Your Story, Your Brand


I am a strong advocate of personal branding. As a college professor who serves students in their junior and senior years of business school, I introduce personal branding concepts in my classes. Students are encouraged to manage their professional careers using marketing principles learned in the classroom. It is a challenge for many people, especially if you are at the outset of your career, to embrace personal branding. Uncertainties about what to do or say as well as doubts of how one can add value for others are common obstacles to launching a personal brand. 

How to Craft Your Personal Brand Story
One approach for simplifying the task of creating a personal brand is to build it around stories. This idea is not a suggestion to create fictional escapades but rather stories about events and people in your life that have shaped your values and purpose. Author Amber Mac gives three tips for how to base your personal brand on stories:
1. Discover Your Story – What are things that have happened to you that people would find interesting and create common ground?
2. Re-write Your Story – Craft a collection of “short stories” into your brand story. Stories do not replace credentials like education or skills, but they do add personality to your brand and can increase your brand’s appeal. 
3. Share Your Story – It is communicated via your social networking pages, oral presentations, and personal interactions. Remember that the purpose is not to brag about you but to develop connections with other people.

Tell to Sell
Keep this in mind: stories are more interesting than facts, bullet point lists, and résumés. Think about brands you like and admire most- they probably have stories worth telling. The beauty of a storytelling approach to personal branding is that everyone has stories to share. Let your stories shape your brand.

Fast Company – “Mastering the Uncomfortable Art of Personal Branding”

Note: This article first appeared on the Marketing DR blog on March 9, 2012

Embrace Rejection to Build Your Personal Brand

No, the headline does not contain a typo- it was not supposed to read “brace yourself for rejection.” Yes, embrace rejection as a stepping stone for development of your personal brand. It is the “make lemonade from lemons” directive that we often hear but can find hard to follow. Rejection hurts, it makes us angry, and it can be difficult to say “thank you- I am going to learn from this.” But, that is exactly the mindset we must adopt.

You Will Be Rejected
Rejection is a given occurrence in any pursuit. In the book Choose Yourself, James Altucher discusses how rejection will find you… and that is normal. Whether it is trying to find a publisher for a book, line up a buyer for a business, or convince someone to hire you, rejection is an outcome to be expected- often happening many times over. The key, according to Altucher, is how you respond when you are rejected (notice that is “when” and not “if”). Your response may make the difference between rejection winning out and you persevering.

Using Rejection to Your Advantage
When you experience rejection, accept it is part of life and resolve to use it to your benefit. Three ways you can make rejection be a matter of turning lemons into lemonade are:

  1. Improve – Rejection can trigger external attribution for why you did not meet your goal. Instead of pointing to other people or factors, look at the person in the mirror. James Altucher says to ask yourself what are 10 things you can do to improve. Let rejection make you stronger.
  2. Ask for Advice – People around you including friends, teachers, and mentors can help by giving you feedback on how you can become stronger at whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. If you apply for an internship or job and did not get an offer following an interview, ask the interviewer if he or she can provide feedback on why you were not selected and how you can improve (going back to #1).
  3. Dance with Failure – Rejection may not be as detrimental to our future as our reaction to it. When you are rejected, do you slam yourself for inadequacies? Blame those idiots that did not choose you? Or, do you look at these disappointments as opportunities to learn and get better? I won’t go so far as to say that failure is your friend, but given that it will cross paths with you why not learn to co-exist with it and use it to better position yourself for future opportunities?
You have probably heard stories about successful people overcoming rejection. Colonel Harlan Sanders could not find any takers for his fried chicken, so he started KFC. Fred Smith got a C on a paper at Yale University in which he proposed a business that would use aircraft to deliver packages overnight (he later founded FedEx). Likewise, whether you are at the outset of your professional career or striving to move ahead, you are almost certain to be rejected. Accept it, deal with it, and use rejection to move you toward your career goals. The stories of how you overcome rejection can be powerful in defining your personal brand.

Note: This post was adapted from a post appearing on the Sports Biz U blog on September 19, 2013.

Word-of-Mouth Builds Trust… Still

Marketers have more tools at their disposal than ever before to influence and persuade people. But perhaps the oldest form of persuasion still is prominent today: word-of-mouth communication.Messages spread from person to person have a level of trust and personalization that is virtually impossible to replicate using paid mass media communication. According to a recent Nielsen study, word-of-mouth messages from trusted friends and family members rose above all other message channels in terms of trust.

