I’m involved in many aspects of advertising where each of the areas are different. Take acting for instance. Before coming to Japan I was a union actor since the age of 10. When I came to Tokyo it was easy to get into the acting community & start getting work. One of the things that is important is a simple face. I love comedy, not because I’m in Japan but actually I just love doing comedy. Most of the TV shows I’ve been on just let me adlib because TV producers & directors have seen me, know what I can do, who I worked with before & are confident in what I can do.
Now comes to the other side of advertising, SEM, SEO communities the ones online. SEO, Google put a face on one of the SEO team members for them Matt Cutts. Most of you guys know the guy & probably have seen his face. For those of us in digital advertising there are plenty of publications that always show who are the big guys & important players. With domains think about it who are the guys you trust a bit? Or actually know? Ron Jackson, Rick Schwartz, maybe even Frank Schilling (Frank’s Chilling’), you guys all know the faces & are more likely to listen to them, or what they have to say. I even remember when I owned IDNForums, members seem like they hated Rick Schwartz but the thing is you already know him, & he has no idea who people in the IDN Community are or what they are experts in.
More & more IDN related services are going to pop up. There is a vast variety of faces that are attached to IDNs. Multicultural variety that’s just hidden. I’m pretty open about who I am, what I do. As of now I write this blog for self documentation & for those who wish to read it. I wish there were faces. I think the concept of IDNs has been embraced. These domainers, guys who have blogs under their name, with profiles about who they are pix etc, they just seem more credible to the average person. I might be wrong… but these are my thoughts…