Interviewer: But can we expand on this idea, the personal becomes professional. The idea that part of what we are asking people to do is to take a look at the stories in their lives that create the senses of values that work in the economic market place. Or that translate important ideas in relationship to the marketplace?

Michael Moon: Sure. Let me address it in two ways. First of all, you have begun to speak about storytelling and really developing your brand as a focus or as a trajectory of storytelling. As a personal transformational process. And that has value just in and of itself. Telling stories is a way of engaging in self-discovery.

In the course of that I think there is a potential of also running astray. And by running astray I mean that you become so referenced by what works for other people that sometimes you end up losing your soul in the process, you begin to lose your authenticity. And in the entertainment business we call this a sellout. They have the schtick. They have their pat phrases and their mechanical behavior that works the crowd, but they have no spark. They have no authenticity. They just aren't human.

And so that is the downside of this principle that I call consumption driven development. You develop the food that the dog will eat. That can serve as the organizing principle for mass or popular culture. And as soon as you create that feedback loop so that you understand what the dog wants and you produce that and then you find out the dog likes this even more. And as you begin to then iteratively hone in on what really gets the response, right? Sometimes you find that you have gone afield. And that you have lost, that you are no longer on your path.

Interviewer: So you no longer speak from the essence of values that you started with, to the point that whatever you represented in this marketplace stops having any unique value within the marketplace.

Michael Moon: Right. And I once wrote a piece, I think it was in New Media magazine, about the two creative actions. The successful commercial artist and/or storyteller. The first creative act has to do with going to the well and pulling something out that is new, that is fresh, that is outrageous, that is audacious. Maybe even repugnant, obnoxious but it is new. And it is you.

So there is the first creative act. And there is only one person that creative act must serve. The artist. Then when we take that work and try to put it into a market economy or take it to the art gallery or whatever you are going to do, oftentimes we find that people say, you have got an ugly child. I want nothing to do with it. So that then requires the second creative act.

And the second creative act is how do I take my original work, package it, position it, market it, brand it, so that I can fit it into the market economy. The consumption driven development popular culture without destroying its intrinsic spirit. Without bastardizing it? Without killing its spirit.

And the mistake that the successful entertainer gets into is they forget the first creative act is an ugly, messy, maybe even asocial process. And then they take that new water that they have pulled from the well and they turn it into something that people can understand and see themselves and reflect it.

Interviewer: We see this most clearly in music, where the commodification of the new means virtually anything can be absorbed and re-sold. That there must be somebody who would like that taste in its most raw. The first record's a hit, but by the third album the artist is stuck in repeating the first album instead of pushing new ground.

Michael Moon: There was a really interesting little quote from David Bowie in a Playboy Magazine about twenty years ago. This is when Bowie came out with his third incarnation. And he had a song called Fame. And the interviewer said, well, you seem to have written some penetrating insights, and he cited some things in the lyrics about Fame, and basically asked Bowie, you seemed to have mastered the celebrity machine. You have gone through three distinct inventions of your celebrity personality. You are like this chameleon. You have successfully branded every one of them. It wasn't stated like that, but that is how we might now refer to it.

How did you do that? What strategy underlies this success pattern. And Bowie said look, Fame is very simple. It is sustained outrage.

You can do one thing. You can do something outrageous once. You can kiss off, you can aggravate, you can perturbate the popular consciousness once. But to keep doing it again and again in ever increasing increments, that is what creates fame.

In building a personal brand, there always remains a sense of outrageousness. Now you can call that your point of differentiation. And you can softpedal it or you can sell it hard, but I believe it nonetheless underscores a key principle.

Interviewer: That is an interesting thing because we would certainly not think as that transfers over into mass marketing that anybody wants to outrage anybody.

Michael Moon: Yes, well you can go to the Saturn car company. I mean, an outrageous assumption that the largest company in the world, from the largest company in the world, comes this division, called Saturn. Where people matter and customers matter. And it isn't about the car, it is about joining a community. And not just any kind of community but a community that stands for certain values. A community of friends and neighbors. With a sense that we live by the golden rule here.

Interviewer: You are right. That is outrageous.

Michael Moon: Fucking outrageous.

Interviewer: Okay. That is a well made point. We are in a culture that constantly feeds on newness, outrageous in context, but, of course, newness is relative to whichever marketplace you are dealing with.

Michael Moon: Right.

Interviewer: But from the standpoint of the individual executive, what does that mean? How do you imagine their re-visioning their own stories to exist in the networked economy?

Michael Moon: Let me set that in the context of the interactive corporation. When I said that the corporation has not barely an inkling as far as what it means to have an interactive relationship with 10 million people, what does that mean? It means that everybody in the goddam company will have to do e-mail with real customers. Everybody in the organization creates the organizational brand.

And all of a sudden it is not that I have a relationship with Compaq. I have a relationship with Jill Stevens, my person at Compaq. She is my go to person in Compaq. She is on the other side of the firewall. When I need to get to get stuff done, she, if she can't get it done, she gets me into the person, sponsored into another relationship, that gets it done. This is the 21st century.

So Jill has to have her own personal Website at Compaq.com. She has to do storytelling. And she has to build her brand. And so then the Compaq brand or the Apple brand or the Hewlett-Packard brand or whatever, isn't just this big corporate, you know, bend over here it comes again, grandiose, you now, whodeyah, Grand Poobah from on high. It is Jill. Jill is Compaq.

Interviewer: And she has to develop a new set of skills that communicates her identity to the world in what is for her a broadband way. Which the web can be. The web is both a broadband way for her to do that as well as the broadband of relationships that she has to have in the company.

Michael Moon: So then the Compaq brand manager then has to think of him or herself as a Concert Master. And no longer is a soloist or the point of command control. But really, as a conductor of a bunch of very, tightly focused specialists. The horns, the winds, the rhythm section, etc. The strings. And so then that is ultimately how these collaborative interactive brands will emerge. Jill will have her fan club. Joe will have his fan club. But Joe's fan club and Jill's fan club all occur under the sponsorship or under the aegis of Compaq.

And so the reason I do business with Compaq is not only do I get the hardware equipment that works, but Jill, Joe and Michael make it real. Make it personal.

Interviewer: That also corresponds to the changing labor patterns. Most people don't imagine staying for the same company, or in the same relationship with a company for a large part of their life. They assume they will be sliding in and out from being an independent contractor or consultant, to being an employee. They never want to lose the personal brand identity for themselves in relationship. It is something to be constantly built upon, by creating new stories, and expanding the media that transmits the stories on the Web or other contexts.