Once you have basics laid out for your business, you can further your knowledge with essential information to keep you in tuned with marketing world. Please remember that without these basics, you do not have a foundation. Without a foundation, your business will crumble.

You pay money to be a walking billboard for Mikey. You strive to represent Mikey ideal. You craft your self-image based on models and sports stars in Mikey ads (even if you're a pudgy smoker with a lazy eyeball and a ten dollar-a-day twinkie habit).

IMAGE IS

But your adoption of Mikey image runs far deeper. You're not just a Mikey customer, you're a Mikey PERSON.

If someone bad-mouths Mikey, you set them straight. If someone speaks well of a non-Mikey product, you respond with autonomic contempt. If someone converts to Mikey-hood, you embrace them into fold.

If it were a cult, it would be called programming.

If it were an ideology, it would be called brainwashing.

If it were a religion, it would be called a conversion.

But it's a shoe. It's called branding.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

In any field, there are two brands and a bunch of off-brands or wannabes. Democrat and Republican are brands. Reform, Libertarian, Green Party and whoever else are merely Other.

It's a Yin Yang interdependence thing. Note how Democracy is diminished without Communism for counterpoint?

In new world order, stores and websites are clubs, brands are families, and The New Person is defined simply as combination of several dozen brand settings, like toggle switches on a motherboard: Coke (not Pepsi). Chevy (not Ford). Burger King (not McDonalds). Shaken (not stirred). Catholic (not Protestant). White Sox (not Cubs).

And is there ever any real difference between first and second place players in any given category?

Sure. The one I prefer is like ten times better.

Duh.