Do you know about - Brand Positioning - Brand Image
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You're branded, branded, branded, branded.
It's time for me -- and you -- to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that's true for anything who's concerned in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the enterprise we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are Ceos of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in enterprise today, our most leading job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.
It's that uncomplicated -- and that hard. And that inescapable.
Behemoth fellowships may take turns buying each other or acquiring every hot startup that catches their eye -- mergers in 1996 set records. Hollywood may be concerned in only blockbusters and book publishers may want to put out only guaranteed best-sellers. But don't be fooled by all the frenzy at the humongous end of the size spectrum.
The real action is at the other end: the main opportunity is becoming a free agent in an economy of free agents, finding to have the best season you can fantasize in your field, finding to do your best work and chalk up a qualified track record, and finding to create your own micro equivalent of the Nike swoosh. Because if you do, you'll not only reach out toward every opportunity within arm's (or laptop's) length, you'll not only make a qualified gift to your team's success -- you'll also put yourself in a great bargaining position for next season's free-agency market.
The good news -- and it is largely good news -- is that every person has a opportunity to stand out. every person has a opportunity to learn, improve, and build up their skills. every person has a opportunity to be a brand worthy of remark.
Who understands this basic principle? The big fellowships do. They've come a long way in a short time: it was just over four years ago, April 2, 1993 to be precise, when Philip Morris cut the price of Marlboro cigarettes by 40 cents a pack. That was on a Friday. On Monday, the stock market value of packaged goods fellowships fell by billion. every person agreed: brands were doomed.
Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services -- from accounting firms to sneaker makers to restaurants -- are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their categories and come to be a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz.
Who else understands it? Every single Website sponsor. In fact, the Web makes the case for branding more directly than any packaged good or buyer goods ever could. Here's what the Web says: anything can have a Website. And today, because anything can ... anything does! So how do you know which sites are worth visiting, which sites to bookmark, which sites are worth going to more than once? The answer: branding. The sites you go back to are the sites you trust. They're the sites where the brand name tells you that the visit will be worth your time -- again and again. The brand is a promise of the value you'll receive.
The same holds true for that other killer app of the Net -- email. When every person has email and anyone can send you email, how do you conclude whose messages you're going to read and acknowledge to first -- and whose you're going to send to the trash unread? The answer: personal branding. The name of the email sender is every bit as leading a brand -- is a brand -- as the name of the Web site you visit. It's a promise of the value you'll receive for the time you spend reading the message.
Nobody understands branding great than expert services firms. Look at McKinsey for a model of the new rules of branding at the enterprise and personal level. Roughly every expert services firm works with the same enterprise model. They have Roughly no hard assets -- my guess is that most probably go so far as to rent or lease every tangible item they possibly can to keep from having to own anything. They have lots of soft assets -- more conventionally known as people, preferably smart, motivated, talented people. And they have huge revenues -- and breathtaking profits.
They also have a very clear culture of work and life. You're hired, you article to work, you join a team -- and you immediately start figuring out how to deliver value to the customer. Along the way, you learn stuff, create your skills, hone your abilities, move from project to project. And if you're of course smart, you form out how to distinguish yourself from all the other very smart habitancy walking colse to with ,500 suits, high-powered laptops, and well-polished resumes. Along the way, if you're of course smart, you form out what it takes to originate a distinctive role for yourself -- you originate a message and a strategy to promote the brand called You.
What makes You different?
Start right now: as of this occasion you're going to think of yourself differently! You're not an "employee" of general Motors, you're not a "staffer" at general Mills, you're not a "worker" at general electric or a "human resource" at general Dynamics (ooops, it's gone!). Forget the Generals! You don't "belong to" any enterprise for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any single "function." You're not defined by your job title and you're not confined by your job description.
Starting today you are a brand.
You're every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop. To start mental like your own favorite brand manager, ask yourself the same examine the brand managers at Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my goods or assistance does that makes it different? Give yourself the traditional 15-words-or-less contest challenge. Take the time to write down your answer. And then take the time to read it. Several times.
If your acknowledge wouldn't light up the eyes of a prospective client or command a vote of trust from a satisfied past client, or -- worst of all -- if it doesn't grab you, then you've got a big problem. It's time to give some serious notion and even more serious effort to imagining and developing yourself as a brand.
Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors -- or your colleagues. What have you done lately -- this week -- to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your many and clearest strength? Your most qualified (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?
Go back to the comparison in the middle of brand You and brand X -- the coming the corporate biggies take to creating a brand. The proper model they use is feature-benefit: every feature they offer in their goods or assistance yields an identifiable and distinguishable benefit for their buyer or client. A dominant feature of Nordstrom agency market is the personalized assistance it lavishes on each and every customer. The buyer benefit: a feeling of being accorded individualized attentiveness -- along with all of the choice of a large agency store.
