in some senses. Some choose to brand via projects rather than by person: Pete Cashmore twitters as Mashable for instance. This would work with a production company or a film, but what if you handle a variety of projects? Also, this approach discounts the value of building a following that stays with you.

A CROWD SOURCED IDENTITY

Using your community to define you: At the end of our interview and fully at ease, I asked Micki to re-tape her intro, to describe herself for the camera but ironically, she had difficulties:

‘Where do I start? I’m not just my job, or past jobs, or my name and consultant sounds (face). I have followers but I’m part of the community, neither more significant than, or defined by the people who follow me. You do it.

‘I can’t’ I replied, ‘I don’t know where to start. You’re a sum of your parts’ I offered: ‘Open source. Created by fans.’

‘That’s interesting’ she said, ‘I do crowd-source everything’.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSISTANCY

Consider how Google’s Page Rank works:

‘Google decides how reliable a site is – and thus how important a site’s content will be when Google forms a list of search results – by considering more than 200 factors as it analyses content. But the secret sauce is Google’s patented formula for following and scoring every link on a page to learn how different sites connect, which means a site is deemed reliable based largely on the quality of sites that link to it.’

Via portfolio.com

SEO is not an exact science given the secrecy surrounding Google’s methods however it’s generally agreed, inbound links, title tags/meta descriptions on your site, keyword density, keyword lay-den links are all important.

Now take this into account when thinking about naming: you see that you can gain hierarchy in a number of ways as long as you are consistent with a naming process:

• Either because of self-created consistent existence on numerous social media platforms (Bud Caddell, Julia Roy)
• Press about you/your project (McG)
• Self created projects/websites/blogs (Arin Crumley, Lance Weiler) with many links in – or links between filmmaker owned sites, like the intricate system devised for Headtrauma
• Or a mixture of all of the above (Mikipedia).

CAN YOU CHANGE YOUR IDENTITY MID COURSE?

For me, I felt it was maybe too late to start again – re-registering everywhere and creating awareness for a new identity but I was pointed toward Sarah Austin, an online life-caster and video journalist who went by the name Sarah Meyers prior to June 2008.

Above: Sarah Austin & blog response

Sarah runs Pop17, a two-to-three minute daily exploration to track, analyze and understand the new cultural phenomenon of online micro-celebrity (Who are these new influentials? What are their stories? How have they leveraged their online successes?) which makes her a specialist in this field. However, there was still confusion on her blog when she came back revamped (see above) as well as in her Google Blog Search.

CONVERSATIONAL & UNUSUAL TRENDS IN NAMING

The rising value of a dot com (a very real issue – Micki herself is chasing a com for her new start up, ironically hindered by her own searchability and the name retainer thus knowing it’s potential worth) as well as the need for memorability, is increasingly leading to some unusual naming, especially within the start up space, as discussed in Media Post just today, as well as a recent trend toward more playful naming of urls for brand campaigns, such as putting the spokesperson first in ashtonscoolpix for Nikon and the conversational urge of yourlidmatters for Yoplait yoghurt. However, by the same measurement, this naming question also dates sites, platforms and projects according to trend and year.

STARTING OFFLINE

Kevin Smith, Tom Green, Rosie O’Donnell (and Miranda July – to a lesser extent) are four ‘name’ individuals I currently point to in terms of filmmakers/celebrities that manage their online well in terms of personal brand creation, social media use and immediacy of communication with fans. However, all started offline, building personas through traditional media prior to moving online (much like Radiohead & NIN) so are exceptions rather than the rule. However, I will explore and explain their methods in a future post, as much of what they do can still be applied.

DIFFICULT NAMES ARE NOT A HINDRANCE

Chuck Palahniuk and Gary Vaynerchuk’s presence online are testament to spelling not being an issue–you’ll always get close enough with a guess for Google to find it. If only I could be called Sayuri Stabrowski liked my Japanese-Polish roommate: that name is made to be famous.

THE ‘FAMOUS’ NAME CONUNDRUM

Which got me thinking about Tom Quinn, the filmmaker, who has the same name as the Head of acquisitions at Magnolia Pictures. Ostensibly this would seem to be a problem, but I had heard that actually this sometimes worked to his advantage. I asked him:

AND SO?

So we find ourselves in a divided space, one which parallels the current divide between film and online culture itself. We see two camps: the first urging get your name – or as similar to – at all costs, and the second highlighting the use of digital as a reinvention tool; represent yourself via a handle.

What can you do? I hope I’ve laid out some thinking here to allow you to make an informed decision, whichever direction you choose. But whatever you go with, be transparent and remember two things: make sure it’s memorable and always be consistent.

Alex Johnson is a NYC based Digital Strategist / Consultant. She started her career within the commercial & music video world (including Radical Media, Partizan, RHB) in London before moving on to head up online outreach & New Media initiatives at Sally Potter’s production company, Adventure Pictures. Alongside devising tactics for low budget feature film promotion & cross-media project development for Endemol, Channel 4 & the ENO, she conceived The Sp-ark Project, a social learning/creative archive platform, currently being used at the University of London. She then joined interactive marketing agency Deep Focus in LA as an Experience Planner (clients included New Line, Universal, HBO, Random House, Vitamin Water, Havaianas, Sundance Channel & The N) guiding thinking on audience insight, branding & strategic approach across Creative, Publicity & Media departments. Most recently she worked with Seize The Media on Myspace/Hammer project Beyond The Rave, an online film release/social game; is consulting for the IFP, guiding the organization’s rebrand & interactive re-launch, and is working with Lance Weiler to expand the open source Workbook Project. Speaking engagements include Open Knowledge Conference, Internet Week NYC, DIY Days LA, Filmmaker Forum & Power to the Pixel. Alex is also a filmmaker, co-founder of interactive theatre collective Me & Them http://ilovemeandthem.com and writes a brand, behavior & trends blog called Motive. More info at: alexjohnsononline.com

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