Art of Branding

As we all know, brands try to harness what’s different and special about a brand in a short tagline or slogan. Famous taglines can even become part of our national identity like Nike’s “Just Do It” or Avis’s “We Try Harder” or Apple’s “Think Different.”

The ad tagline is a catchy representation of the brand’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition) also known as the brand’s Big Idea. The Big Idea is a proposition so compelling that it draws people to your brand.

From a branding perspective, a USP can be very powerful. Look what the concept of “safety” and the slogan “For Life” did for Volvo. Interestingly, when they developed the car’s USP around safety, the team working on the branding for Volvo was also exploring other ideas such as a heritage strategy based on being made in Sweden. Who knows what would have happened if they took that route?

From a personal branding perspective, it’s important to know and communicate what’s different and special about you, too, in a Big Idea, so that you can be a brand apart in the business marketplace. For example, one colleague who is a market researcher specializing in the women’s market calls herself “The Oprah of Madison Avenue.” Another client calls himself “The Empowering Leader” to emphasize his leadership style that gets results with his team.

Here are five tips to keep in mind as you isolate your Big Idea or USP:

1. Be authentic: You brand positioning must come out of a key strength you have that sets you apart from others.

2. Make it short: Use a phrase, not a sentence

3. Be big enough to last: You don’t want to box yourself into a USP that won’t help you advance in your career.

4. Convey a positive emotion: Focus on the positive result or benefit you provide.

5. Strike a chord: Your USP should be relevant and be appealing to your target audience (colleagues, bosses, clients, customers).

My mother always said, “Beauty is only skin deep” and “Don’t judge a book by its cover” when I would fret over my looks.

Yet, the reality is, we judge people by the way they look every day.

When the hearings for Elena Kagan’s nomination start on Monday, June 28th, I doubt whether her looks will come up in the questioning, but her looks already have been commented upon in the media. (See Deborah L Rohode’s article on Kagan and her looks in The Daily Beast.)

As Rhode points out, “Looks are one of the last frontiers of acceptable bigotry.”
And looks are definitely an area where” the diversion of attention from achievment to appearance is more common.”

Yet, I can’t buy into Rhode’s thesis in the artifice and her new book, The Beauty bias, that we need to eliminate the beauty bias. She advises: “We have always known that it hurts to be beautiful, and that it hurts even more not to be beautiful. But few of us realize how much. Although our prejudice runs deep, we can do more to reduce its most unjust and unnecessary forms.

Impossible, I say. That’s like trying to change human nature.

While a mother loves all of her children, studies show the more attractive ones are favored. And study after study points out that we are all susceptible to the “beauty premium” and that looks have a halo effect. We think more attractive people are smarter, more productive, even kinder than unattractive people.

That’s why we have to acknowledge that the beauty premium exists, and package ourselves to advantage. Oprah has a weight issue like many of us but still packages herself attractively. And octogenarian Betty White is red hot on TV right now showing that you don’t have to be young either to be attractive.

We all can package ourselves to advantage. And it sure beats trying to change human nature.

Ever wonder how some people just seem to exude confidence and charisma? How one remembers them and how they influenced you when they entered the room? Often you will find that they are ordinary people like you and I. No special background, yet they remain on our minds. Some of us call this personality, some authority and finally some will just say blessed. All this could be true, yet many times you will find out that they had no special schooling and in fact where probably just the opposite of whom we perceived them as.

How’s it done? Catherine Kaputa answers this mystery and has produced a practical guide to what is called self-branding. Usually we are talking about people that work on their brand, knowingly or unknowingly. We has human beings are the result of our social and educational engineering. Throw in the sum total of all our experiences and you end up with a potent stew. The key here is how to control and apply this “product”. Like in the commercial world, good products that are expertly marketed end up being waypoints in our lifetime. Logos and names “branded” in our memory.

Catherine outlines in an excellent “how to” book how one takes corporate branding techniques and applies them on ourselves. We are the product, therefore we are also the Brand. If done with attention and diligence the results can be staggering. The old cliché applies here, it’s not what you know but who you know, and so it goes in personal branding. With a managed approach it is not important what and who you are but more importantly who you are perceived to be, the image you portray.
If you are on a career path then you need to draw up a personal business and marketing plan for your future just like you would do for a product. How you look and act will develop your brand.

Catherine Kaputa is no bored housewife writing books for a hobby. Catherine has full hands on experience in guiding people to fulfillment of their ambitions and human potential. She is seriously committed thus founding Self-brand, a New York City-based brand strategy and coaching company, www.selfbrand.com. Her fundamentals come straight from the business world. Her methods are outlined in the book with practical examples and worksheets.