The WOM Advantage
Among the findings concerning trust with different communication channels were:

  • 84% of respondents said they trusted WOM messages from family or friends
  • 69% trust content marketing messages
  • 68% trust user reviews and recommendations
  • 62% trust TV advertising
  • 60% trust magazine advertising
  • 56% trust e-mail messages
Results of the Nielsen study send a clear message on two fronts: 1) the death of traditional media advertising has bee greatly exaggerated and 2) word-of-mouth communication is as effective as ever. The toolkit analogy for marketing communication strategy is very relevant today. A wide mix of communication channels are needed to reach customers and prospects- no one channel is potent enough to build and nurture customer relationships.
WOM Works But…
The power of word-of-mouth communication is undeniable. The challenge for marketers is how to harness the power of WOM to take advantage of the high level of trust it enjoys. Here are two simple ways to let your customers be marketers on your behalf- one is old, one is new:
  1. Reward referral behavior – Do you encourage referrals, I mean really encourage referrals by giving customers incentives to tell others about their experiences with your business? Don’t just give referrals lip service; reward customers for bringing new business to you. The ROI will likely eclipse any advertising campaign that you could run.
  2. Encourage social sharing – Make it easy for people to advocate for you via social media. Sadly, many of the efforts in this area are quite lame. “Please like us on Facebook” has all the appeal of a trip to the dentist. Facilitate sharing in social media as well as e-mail. Your fans can help build your e-mail list by sharing their permission-based messages with people in their networks. In turn, they might come to you and become a customer. Create excitement about social sharing by campaigns or even contests that call on your fans to spread the word on your behalf.
You know the old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” That adage holds true in marketing. New media channels give us more ways to connect with audiences, but the gold standard of person-to-person influence remains as one of the most powerful ways to build customer relationships.

Marketing Daily – Nielsen: Consumers Trust WOM Over Other Messaging

Avoid the Phrase that Can Harm Your Personal Brand

I believe LinkedIn is a valuable networking platform for professionals. It expands our connectivity by removing geographic barriers to interacting with other people who have shared interests. LinkedIn expands the reach of our personal brands, increasing exposure in the marketplace and potentially leading to new opportunities. All of the benefits I have mentioned about LinkedIn are contingent on one thing: Applying common sense networking principles. Unfortunately, not everyone uses their common sense, and they fail to realize the full potential LinkedIn holds as a connector of people.

What not to Say
How do people fail with LinkedIn? The number one mistake can be summed up in the following phrase:

 
I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
 
Yuck! This phrase, the default networking language LinkedIn has crafted for its users, is disastrous for your personal brand when it is used as a stand-alone invitation to connect with someone. Yes, it seems innocent enough, and the statement does specify what you want. But, this “pick up line” can be interpreted in other ways:
  • You are lazy – It is too much trouble for you to write a personalized note explaining why you want to connect
  • You want something – The other person has no idea about your motives for reaching out because you have given no explanation for the invitation connection.
  • You are not really interested in networking – Without showing some interest and effort, you seem to be going through the motions of networking.
The only thing worse than getting this impersonal LinkedIn connection request is getting it from this person:
Do you recognize him or her? Worse yet, is this you? I know you are much better looking than this silhouette. I don’t want to network with graphics, I want to network with real people!
Make it Personal
When reaching out to someone with a connection request on LinkedIn, approach it as you would a face-to-face encounter. Among the critical elements of a connection request are:
  • Introduce yourself
  • State a common interest or common connections
  • Briefly explain why you wish to connect
Let’s face it, you would not initiate communication with someone you do not know in the following ways:
  • Hi, I’m Sharon- will you hire me?
  • This is Joe here- will you marry me?
  • My name is Steve- can you lend me $10,000?
A very simple definition of networking is “building good relationships.” Commit to using LinkedIn as a channel to do just that. In order to build relationships, focus on communication quality. Make your interactions personal and show genuine interest in others. Online networking might be relatively new, but it is built on timeless principles of human relationships. Take an interest in others, make your personal brand personal, and enjoy the process of building good relationships.

 

First Person Should Take Second Position

The language of marketing has shifted dramatically in recent years. A mass marketing mindset has given way to a focus on the customer. As this shift has occurred, the vocabulary of marketing has changed as well. Instead of “I,” “we,” and “me” setting the tone of marketing messages, the attention has shifted to the customer. Today, “you” and “your” are the pronouns of choice to connect customers with brands. Does this mean that marketers should never talk about themselves and their products? No, but what must happen is marketing messages should respond to the customer’s situation rather than always being “buy me now” pleas.

