I've been on the road this week but my story can't compare to Hugh Macleod's road trip round Britain's Tescos, on behalf of Stormhoek.

Hugh says

4. I'm enjoying being away from my usual "blog routine", I have to say. Though it's nice to have something which allows anything to to be published, by anyone, anywhere, into a global medium... like all media, to do it well is EXTREMELY time consuming. I spent five-odd years being sucked deeper and deeper into the blogosphere vortex [Current Technorati ranking: 86], and it's nice to come up for some air, at long last.

Yes, blogging is really just the tip of the Web 2.0 iceberg, and it's fun to see brand Hugh hitting the road this way. Judging by the posts on the Stormhoek blog, he's a walking social object and I wonder how many conversations he's sparking as he schlepps his way round the country. How many Tesco employees are going home and reporting on a weird thing that happened to them at work today?

It's all a million miles away from high-powered branding from the top down. You let go of the trappings of high office when you follow this path, and get down to the grassroots, taking the risk of having some ordinary, rambling conversations in the real world, instead of broadcasting brand mantras over mainstream media. There are no comforting stats of impacts-per-thousands spent this way, just the reality of a certain amount of grind. Of course it's not really a grind if you happen to like talking to people.