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Showing posts from November, 2007

The Brand Called You: Your power (Series part 4)

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 different kind of power than we usually 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 influence power. It's being known for making the most significant contribution in your particular area. It's reputational power. If you were a scholar, you'd measure it by the number of times your publications get cited by other people. If you were a consultant, you'd measure it by the number of CEOs who've got your business card in their Rolodexes. (And better yet, the number who know your beeper number by heart.)  Getting and us

The Brand Called You: Your Pitch (Series part 3)

What's the pitch for You? So it's a cliche: 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 program 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 usually means a full flight of TV and print ads designed to get billions of 'impressions' of your brand in front of the consuming public. If you're brand You, you've got the same need for visibility -- but no budget to buy it. So how do you market brand You? There's literally no limit to the ways you can go about enhancing your pro