Get Over Yourself
Some people might think that devoting a blog post to emphasize a customer-first mindset is a waste of time because it is a given that marketing is about satisfying customers’ needs. Perhaps it would not surprise you that not everyone has gotten the memo. Recently, a colleague showed me a draft of copy for a web page that one of his B2B clients had developed. As I began reading the copy, I was taken aback by the old-school mindset that prevailed in the text. On a single page, the tone of the conversation went as follows:
“We” was used 14 times
“Our” was used 7 times
“Us” was used 1 time
“You” was used 3 times
“Your” was used 3 times

This self-congratulatory tribute to the company left little doubt as to who it saw as the star of the show: Its product. For every time customers were referenced, the company mentioned itself almost four times. Again, I’m not suggesting that companies should never talk about themselves in marketing messages. But, instead of focusing on the company and product, emphasize how customers benefit from the company and product. We can never lose sight of the fact that customers do not buy products; they buy benefits and solutions that products provide.

A New Order 
It is time to shuffle the order of pronoun usage in marketing. “You” and “your” maybe second person pronouns according to your English teacher, but they have ascended to first person status in the marketing lexicon When we adopt this new order, the customer’s story takes center stage. What are their problems? Their desires? Their dreams? That is what they are really concerned about- not how great your company is because they have solutions that might be of interest to them.

Position for the Right Kind of Security

As another academic year begins for college students across the country (including beginning of the fall semester at my university this week), my thoughts are focused in two directions. One direction is to be expected- the here and now- meeting classes for the first time and orienting students to the courses they will be studying this semester. At the same time, I am looking in another direction: Forward. The here and now is important, but that is not why students are pursuing a college degree. They are laying the foundation for their future. It is my responsibility to not only impart subject matter expertise, but I must guide and mentor students to transition from being marketing students to marketing professionals. My task to complete the latter was clarified recently in a blog post by executive career consultant Richard Kirby.

Strive for Positive Security
The career model that my generation subscribed to when in college was to strive to land a job at a large corporation, move up the ladder, and stay there indefinitely. In the past 15 years, this model has imploded through downsizing, increased appeal of working for start-ups, and negative connotations attached to being “corporate.” As Richard Kirby says, job security, or the idea of finding long term employment with one organization, has been fading in America for several years. Kirby suggests that this trend calls for workers to rethink the approach to their careers, shifting from “job security” to “employment security.” I could not agree more. While the notion of security has appeal to virtually all of us, job security can be perceived negatively. “Maintaining status quo,” “avoiding risk,” and “path of least resistance” could be associations people hold with staying put at a single employer. The inference is that if we crave job security, we could miss out on growth opportunities.

What is Employment Security?
In contrast to job security, employment security does not define success as being able to keep a job at the same employer. In today’s environment in which professionals may be contractors, “free agents” moving from one project to another, expecting to work long term for the same employer can be unrealistic. Thus, the mindset and skill set of workers must adapt to the fact that we may not work at the same company forever, but the value we offer is so great that we will be working for someone… if not ourselves. Richard Kirby identifies two skills in particular that are vital in the age of employment security: 1) commitment to build industry and professional knowledge and 2) self-marketing and self-selling skills. No one else is going to give these to us, not even employers that still invest in employee training and development.

In today’s “free agent nation,” workers should be loyal to their personal brands first and foremost. I am not suggesting forget about loyalty to employer, but blind loyalty can be hazardous to one’s career trajectory. When employment security is the positioning basis for your personal brand, job security is more likely to be an option if desired. But, when winds of change lead to the end of one job, a personal brand built on marketable skills and communicated to the marketplace will serve you well to provide the security that is a fundamental motivation in our lives.

Vulnerability is a Desirable Brand Trait

An important aspect of brand management is proactively monitoring image and reputation. How a brand is perceived by others is influential in determining its standing in the marketplace. Whether a product brand or personal brand, meticulously overseeing for what is communicated about our brand is vital to maintaining trust with others… or is it?

Why Vulnerability is a Desired Trait
I would have argued strenuously in favor of obsessively managing a brand to “protect” it until hearing a statement in a podcast that called this belief into question. Best-selling author Ken Blanchard was interviewed on Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership podcast about his latest book, Trust Works! The book teaches how to assess the level of trust others have in you as well as discussing “trust busters” that diminish a leader’s effectiveness. The idea that brand management is about striving for perfection is debunked by a statement Blanchard made about how others perceive leaders:

“People admire your skills but love your vulnerability.” 

