On his company’s fledgling blog, the other Paul McNamara — known hereafter as The Other One — launches an interesting discussion about how the Internet has changed the branding game, particularly for startups such as his own stealth-ensconced Versai Technology.
In this essay we learn why Fiat drivers always park at the top of hills, Fiat dealers sell window cranks by the dozen, and Fiat enthusiasts put up with crappy cars. There’s a modern-day lesson in it, trust me.
The Other One, a former Red Hat exec, closes his piece with this passage: “And finally, great Internet brands must be ‘aspirational’: They establish a sense of shared mission among their customers. At Red Hat, our mission was to take down Microsoft. Not put them out of business necessarily, but take them down a few pegs. We wanted to establish Red Hat as an alternative to the company that people widely believed had become a monopoly. By affiliating themselves with our brand, people could join the mission and share the aspiration. The very act of buying Red Hat Linux was like sticking your finger in the eye of Microsoft.”
