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Building a Personal Brand Identity -- The Brands Called Will & Lydia By Chuck Pettis Your Personal Brand Identity is created by finding the intersection of who you are, who you want to become, and what your organization and customers want from you, all relative to any competitors. All brands have customers, products, and competitors. Your “customer” may be a boss, someone your work with, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a spouse, a child, a friend, a family member, or relative. The goal of Personal Branding is to build and/or improve your trust relationship with the target customer. You are a “product” with features and benefits, certain skills and special talents that other people value. In creating your Personal Brand, Me, Inc., ideally you want to use those skills and talents that are highly valued by your “customer” and that you enjoy using. You are part of a larger “organization.” We all live and work in larger organizations, whether it is our family, the place we work, or our school. These organizations have written or unspoken values, ethics and cultures that have a big impact on how we act. Bob Dylan once said, everybody has to serve somebody. In that sense, we all have bosses, parents, spouses, etc. that are important to our success and happiness. Whether we are competing for a job or a mate, we all have “competitors,” in business and in our personal lives, that we need be aware of. By finding the best “position” to take relative to these competitors, we can make ourselves seen as not only different, but better. Your Personal Brand identity is the sensory, rational, emotional and cultural image that surrounds you. Just like brand-name clothing, a box of Tide in the supermarket or an Intel-based PC, our personal identity is a “package” that combines ourselves as a “product” that is part of a larger “organization” with “customers” and “competitors.” The “look and feel” of your brand is communicated by what you wear, your hairstyle, your personality, and your physique. The goal of Personal Branding is not about being someone we aren’t or being fake. It is not about exaggeration, bragging, or egotism. It is simply to become the best “You.” It is about finding your own personal essence that, at the same time, is valued by people in your organization. Who Should Consider Personal Branding - What are the Benefits? If you are looking for a new job, personal branding is an ideal way to find the optimal intersection of the skills that you enjoy using with an organization that will value those same skills highly. If you want to get promoted or make sure that you get the kind of job responsibilities that you want and deserve, Personal Branding will help you will help you find out how to do that most effectively. If you would like a better and more trusting relationship with your spouse, a family member or a work associate, Personal Branding will tell you the specific values and behaviors needed to improve the quality of your relationship. If you want to find out a lot of deep information about a potential boyfriend or girlfriend early on in the relationship, Personal Branding will help you get that information in a manner that is fun and nonthreatening. If you want to improve the relationship with your child, Personal Branding will help you both to communicate about a subject that is often hard to talk about. The Brand Called Will - Giving Will’s Wife What She Wants As part of an exercise for all BrandSolutions employees, Will Powers used an adaptation of the BrandSolutions branding process to learn more about his organization’s most important customer, his wife. As Will recounted in a recent interview with National Public Radio, “I had my wife come up with the most important attributes of her ideal husband. She wants me to be loving, empathetic, caring, honest, funny, forgiving, gentle, patient, strong, and protective.” Realizing that this list of attributes alone did not provide him with enough detailed direction to achieve “100% customer satisfaction,“ Will asked ‘How can I, the “product” provide these services and please you, my “customer”?’ She gave me a list of things I can do, ranging from holding her hand to working hard for our future to picking up my clothes after a business trip.” Picking up clothes makes the heart grow fonder Will theorized that “Branding works for our clients, why won’t it work for me and help me ‘sell’ my ‘product’ (i.e., me) to my ‘customer’ (i.e., my wife)?” Through questioning, Will created a series of brand ladders, including one for picking up his clothes after a trip. (Brand ladders are a method for finding the higher-level benefits and emotional rewards of features, services, or values.) To do this, Will asked his wife, “What does picking up my clothes do for you? Why is that important?” She responded, “It makes me feel like we’re a team. When you are helping me out, it makes me feel like we have a strong relationship.” Ultimately, the brand ladder led to a feeling of greater love and reassurance. “Now I pick up my clothes,” Will states. “My wife is the most important person in the world to me. Because she is the number-one customer in my organization, I have to make sure she’s 100 percent satisfied and happy with the product.” “This exercise helped my wife and I to fine tune our relationship,” says Will. “Like many men, I sometimes find it difficult to talk about my emotional feelings. In the context of the brand laddering it was easier to talk about my feelings because I could relate them to business terms I understood and felt comfortable with.” What does Will’s wife have to say? Describing the results of their personal branding to a friend she said, “The boy finally understands!” The Brand Called Lydia My sister, Lydia Pettis undertook the Personal Branding process to clarify her strengths and the recognized contributions that she makes to the technology department of a major academic research library. She interviewed 10 people representing the functional areas of the library, and asked for their help. “People are glad to do this!,” reports Lydia. “The format of the questionnaire creates a comfortable win-win situation for everyone. It was a revelation to hear a diverse set of people say the same things over and over… and to realize that I do, in fact, have a personal brand!” Here is an excerpt from Lydia’s one-page “talents” document. Lydia - Building a bridge between people and technology Clear Communicator
Making the complex simple:
Teaching / training
“The great thing about this is that the bullets each reflect a quote from one of the interviews,” tells Lydia, “This is powerful stuff! One benefit of this process is that I now feel very big! Look what I can do! Look what people say about me! People recognize and appreciate the role that I have played in the library over the years. This feels really good. Part of the feeling of expansion is reflected in a fuller understanding of the elements of what I do and really enjoy.” Lydia is using the results of the interviews in discussions with her boss about the kinds of projects in which she would like to be involved. “Previously I have simply said ‘I’d like to do more training’,” says Lydia. “Now I have real ammunition that lets me say ‘There is a recognized need in the library for more training, and these specific managers want me to do it. Furthermore, I’d like to put my analysis skills to use by assuming a leadership role in the implementation of a new library management system.’” The Personal Branding system is a fun, easy and surprisingly painless way to get up-to-date on who you are and what you do at work. It shines a spotlight on your talents and clearly identifies your impact on the people you work with and the organization. This is your chance to see, and hear, how you ripple through your particular pond. Return to To First Page Copyright 2003, BrandSolutions, Inc. All Rights Reserved |