If you are on a career path or even navigating high school, then this is one of those books that you need to have in your reference library. You will refer to it often as you approach those important waypoints in life. You will be provided with the ability to write your own road map with the knowledge of how to perform and get positively noticed.
So what is Branding? Is it a character issue? Is that all there is? Slap together a great logo with a dynamite message and you’re off to the races. That is the mechanical part of it. But in essence your brand is what you stand for, yes your character behind your promise and your capacity to make a difference. The core being about the Big Questions and raison d’etre, your story and the mystic you compel, that is what people believe in.

You are a Brand – Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Best Career Book, now in paperback – discover the secrets of a personal branding strategist.

James van Etten, Executive Editor, CLIPPINGs

Here’s an interesting post on how to use keywords online so that you show up in the top 10 list when the word is googled or binged:

http://www.successpointconsulting.com/where-to-use-the-right-keywords

Repetition of core keywords is important in all your online communications as you point out since you will be more likely to show up on the short list in search.

I think it is important to look at keywords in a larger perspective – all of your marketing materials – even things that won’t appear online. In branding, in terms of verbal identity, you want to “own” a word or phrase in the minds of others like Volvo owns “safety” and Coke owns “cola.” So when people think of X they think of you, and when people think of you, they think of X. I’m amazed when people describe themselves and what they do differently in various marketing pieces like their business card, brochures, elevator speech, website, etc. Everything should work together to reinforce the message by using your core keywords and phrases like advertisers do.

Secondly, there is a concept in media for brand campaigns called Net Effective Reach. People don’t remember your message until they’ve seen it about 8 times or so. You may feel you’re being repetitive, but that’s just when people are starting to remember your message!

Just when I was going to brand the 2011 election cycle as the year of the female candidate, I’m reduced to writing about hair.

Dee Dee Myers famously said about her experience as White House Press Secretary for President Clinton that “people don’t hear a word you say until they decide whether they like your hair or not”

Of course, Dee Dee was talking about a lady’s hair. (For a man’s hair style to register on the radar screen it has to be really out there like Donald Trump’s hair.)

Which brings to mind Carly Fiorina’s offhand comment about Barbara Boxer’s hair yesterday caught on an open mike. Carly is the Republican candidate for the US Senate and Boxer is the Democratic incumbent in California and both are revved up for battle in the general election.

My fear? That the great wins women have made in the primaries are already becoming a cat fight.

Asked about the incident by Greta Van Susteren, Fiorina said, “I was quoting a friend of mine. My goodness, my hair’s been talked about by a million people, you know? It sort of goes with the territory.” Fiorina then brought up her battle with cancer, adding, “Especially when you don’t have any. As you remember, I started out with none.”

Of course, Fiorina’s comments in a larger context aren’t a big deal. We all make gaffes particularly when we think we’re just talking to a trusted aide and don’t realize the mike is on. And Fiorina did brand herself as strong and courageous in my book when she began her campaign with absolutely no hair after battling cander.

But in another, more damaging way for women, her words reinforce popular stereotypes about women, namely that we’re catty and tear each other down behind the scenes.

Article by Catherine Kaputa in Execunet Newsletter, May, 11, 2010

You got the appointment and
spent the last week researching the
company and fine-tuning your résumé.
But you blew it in the first five minutes.
That’s because you planned everything
but the most important thing — making
a great first impression with an “elevator
speech.”

The First Ten Seconds
May be All You Have
People make judgments about you in a
matter of seconds: winner/loser, strong/
weak, hire/don’t hire. Such judgments are
based on first impressions: how you enter
the room, what you’re wearing, your body
language, your facial expressions, and the
first words out of your mouth.
These first, blink-of-an-eye impressions
are powerful. Research shows that
how you are viewed coming out of the
gate is usually indelible and doesn’t
change over time.
That’s why it’s important not only
to research the company, but also how
you look, how you walk and how you
connect to others at the meeting. It all
starts, of course, with the first words
you plan to say.
Most people flub the most basic
and popular opening statement, “Tell
me about yourself.”

The 60 Second Elevator Speech
The words you use to introduce yourself
and your accomplishments can be
powerful and memorable or instantly
forgettable. Too many people waste the
beginning of a pitch with a long-winded
life story while their audience is wondering
why they’re there and what they do.
Instead, prepare an elevator speech, a
pithy explanation of who you are, what
you’ve done and can do for them, and
why it matters.
Here are the tenets of creating and
delivering a great elevator speech:

Be Short
An elevator speech should last about a
minute and a half, the time it takes to
go up a few floors in the elevator.

