Joe Baena's moustache: the "New Coke" of personal branding?

Joe Baena's moustache: the "New Coke" of personal branding?

    A good friend asked me a few months ago if I'm keeping up with any sports. I flat out told him: "You know what I'm not keeping up? Joe Baena on Instagram!". He politely asked me why.

    I told him the truth: "Now he has a moustache and I hate moustaches!". He laughs. "Just for that?!", he asks in disbelief. His face tells me all about the bizarreness of the situation."That's the law of supply and demand in the attention economy, homs!", I say and brush that off. I did point out that maybe the market in the attention economy was rewarding him, and my attention on social media was a "necessary casualty". Lo and behold, the old Joe Baena is back! The classic Joe Baena, it may be pointed out!

    I went to his Instagram account and really quickly noticed his last six posts after the moustache stunt, and the six last moustache-laden presentations of this amazing fellow sort of make me think that facial hair style gone is good for his metrics: the 6 lasts posts with the moustache, combined, total 116,700 likes and the 6 posts immediately after total 142,322 likes, which points to an increase in likes of 21.96% If Joe Baena was a stock in the stock market, I would say he is Nvidia exceeding expectations regarding the 1 year conservative bull case! If he was a country, he didn't discover oil but he did find a virgin natural gas reserve! Or received a generous amount of capital flight originating in a country where an illiterate socialist just took power!

    There's a famous case study in the history of private sector management: the New Coke fiasco. There was a scandal because Pepsi ran a few blind tests and most customers preferred it over Coca-Cola based on taste only. The Coca-Cola Company then launches a new soft drink, and discards the almost one hundred year old original recipe. Customers were outraged. The product was removed in less than three months, and the original recipe based soda was reintroduced. This contributed to Coca-Cola consolidating its position as the manufacturer of choice for mass market colas.

    Some wonder, since this was so masterfully pulled off in retrospective, if The Coca-Cola Company purposefully took the product away, introduced a new one that sucks, just to give customers the same one they actually like back! Not that said strategy would be ludicrous given the reality of corporate pragmatism, even though most people deny that was actually the case. Regular people, every now and then, do the same thing. I have a friend from my High School days who got so pissed off at his parents being over-demanding that he said he was going to start failing every course in school. His parents did have a very productive discussion with him after he actually failed the first exam on purpose! Like Roman poet Terence said: I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.

    Joe Baena has many challenges ahead, growing out of his father's shadow and carving out a way for himself. I encourage him to remember the importance of the virtue of Temperance. And I assure every reader he can anticipate many great opportunities if he does that!

That's all from me! The die is cast...