Play dress-up with your avatar
November 28th, 2007
In Start early, leverage habit I suggested that if you plan to get back to the gym after the new year, now is the time to start seeing images of yourself working out. Dressing up your avatar is a perfect, fun, and very easy way to do that.
An avatar is a little picture that represents you in certain online environments. For example, I made an avatar for the Yahoo! account I use for email and chat. Sometimes an avatar is made from a photo, but more often it’s a cartoon image that is constructed from various body parts and costumes you select.
Usually it’s very easy to make changes to your avatar - for example you might change its hair color, the shirt it’s wearing, or the background it’s standing in front of. Check out the stuff you can do to your Yahoo! avatar at avatars.yahoo.com. Lots of other sites have avatar programs, as well.
Playing with your avatar can be a really fun and safe way to experiment with new identities or remind yourself of future realities. For example, back when I was working on my RV ad campaign I parked a motorhome behind my avatar and dressed “myself” in camping clothes for several months.
TBYB! is always looking for methods to deliver our messages that will be automatic; that is, they occur frequently in the normal course of doing things you would do anyway without requiring any additional action or thought on your part. Dressing up your avatar can be a great way to accomplish that automation. Now that I have all mine all suited up and at the gym I see “myself” working out every time I check my email!
Related articles
Join in!
- Have you made ads for yourself that you're willing to show to the rest of the TBYB! community? Mark them with the tag tbyb in your Flickr account and they'll be automatically displayed on the new Your ads page.
- Or if you're a blogger, post a photo of one of your ads on your blog and send me the link to post on the Your ads page.
- Join the conversation about personal marketing by sharing your thoughts about this article in the comments.
- Take the TBYB reader survey to help me improve this site for you.
- Order a copy of Phrases That Sell
to help yourself write slogans for your ads.
- Buy a flexible Gorillapod tripod for your small
, medium
, or large
camera so you can easily take your own picture.
- Subscribe to the TBYB! RSS feed so you don't miss a single article.
- Recommend this article to others with Blinklist, Del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, reddit, StumbleUpon, or Technorati.
- Try out personal marketing and let us know how it works for you!
October 24th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
i luv this site!!!