Position Yourself and
Your Value as an Employee
It should contain a value proposition: why
you and your business accomplishments
and abilities are relevant in the marketplace.
Strong positioning for you could
be to represent innovation and growth.
So frame your career story that way.

Be Memorable
Include a memorable phrase that embodies
the idea, like an ad slogan. Another
way to add interest is through analogy.
Try to put two different ideas together to
express who you are and what you are
about, such as “I’m a cross between
_____ and _____” or “It’s like ______”
relating the business to something in a
totally different industry. For example,
one market researcher who specializes in
the women’s market calls herself “the
Oprah of Madison Avenue.” I often
define myself in my elevator speech as
“a personal branding strategist — you
might say I’m a cross between a P&G
brand manager and an executive coach.”

Be Conversational
Your elevator speech shouldn’t seem
wooden and rehearsed. The key is to
practice, but to avoid memorization
so you don’t sound like you’re scripted.
Keep an elevator speech as conversational
and spontaneous as possible.

Look the Part
It may seem superficial. After all, why
should you be judged by your looks?
Self-presentation — your visual identity
in branding terms — is important
because of the link people make between
what something looks like on the outside
and what is on the inside. The fact is the
way you look, carry yourself, your facial
expression, the clothes you choose all
talk — sometimes more loudly than
what you say.

Project Confidence
There are easy things you can do to
project confidence — even if it has been
battered internally. Stand tall. Give a
good firm handshake. Make eye contact.
Smile. Ask questions, too; don’t just
respond to questions. When you engage
in conversation and ask questions, you
level the playing field because you come
across as someone who has options, too.

Brainstormer Exercise
Try this short brainstormer exercise to
get you started. Set a stopwatch for 60
seconds. Practice your elevator speech.
What hooks, connections, stories, or
analogies can you add that will make
your opening more powerful and relevant?
Test different approaches to your
elevator speech with a few colleagues.
What works best?

You might be born with it. Or not. Of course, no one has it all the time. But some seem to have a lot more of it than others, particularly men.

That elusive thing we all know as self-confidence.

One UK researcher who did a meta-analysis of 30 global leadership studies found that men displayed more confidence in talking about career accomplishments. Believe it or not – many men even exaggerated their accomplishments, what the researcher called The Male Hubris Effect.

On the other hand, women tended to downplay their accomplishments, what the researcher called The Female Humility Effect.

A recent study by Vanguard, the investment firm, found a similar disparity in confidence along gender lines. Men were more confident in investing and felt confident they knew where the market was heading. Turns out, that a lot of that male confidence is dead wrong. Because they felt so confident in their own abilities, many men tended to trade more and had a worse performance record in their investments than the women investors in the study.

But confidence, I’m convinced, is something everyone can grow. Here’s how:

• Realize that confidence comes from feeling comfortable with yourself – not from perfection. What holds a lot of women back from feeling confident is the fact that they don’t know everything. No one does. If you put off feeling confident, until you’re perfect or know everything, you’ll never achieve it. Accept yourself is the most important ingredient in the self-confidence formula.

• Pretend. This is a secret from the acting world and cognitive therapy. Act “as if” you are confident and before long, your confidence that began as a projection will feel natural and will become who you are. Do a visualization of yourself as confident and in control before you enter a meeting or important conversation. Practice positive self-talk. Give a firm handshake, smile and make eye contact as you interact with people.

• Study role models. Look at confident people you admire: high profile people in the news or in the media. Watch how they project confidence. Look at confident people around you at work. Mimic them. Often what seems difficult can be broken down into small steps and discreet actions. As you experiment with doing a brain transfer with confident individuals, you will be well on your journey to projecting self-confidence.

WWW.SELFBRAND.COM

by Peggy Lowe Orange County Register Blog, April 22, 2010

What’s in a name?

In these days of high unemployment, a great deal. The many experts out there trying to help jobseekers, including my host, Tim Tyrell-Smith, constantly urge folks to create a personal brand. Put old-school, it’s called making a name for yourself.

They are right, of course. It’s important to, as Ryan Rancatore told Tim, match “your inner qualities, strengths and passions with your outward, visible persona.”

So why in heaven’s name would anyone brand themselves a “ninja?”

