Hey Newbie Marketers: Show your real face in Avatar

Ok Tamal, keep it up and I just may cast my vote you to make you one of the top runner ups in the BMW of the year award.

What do you say about this pic and this company???



Note the pic? Now, note the truth.

So I guess, by your business model, the Quaker Oats Company has no trust amongst consumers?

Oh, and what about David Deangelo of the online company, Double Your Dating? For years no one knew DD is a pen name and that the man behind the fictional dating icon is actually a person name: Eben Pagan.



Even when Eben finally let the cat out the bag about his true identity, some people still do know, but guess what, they still trust him!

In the final analysis, you put your real picture up and guess what? Who cares either way. Just so you know, if you never brought it to our attention, no one would have given a second thought to it.

Giles, the Crew Chief

Offend me? :confused: Not one bit.

Where can I find your opt-in? I just decided I want to subscribe to it.

(Tony Shepherd is one marketer whose emails and blog posts I enjoy receiving/reading, for exactly this reason. )

I'm going to call your mother and tell her you had a boob job That should get her attention.

Yeah ... especially if you're a male. If you're a female, who cares how big her *ahem* breasts are? Which goes to show ... you can put any pic up there and no one will know whether it is the real you or not. I certainly don't know if that is your real pic.

Branding ... branding is not about putting a face on a forum or piece of stationary.
Wikipedia:
A brand is the identity of a specific product, service, or business. A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. I do, as a matter of fact, use my avatar on many of my own personal sales pages and a personal blog. That is branding. I could just as easily use a symbol ... that too is branding. As long as it is consistent, it is branding.

Funny thing is, many people here "know" me as well as you can know someone on the Internet. They know my name and it's easy to also find my address and email. They know what I do for a living.

Just because someone slaps a photo up in the forum does not mean that we know you or trust you. That's called reputation and no matter what symbol you use to represent yourself, reputation is built over time. Has nothing to do with a photo.

Never bored mate. Let the guy run his own race. Either he learns or he doesn't.

Hi Commander Chief, how's the flight over there? Can you see my house up from the sky. LOL ..jokes apart.

Well pal seriously do you need all that documents just to exchange messages with me, or tweet, comment, PM etc? Do you do this with everyone you meet? I am saying I have shown my real face and I would like to see your own face.

Since you are posting on this thread I have build a personality for you on my mind based on your replies. Next time when I will think about you, the guy in your avatar will come in my mind.

So you see we are humans who is reading, interacting and commenting. We get happy when some one agrees and get angry when someone disagrees with us. So why not put a real face aside to that real mood?

Yes this is how my trust works. And what I believe, I think everybody else is like me, but I'm wrong.

So many people who have done business with me, never talked/video chat with me on the first time. They have been the best customers, because I feel they are like me, they trusted me.

People who have talked with me on skype, video chat, email and verify me for days didn't end up working with me ever. I see the world is filled with so many people with so many different beliefs. MERRY CHRISTMAS

This really is a picture of me, though, as we're on about trust here, I think it's important that people realise that I created the picture...I'm not really an art gallery/museum exhibit.

Just in case people had an issue with that. :rolleyes:

Wow - millions of sales pages with photos of the marketer on them?
Can you send me the urls of all those that you visited and what steps you took to verify that the photos were of a real person and not used to lend credence to an online alias.

I've been online for years and I doubt I've seen anywhere near a million sales pages.

[Edited to remove comments that may have derailed thread]

Richard -

Interesting that when I posted in a thread asking why a photo of a Canadian blond female student was the avatar for a guy from India - my post was deleted.

Sometimes threads with such avatars are entertaining - some people are dopes (or seriously need a date).:p

I still can't get over how often the idea of "not having anything to hide" so often seems to come up as sort an ultimate bottom-line conclusion in this discussion. There are so many other reasons why a person would want to remain anonymous. Loss of privacy and identity theft are certainly on this list. And in the case of a woman, especially, there is the issue of stalkers. TrekkieGrrrl makes a good point about how your choice of online identity can say MORE about who you really are than your real name. This could be lumped in with the idea of "branding" if you wanted to reduce it to business terms (although it is really a much richer idea than that for some people---fortunately).

Tsgeric started a very lively thread on this topic that might interest some. One of his most compelling points was the worry that an employer or potential employers might not approve of something you say or do online. Granted, a lot of us don't have conventional jobs but it does open up the possibility of pressure and judgement from unexpected sources. One of the posters on tsgeric's thread talked about how he used his real name at first for some kind of simple online venture and ended up getting calls from the university (he was a student) complaining that people were calling from all over the world to verify his student status. Needless to say, he has used an alias ever since.

All of this is just to make my point---that not everyone who feels more comfortable with a "stage name" is doing so because they have something to hide. There can be all sorts of valid reasons.

Having said that--I've gleaned from other posters on WF that if you want to use your real name, it CAN work. For instance, one guy googled his own name and came up with THOUSANDS of matches. So if you have a fairly common name--you may be able to be "honest" about who you are and still be pretty safe. It will help if you don't also give out too many other clues such as your location that would let people narrow it down too easily. As far as your pic goes---I won't even go into that. There was some pretty scary stuff out there recently about unintended consequences of facial recognition technology.

I think that being "yourself" or not out there is a very important basic choice. Most of us underestimate its importance, I think. Whichever path you take has advantages and disadvantages. This is greatly influenced by your particular situation and goals, obviously. Whichever path you take automatically has certain consequences that you can plan for. For instance, if you have a fake name, be prepared for awkward moments when you are ready to partner up with someone to do a public launch--cohost a live event---or even make yourself available for press release followups (This is probably the real reason most of the "big" people in IM are quite public---it would just be too much work and too inhibiting to do otherwise). Similarly, if you decide to be "you"---please take care with how much other personal information can be readily linked to your name. I realize that determined people can usually find much of this out--but if you make it a little less convenient, you can weed out at least most of the crazies, etc. And be open to the possibility at least of using pen names when addressing controversial subjects.