So what is the "feature-benefit model" that the brand called You offers? Do you deliver your work on time, every time? Your internal or external buyer gets dependable, trustworthy assistance that meets its strategic needs. Do you anticipate and solve problems before they come to be crises? Your client saves money and headaches just by having you on the team. Do you all the time complete your projects within the allotted budget? I can't name a single client of a expert services firm who doesn't go ballistic at cost overruns.
Your next step is to cast aside all the usual descriptors that employees and workers depend on to locate themselves in the enterprise structure. Forget your job title. Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the proper rungs of progression you've climbed in your work up to now. Burn that damnable "ladder" and ask yourself: What have I ended that I can unabashedly brag about? If you're going to be a brand, you've got to come to be relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value, that you're proud of, and most important, that you can shamelessly take prestige for.
When you've done that, sit down and ask yourself one more examine to define your brand: What do I want to be notable for? That's right -- notable for!
What's the pitch for You?
So it's a cliché: don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle. It's also a principle that every corporate brand understands implicitly, from Omaha Steaks's through-the-mail sales agenda to Wendy's "we're just regular folks" ad campaign. No matter how beefy your set of skills, no matter how tasty you've made that feature-benefit proposition, you still have to market the bejesus out of your brand -- to customers, colleagues, and your virtual network of associates.
For most branding campaigns, the first step is visibility. If you're general Motors, Ford, or Chrysler, that commonly means a full flight of Tv and print ads designed to get billions of "impressions" of your brand in front of the intriguing public. If you're brand You, you've got the same need for visibility -- but no allocation to buy it.
So how do you market brand You?
There's of course no limit to the ways you can go about improving your profile. Try moonlighting! Sign up for an extra project inside your organization, just to introduce yourself to new colleagues and showcase your skills -- or work on new ones. Or, if you can carve out the time, take on a freelance project that gets you in touch with a totally novel group of people. If you can get them singing your praises, they'll help spread the word about what a qualified contributor you are.
If those ideas don't appeal, try teaching a class at a society college, in an adult instruction program, or in your own company. You get prestige for being an expert, you growth your standing as a professional, and you growth the likelihood that habitancy will come back to you with more requests and more opportunities to stand out from the crowd.
If you're a great writer than you are a teacher, try contributing a column or an notion piece to your local newspaper. And when I say local, I mean local. You don't have to make the op-ed page of the New York Times to make the grade. society newspapers, expert newsletters, even inhouse enterprise publications have white space they need to fill. Once you get started, you've got a track article -- and clips that you can use to snatch more chances.
And if you're a great talker than you are teacher or writer, try to get yourself on a panel discussion at a discussion or sign up to make a presentation at a workshop. Visibility has a funny way of multiplying; the hardest part is getting started. But a merge of good panel presentations can earn you a opportunity to give a "little" solo speech -- and from there it's just a few jumps to a major address at your industry's each year convention.
The second leading thing to remember about your personal visibility campaign is: it all matters. When you're promoting brand You, all you do -- and all you choose not to do -- communicates the value and character of the brand. all from the way you handle phone conversations to the email messages you send to the way you conduct enterprise in a meeting is part of the larger message you're sending about your brand.
Partly it's a matter of substance: what you have to say and how well you get it said. But it's also a matter of style. On the Net, do your communications demonstrate a command of the technology? In meetings, do you keep your contributions short and to the point? It even gets down to the level of your brand You enterprise card: Have you designed a cool-looking logo for your own card? Are you demonstrating an appreciation for create that shows you understand that containers counts -- a lot -- in a crowded world?
The key to any personal branding campaign is "word-of-mouth marketing." Your network of friends, colleagues, clients, and customers is the most leading marketing vehicle you've got; what they say about you and your contributions is what the market will ultimately gauge as the value of your brand. So the big trick to construction your brand is to find ways to raise your network of colleagues -- consciously.
What's the real power of You?
If you want to grow your brand, you've got to come to terms with power -- your own. The key lesson: power is not a dirty word!
In fact, power for the most part is a badly misunderstood term and a badly misused capability. I'm talking about a distinct kind of power than we commonly refer to. It's not ladder power, as in who's best at climbing over the adjacent bods. It's not who's-got-the-biggest-office-by-six-square-inches power or who's-got-the-fanciest-title power.
It's sway power.