This statement resonated with me. I think of branding as being “always on”- our guard is up to minimize chances of something being said or done to harm our brand. Yet, the reality is we cannot prevent missteps or mistakes- we are humans, not machines. Vulnerability is a state in which we all are in from time to time; it makes you no less effective as a leader if vulnerabilities are revealed. In fact, your brand can benefit when you reveal traits with which others can relate.

Vulnerability is Part of Your Brand Story
Stories bring out unique qualities and help paint the picture that is your brand. Revealing vulnerabilities and your efforts for dealing with them does not portray an image of weakness. Instead it conveys authenticity. We work hard to build credibility by developing expertise and building trust. But, underneath all of our brand building efforts remains a person with weaknesses. We don’t have all the answers; in fact, we are rarely the smartest person in the room. Share your humanness rather than obsessing with control in a futile attempt to project a perfect identity that does not exist.

Dealing with and overcoming vulnerability can be a captivating brand story, and one that is more credible than a facade of perfection.

Death,Taxes, and Broken Promises

A brand is not a single-dimension concept created by a business. It serves multiple roles- it creates identity through name and logo, it projects an image through brand associations formed about it, and it connects customers and others in a relationship with the brand owner. One other valuable role that a brand serves is to make promises. Some promises are explicit, like service guarantees and product performance claims. Other promises are implicit, expectations that we form about a brand. Some of these implicit promises are suggested to us through marketing while others are formed as a result of our interactions with the brand.

A Promise Problem
A great brand excels at delivering against explicit and implicit brand promises. Consistency in actions is influential in building brand reputation. But as the saying goes, promises are made to be broken, and we are often disappointed by the experience of a broken promise made by a business with which we do business. An Accenture study of U.S. consumers found that broken promises is an all too frequent phenomenon. Among the study’s findings:

  • 70% said a company had made a promise to them (hey, it should be 100% based on the above description of brand as promise, but we will cut the respondents some slack)
  • 40% said they have had the experience of a broken promise made by a business
  • 90% said they would consider switching to another company because of a broken promise
Customers of telecommunication companies were especially familiar with broken promises as this industry was cited most frequently (22%) followed by retailers (11% of customers had experienced a broken promise made by a retailer). Not surprisingly, customer service failures were chief contributors to broken promises, with having to repeat issues multiple times to a company’s personnel (45%) lack of employee knowledge to resolve problem (33%), and failure to satisfactorily resolve a problem cited as actions (or inaction) that led to a broken promise.
Forgiving Customers
The Accenture study found hope for companies struggling to overcome broken promises experienced by customers: Many people will give a business a chance to resolve a service failure and minimize the damage of a broken promise, with 80% of survey respondents saying they would complain to the company before switching to another provider and 55% saying they would give a company two chances before giving up on it. These findings on customer flexibility is a welcome reprieve for a business. Like death and taxes, service failures that lead to broken promises are inevitable.

Even the most customer-focused organizations will have a breakdown in service delivery or some aspect of the customer experience that is inconsistent with brand promises. Thus, the goal is not to strive for zero broken promises. Instead, businesses must have a clear understanding of promises as perceived by their customers. When performance falls short of promises, the response to service failure can make the difference between reinforcing customer trust or irreparably damaging it.

Marketing Daily – “The Power of Keeping a Promise”

Personal versus Perfect: How Brands Walk the Social Media Line

Social media has dramatically changed how businesses communicate with their target markets. A reliance on one-way communication through mass media channels is now complemented by a more flexible, interactive channel. In addition to the interactivity characteristic of social media, companies that take to social networking sites have the opportunity to “humanize” their brands. Employees that are the voice of a firm’s social media accounts can create personal interactions between buyers and seller. Twitter users who interact with a business to share a complaint, for example, may interact with Jeff or Janie rather than a nameless representative of the brand. Bringing a more personal touch to customer relationship management can lead to more satisfactory experiences and greater customer loyalty.

Is Perfection the Ideal?
We think of brands as being “always on.” Product or service failure is a negative reflection on the brand; we always have our guard up to protect brand reputation and should act quickly to resolve any situation that could put a brand in a negative light. But, is this quest for perfection attainable? More importantly, do customers even expect it? Research by Disruptive Communications of UK consumers into what people dislike about brand activity in social media suggests that brands must walk a line between giving off a personal feel and maintaining consistency that is a hallmark of branding. A survey of 1,003 UK consumers found the number one misstep brands can make on social media is using poor spelling or grammar in their posts (see infographic below). The other big no-no is making too many posts aimed at selling products. Other social media faux pas that turn off consumers are posting updates too often, trying too hard to be funny, and not posting updates often enough (further evidence that you cannot please all of the people all of the time).