The Wall Street Journal reports that “ninja” is replacing “guru” as the hot new job title. Apparently, computer programmers who are trying to distinguish themselves from all the other geeks sitting in cubicles across the country are touting their application of the “sly skills of the feudal Japanese warriors to writing software.”
I’m sorry, but if a resume came across my desk with the term “ninja” on it I would toss it to the trash as fast as one of those would-be warriors using a throwing star. The term “ninja”conjures a vision of my little brother in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajamas.

I thought the point is to be original, to set yourself apart from the thousands of people who want that job. I ran my theory by Catherine Kaputa, a personal brand strategist and author of two branding books. She agreed with me and said the key to personal branding is authenticity.

“The way to do well in business is not to run with the herd,” she said. “The two cardinal rules of branding are ‘be different’ and ‘be authentic.’ When you latch onto the buzz word of the moment like ‘ninja’ to describe yourself professionally, you brand yourself as an imitator, a B-player who hops onto the latest trend.”
So how to make yourself into an A-player? Be a Dirtbag.

Dirtbag lore goes like this: It was 1989 and Coach Dave Snow hired on as head baseball coach at Long Beach State. To creatively say Snow had a big job in front of him would force me to use 100 sports cliches. The team had a 14-45 record the previous year, had a bunch of new players and played without the benefit of a home field, splitting their season across three local ballparks.

Not only did these kids not enjoy a home field advantage, the infield guys were forced to practice on a nearby all-dirt Pony League. This is where the dirt comes in. After a hard day at practice and returning to the campus practice field, the infielders were teased and called “dirtbags.”

I don’t need to play the soundtrack that always goes with those come-from-behind sports movies, but that’s the kind of story this is. This scrappy, ragtag group of kids adopted what could have been a pejorative — dirtbags — and made it into capital D Dirtbags. And they created a legend at a school with a laid-back name. (Fans yell “Go Beach!”)

The Dirtbags finished the 1989 season 50-15 overall, which is still a school record, and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for their first appearance at the College World Series. Since then, the program has become a West Coast powerhouse, with four College World Series appearances, 18 regional playoff berths and 28 players sent to the major leagues.

They also created a killer personal brand. To be a Dirtbag meant that no matter the tough circumstances, you play to win. It meant that you might not be the most talented player out there, but you will give 100 percent and go home dirty and proud. To go back to old-school speak, you play with a lot of heart.

Steve Tinoco, the Dirtbag’s current first baseman, is from Coto de Caza and grew up knowing the legend. I asked him for the definition Wednesday night, following his team’s stunning 16-4 win over No. 5 UCLA.
“It means you go out every single day and give it your all, leaving it all on the field,” he said, “being the dirtiest guy on the field and having fun. Having fun beating all the other teams.”

“We’re going to be reckless and abandoned on the field, but respectful off the field. We’re going to beat the other team, having that chip on our shoulders.”

My advice on this personal branding business? Dream up a name or image that best represents who you are. I’m not suggesting you put that on a resume — I might still toss one that uses a sports, warrior or guru metaphor. But use that name as your guiding force, your mind’s eye vision of you. Then own it, and wear that name as a badge of honor.

So get out there, dig deep and find your inner Dirtbag.

In a hyper-competitive job market, employers are having trouble finding potential employees among a sea of qualified candidates. You can convince them that you’re ideal by developing and communicating a compelling and unique personal brand.

By Catherine Kaputa on Tue, April 13, 2010

CIO Magazine— Zeroing in on your unique personal brand and communicating it consistently and effectively in your job search is a surefire strategy for attracting employers’ attention and landing a new job. Here are four personal branding tactics that will make you irresistible to hiring managers.

1. Brand yourself in a sentence.
Effective brands are defined succinctly and competitively in a single sentence. The sentence should declare what’s different about you and why it matters. It should be short enough to write on the back of a business card and definitive enough to describe the brand’s purpose. For example, Google (GOOG) defines its brand this way: “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible and useful.”
When you are composing your brand sentence, think of how you can label or position yourself differently. For example, rather than calling myself a career coach like others do, I call myself a “personal brand strategist” and go on to say, “I use the principles and strategies from the commercial world of brands for the most important brand—Brand You.”
Similar to this Article
• Personal Branding: 8 Tips That Will Help You Stand Out
• Personal Branding: IT Professionals’ Four Pain Points
• Developing a Personal Brand for Your Job Search
• 6 Personal Branding Mistakes That Can Threaten Your Job Search
For an IT professional I worked with, we devised this brand sentence: John Doe: A technology solutions pioneer developing new revenue streams through technology in the converging worlds of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