It's being known for making the most critical gift in your single area. It's reputational power. If you were a scholar, you'd portion it by the number of times your publications get cited by other people. If you were a consultant, you'd portion it by the number of Ceos who've got your enterprise card in their Rolodexes. (And great yet, the number who know your beeper number by heart.)
Getting and using power -- intelligently, responsibly, and yes, powerfully -- are critical skills for growing your brand. One of the things that attracts us to determined brands is the power they project. As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose qualified proximity creates a halo ensue that rubs off on you.
It's the same in the workplace. There are power trips that are worth taking -- and that you can take without appearing to be a self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing megalomaniacal jerk. You can do it in small, slow, and subtle ways. Is your team having a hard time organizing efficient meetings? Volunteer to write the agenda for the next meeting. You're contributing to the team, and you get to conclude what's on and off the agenda. When it's time to write a post-project report, does every person on your team head for the door? Beg for the opportunity to write the article -- because the hand that holds the pen (or taps the keyboard) gets to write or at least shape the organization's history.
Most important, remember that power is largely a matter of perception. If you want habitancy to see you as a qualified brand, act like a credible leader. When you're mental like brand You, you don't need org-chart authority to be a leader. The fact is you are a leader. You're leading You!
One key to growing your power is to recognize the uncomplicated fact that we now live in a project world. Roughly all work today is organized into bite-sized packets called projects. A project-based world is ideal for growing your brand: projects exist colse to deliverables, they originate measurables, and they leave you with braggables. If you're not spending at least 70% of your time working on projects, creating projects, or organizing your (apparently mundane) tasks into projects, you are sadly living in the past. Today you have to think, breathe, act, and work in projects.
Project World makes it easier for you to correlate -- and advertise -- the strength of brand You. Once again, think like the giants do. fantasize yourself a brand employer at Procter & Gamble: When you look at your brand's assets, what can you add to boost your power and felt presence? Would you be great off with a uncomplicated line postponement -- taking on a project that adds incrementally to your existing base of skills and accomplishments? Or would you be great off with a whole new goods line? Is it time to move overseas for a merge of years, venturing outside your relieve zone (even taking a lateral move -- damn the ladders), tackling something new and wholly different?
Whatever you decide, you should look at your brand's power as an exercise in new-look résumé; management -- an exercise that you start by doing away once and for all with the word "résumé." You don't have an old-fashioned résumé anymore! You've got a marketing brochure for brand You. Instead of a static list of titles held and positions occupied, your marketing brochure brings to life the skills you've mastered, the projects you've delivered, the braggables you can take prestige for. And like any good marketing brochure, yours needs constant updating to reflect the growth -- breadth and depth -- of brand You.
What's loyalty to You?
Everyone is saying that loyalty is gone; loyalty is dead; loyalty is over. I think that's a bunch of crap.
I think loyalty is much more leading than it ever was in the past. A 40-year work with the same enterprise once may have been called loyalty; from here it looks a lot like a work life with very few options, very few opportunities, and very exiguous personel power. That's what we used to call indentured servitude.
Today loyalty is the only thing that matters. But it isn't blind loyalty to the company. It's loyalty to your colleagues, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your project, loyalty to your customers, and loyalty to yourself. I see it as a much deeper sense of loyalty than mindless loyalty to the enterprise Z logo.
I know this may sound like selfishness. But being Ceo of Me Inc. Requires you to act selfishly -- to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to recompense yourself. Of course, the other side of the selfish coin is that any enterprise you work for ought to applaud every single one of the efforts you make to create yourself. After all, all you do to grow Me Inc. Is gravy for them: the projects you lead, the networks you develop, the customers you delight, the braggables you originate originate prestige for the firm. As long as you're learning, growing, construction relationships, and delivering great results, it's good for you and it's great for the company.
That win-win logic holds for as long as you happen to be at that single company. Which is of course where the age of free agency comes into play. If you're treating your résumé as if it's a marketing brochure, you've learned the first lesson of free agency. The second lesson is one that today's expert athletes have all learned: you've got to check with the market on a regular basis to have a trustworthy read on your brand's value. You don't have to be finding for a job to go on a job interview. For that matter, you don't even have to go on an actual job interview to get useful, leading feedback.
The real examine is: How is brand You doing? Put together your own "user's group" -- the personal brand You equivalent of a software enumerate group. Ask for -- insist on -- honest, helpful feedback on your performance, your growth, your value. It's the only way to know what you would be worth on the open market. It's the only way to make sure that, when you profess your free agency, you'll be in a strong bargaining position. It's not disloyalty to "them"; it's responsible brand management for brand You -- which also generates prestige for them.
It's this simple: You are a brand. You are in payment of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to originate the brand called You. Except this: Start today. Or else.
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