Source: Disruptive Communications, 2013
Common Sense and Common Courtesy
Findings from the Disruptive Communications study are insightful as they validate what was widely assumed: Using common sense and common courtesy will go a long way toward using social media to nurture customer relationships. Common sense says to pay attention to detail when posting to social media accounts, making sure not only that information is grammatically correct but that offers and claims are accurate, too. Common courtesy should be exercised not to encroach on your community’s social space by bombarding them with sales messages. In fact, selling should be far down the list of social media objectives for most firms. 
Use the privilege of connecting with customers and others to listen, share, and discuss. I do not know many people who joined Facebook or LinkedIn in order to be hit up with marketing messages. Also, common courtesy suggests to not damage customer relationships by posting insensitive or controversial content on social media. Sounds like common sense would prevent that, but we can point to many examples of a failure to exercise common sense. Remember this clueless tweet from Kenneth Cole during the uprising in Egypt in 2011?
Social media should be embraced as a unique opportunity to build a community in ways that marketers of previous eras could only have imagined. But, with great power comes great responsibility; in the case of social media this means respecting your community’s space by being a participant with them rather than a seller with a digital megaphone.

The Multi-Dimensional Responsibilities of a CMO

The position of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in a business shares similarities with the head coach of a professional sports team. First, both positions represent the go-to leader for the people charged with delivering results. Second, pressures to perform can be great and immediate. Third, when performance falls short of expectations an organization can either get rid of all employees or the leader- we know which route is normally taken. The stakes to perform and perform now are high for CMOs. The average tenure of a CMO in 2012 was about 45 months according to research from Spencer Stuart. Although 45 months seems like a precarious tenure, it is nearly double the average CMO tenure in 2006 (23 months). Still, there is little disagreement that CMOs are subject to a great deal of scrutiny when it comes to the marketing performance of their organizations.

Why CMO is a Tenuous Position
CMOs bear great responsibility for the success of their firms’ marketing efforts. Much is expected of them… perhaps too much. A recent global study of business executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit   revealed a disjointed situation concerning the marketing function. It is disjointed in that the CMO is looked to by many executives as a comprehensive marketing solution. One area in which the CMO is expected to take the lead is in customer centricity. In the EIU study, the current state of customer focus is not very impressive:

  • 60% said their firms were customer-centric
  • 56% said their companies have a clear understanding of customers’ tastes and needs
These findings are sobering; we expect marketing organizations to be on top of understanding customers, but four in ten executives see their organizations as not doing a good job of being customer focused.

Another chief responsibility that CMOs are charged with is being most in tune with the Voice of the Customer (VOC):

  • 28% said CMO should be Voice of the Customer, but only 18% said the CMO fulfills that role now. Currently, that role is more likely to be taken on by the head of Sales (31% said Sales has VOC responsibility).
  • 25% of marketing executives surveyed believe a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) is needed to be the VOC, but that sentiment is not shared by executives outside the marketing suite as overall only 13% said a CCO should take the lead for VOC.
The customer-leading role that CMOs are expected to take on adds a layer of complexity to the position. The reason is that the relationship and brand equity building functions of a CMO are superseded by other marketing priorities. When asked what the function of marketing should be, executives connected marketing to financial outcomes:
  • 30% said revenue growth should be top priority
  • 17% said finding new customers should be marketing’s top function
  • 16% said improving organization reputation should be top function

Thus, CMOs are expected to have significant dual roles in managing customer relationships and driving business growth. Either role can be a monumental challenge on its own. It is little wonder CMOs are on average out of an organization in just under four years- they struggle to meet expectations that may be unrealistic or unclear.

The Case for a CCO
Findings from the EIU study suggest that the CMO position as conceptualized by executives is two roles in one: Chief Customer Officer and Chief Marketing Officer. It seems that the findings calling on the marketing function to focus on growth create a clear need for an executive whose job is to drive growth. That person should be the CMO. At the same time, nurturing customer relationships has bearing on growth as well as creating brand equity. Given that four in ten executives believe their firms are deficient in understanding their customers, a need exists to bridge the gap between seller and buyers. The CCO position can narrow such a gap. Just as the marketing function became more specialized over time and led to splitting of sales and marketing roles in many organizations, the time has come for businesses to back up talk about being customer centric by creating a leadership position such as CCO.

Center for Media Research – “Who Knows the Customer Best”