2. Get feedback on your 60-second elevator speech.
Brands hire experts to create their ads, then test them to get feedback.
There’s an easy way for you to get feedback: Just grab a video camera and record yourself giving your elevator speech or your answer to the most popular interview question, Tell me about yourself. Then sit down and evaluate your performance. The only way to get good is to practice, make a video and rate your performance.
Your personal commercial should elaborate on your brand sentence in an interesting way. Take another page from the branding playbook and include a memorable phrase that embodies your brand purpose, like an ad slogan does for a brand. Try an analogy: Put two different ideas together to express who you are, such as “I’m a cross between X and Y” or “I’m like A meets B. Tazo Tea, for example, defined itself as “Marco Polo meets Merlin.” I sometimes say, “I’m a cross between a P&G brand manager and a career coach.”
Even though you’ve practiced and videotaped your delivery, your elevator pitch shouldn’t seem wooden and rehearsed. The key is to practice, but to avoid memorization so you don’t sound like you’re scripted.

3. Create branded marketing materials that break through the clutter.
Every brand has marketing materials: advertising, a website, brochures, business cards and other collateral that are all designed with a distinctive look and feel and a message focused on the brand vision—the best brand story possible.
You should do the same. Your marketing materials are your business card, cover letter, email address, voicemail message and resume. Later you can expand your brand’s marketing materials to include online social networking profiles, a website and a blog. It’s easy to do them for free or economically though a service such as VistaPrint. But don_t use their free business cards with their logo on the back (that will brand you as cheap!) or use a template design. You are a brand, after all.

Make sure that all your marketing materials have a similar look (they should use the same fonts and colors, for example) and tell your best brand story.
You can take another page from the branding playbook and get “celebrity” endorsements in your marketing materials. Of course, we’re not talking about actual celebrities, but getting a quote from a former boss or client about a project where you played a major role. Put together a Resume Addendum that lists key projects in a case study-Challenge-Solution-Results-format. Then put the quote from your boss or client at the top of each case study. You can also use your endorsement quotes in your cover letter, website and your LinkedIn profile.
Similar to this Article
• Personal Branding: 8 Tips That Will Help You Stand Out
• Personal Branding: IT Professionals’ Four Pain Points
• Developing a Personal Brand for Your Job Search
• 6 Personal Branding Mistakes That Can Threaten Your Job Search

4. Develop an e-mail “Stalking” campaign.
CNBC “Street Signs” Anchor Erin Burnett got her start on television after writing what she called a “stalker letter” to anchor Willow Bay. Of course, Burnett wasn’t literally stalking Bay, but a clever email and letter campaign to companies and hiring managers can brand you as someone with initiative and get you noticed.
Many of my clients have used this technique successfully in today’s tough job market. Here’s an email sent a client, a young technologist in transition, sent that got him a series of interviews and eventually a job offer:

Subject line: Looking for ways to keep costs down for your clients?

Body of email: I’m a technologist who recently supplemented my technology training at ABC University’s program in xxx. I’m a go-getter who can deliver projects and services at a lower rate for your clients, a key concern during these economic times.
In today’s environment, I think it’s important to segment tasks that require someone to do a process or a project versus those that require someone with extensive experience to exercise judgment. Today’s clients are looking for ways to decrease costs and I can help provide different ways to bill the client at a more cost-effective rate.
I would love to get on your calendar for a phone or in person meeting to discuss how I can add value to your company. I have attached my background and look forward to speaking with you.

When you get into the branding mindset, you’ll want to reassess your personal brand regularly just like any brand manager would do—not just when you’re in transition. After all, Brand You is a journey that will last your whole lifetime.
Catherine Kaputa is a personal brand strategist and president of SelfBrand. She is the author of the book You Are a BRAND! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success, which won the Ben Franklin award for Best Career Book 2007. She also wrote The Female Brand, Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business (May, 2009).

Brands think in terms of defining their brand succinctly and competitively in a brand sentence. The sentence should put a stake in the ground and declare what’s different about you and why it matters. It should be short enough to write on the back of a business card, and definitive enough to define the brand’s purpose.

For example, Google defines its brand this way: “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible and useful.”

When you are composing your brand sentence, think of how you can label or position yourself differently. For example, rather than calling myself an career coach like others do, I call myself a “personal brand strategist’ and go on to say, “I use the principles and strategies from the commercial world of brands for the most important brand – Brand You.”