MAY 13, 2009|PERSONAL BRANDING
The Greatly Exaggerated Death Of The "Who's Who" List?
Over the past few months as I have been contacted by several of these lists to be part of their "exclusive" 2009 publication. They have names like Presidential, Continental and Marquis - and they all promise things like blasting my bio on a billboard in Times Square, and accessing a site where I can connect with all sorts of other highly influential people that I may not know yet. All in exchange for my paying a small "listing fee" to augment my "free listing" which apparently will be part of the directory anyway.
With the rise of online professional networking tools like LinkedIn and social networks like Facebook - you might have thought surely these Who's Who lists have become a forgotten relic of the past, but they seem to be alive and well. Though it may be hard to imagine people still pay for this sort of thing for someone like me who is active on social networks and publishes content to connect to more people, perhaps this Who's Who list subculture is the secret engine really driving business relationships and networks. Am I missing something here, or are these Who's Who lists a virtual ego stroke destined to join Encylopedia Brittanica as tools of a past age that our digital lives are making obsolete?
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How It All Started
A Short Backstory Of This Blog
This is a blog about non-obvious ideas. Originally launched on the Typepad platform in 2005 as the Influential Marketing blog, the stories at first focused mainly on digital marketing while Rohit worked at Ogilvy Advertising. In 2015 Rohit officially rebranded to the Non-Obvious Insights Blog and published his WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious. For the past twenty one years, this blog has coined new terms, introduced future marketing practices and inspired the next generation of non-obvious thinkers and marketers.
