Writer Vixen Explains It All

How Branding is Like Sex

Originally posted at The Engine is Read.

Best of Writer Vixen: Originally posted April 2009

If comparing something to sex doesn’t make it more interesting, then we’re not doing it right. Take branding, for instance. Here are the three most important ways that branding is like sex.

#1: It’s simultaneously ubiquitous and mysterious. Like sex, branding is everywhere. And like sex, we’re all convinced that branding is what sells. Do a simple Amazon search on “branding” and you get 50,840 results. Whether you’re one of the “dummies” or a Harvard Business School grad, you could spend the rest of your life reading up on effective branding, simple branding, personal branding, corporate branding, emotional branding and digital branding, just for starters.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Never was so much written by so many and understood by so few. Yet despite all this information, the currents and eddies of attraction between products and buyers remain as elusive as the tendrils of desire between individuals.

Monday Morning Maxims: "How to Succeed in Business"

Best of Writer Vixen: Originally posted November 2007

Starting off your workweek with a bit of humor, here are four edifying corporate lessons complete with memorable epigrams. I didn’t write these—they’ve been floating around for so long that I have no idea whom to attribute them to. Happy Monday!

Corporate Lesson #1
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is toweling off, when the doorbell rings. After arguing over which one should answer the door, the wife gives up, quickly wraps herself in her towel, and runs downstairs. It’s Bob, their next-door neighbor. Before she can say a word, Bob says, "I'll give you $800 to drop that towel." After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of him. After looking her up and down, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.

Confused, but excited about her good fortune, the woman retrieves her towel and goes back upstairs. Her husband shouts from the shower, "Who was that?"

“Bob from next door," she replies.

"Great!" the husband says. "Did he give you the $800 he owes me?"

Moral of the story:
Sharing critical information in a timely fashion may prevent avoidable exposure.

The Vixen Guide to Corporate Life

Best of Writer Vixen: Originally posted July 2007

Although Vixenhood is a full-time gig, it is not, alas, a paying one. I have a committee working on that!

In the meantime, the tedious details of life (rent, car payments and cat food)—not to mention the fabulosity of life (expensive shoes and handbags)—occasionally demand that a Vixen sidle her bodacious behind up to the corporate trough.

Vixenosity is not the most congenial fit with the Corporate Universe. Like the mating of porcupines, such a union should be attempted only occasionally and with a minimum of actual interaction. There is, however, an appalling lack of truly useful guidelines for this situation. So in the spirit of delivering on this column’s promise to “explain it all,” I’ve compiled my Top Five Vixen Tips to Surviving—And Thriving—In Corporate Life.