Brand new Brand YOU
"Personal branding reflected in the zeitgeist. Watching the pros in entertainment, politics, business. And now you. What makes YOU different?"

This blog will be soon… RE-ANIMATED!

As a start I wrote some very basic posts for everyone who is new to this subject:

Personal Branding

Celebrity Branding

No it isn’t a new Internet provider.  USP is a major factor in your your branding efforts.  It may the most important aspect of your brand.  USP stands for Unique Selling Point. The acronym used to mean Unique Selling Proposition. The term came from Rosser Reeves, one of the forefathers of modern advertising, and was coined in his book Reality In Advertising in 1961. 

1. The proposition to the customer should be: “buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition itself must be unique.
3. The proposition must be strong enough to pull new customers to the product.

But that was the sixties.  This is today. Unique Selling Proposition has given way to Unique Selling Point. With the explosion of TV and now the internet, Selling Point is a better term.  The clicking advertising of todays market means that the propostion angle is too slow for todays consumer. The speed of which todays purchases are made means brand recognition needs to capture just as quick.

So how do you incorporate a USP to your personal brand.  Well it falls into the what is special about you discussion from previous posts.  Your USP has to accomodate what is unique about you.  Is it your physique, your humor or you juggling ability? Ask yourself these question when throwing out a “pitch”.  And what about these aspects makes you unique?   How is your nose different or your jokes funnier and how many things can you juggle. Then how can you show people these qualities. The uploading site of todays internet like Youtube.com can give a huge audience to you and your brand.

Following the simple rules of the older USP and transferring them to the newer USP can be a valuable tool in promoting you to the world.

Ok,  You ask why bother branding for the elderly they usually have no money.   Well if you visit any city in Florida any more that myth is tossed to the wayside.  There are whole communities of retirees that have nothing better to do than wait on emails or letters from their grandchildren and , most importantly, shop!!!  They buy everthing!! When an elderly person cuts you off isn’t it usually in a brand new car?

Shifting a brand to focus on the elderly might involve some research.  Older folks are pretty much set in their ways so you will have to be the one to adjust your brand. Now some older people are pretty hip and keep up with changing trends but you will have those who still like the good old days.   So see what the older consumers liked back in the day. You do not have to put on a zoot suit or even a Grateful Dead headband but just focus on the things that made their ” good old days ” for them. 

Again this will take research.  Each gathering of old folks will differ from place to place.  Take your brand to them in a package they will relate to.

Mel Gibson makes racial drunken slurs, The Pope slams Islam, and Brittany Spears, well, is just a walking embarassment with her lack of parenting skills and a joke for a boyfriend.  One has to look on the other side of these events though. The actions are embarassing but the one effect they all have is that people paid attention. People always do.

That is the effect they wanted to happen.  Mel Gibson hasnt been in the public eye for a while until his incident making fun of Jews in a drunken banter to police. The pope hasn’t been in the news until his Islamic rant. Britanny isn’t singing anymore so she has to use her child and her moron boyfriend to keep the attention on her.

Now all of these incidents could be coincidence or they could not. The one thing they did do was keep their respective subjects in the public eye.  It is fine to embarass yourself once in a while.  The thing about embarassment is that it only affects you if you let it.  The thing about embarassing acts are they get you noticed.  they are only embarassing if they go against the public ideal of normalcy.  That’s how embarassing acts work to garner attention.

Someone that takes off their pants and runs around a public fountain will get noticed, and subsequently arrested. But the incident will be on the minds and tongues of everyone who witnessed it that day. No one in their right mind would take off their pants and run through a public fountain.  You get into the minds of the viewers because some of them are embarassed for you, some think you are a moron and the rest have an urge to take of their pants as well and run with you.  

That is the power of embarassment. 

Agressive branding has a main function and an underlying one. The underlying one is one that you can choose to use or not. Agressive branding can be used to get your point across to as many people as you can. The other is to destroy your competition. Now this is a tactic that has its ups and its downs.

Think about this. Mcdonald’s play its commercials non stop on every network they can. Now if McDonald’s were to quit advertising altogether it is safe to say there wouldn’t be any people who would say ” Did Mcdonald’s go ut of business??!!” Of course they will never go out of business Their brand is so solid and their product is so saturated in everyay life that would never happen.

Therefore why does Mcdonald’s keep inundating the viewing public with advertising. One reason could be to make people forget there are other fast food places to go to, or to put it another way, destroy the competition.

Now as a personal brander you probably do not have the resources to throw you or your brand all over the airwaves. You can be aggressive in other ways. Local media is a start. While not as far reaching as national broadcasting your local newspapers and television stations are always looking to sell air time. Why not put you on them. There is other ways to mass market your brand. The annoying advertising that you find on your windshields. That can be used to push your brand. Start you own zine in your area. Put it in the local convience stores and grocery stores.

Keep your brand in the public eye constantly and forcefully and you will leave your competiton in the dust. The one thing you cannot do is care about your competitors. Be aware and be watchful but lose all feeling for them. They do not care about you other than a obstacle in their way so return the favor. Treat them as an enemy because well they are!

The downside to this that once you reach the top there will be a struggle to maintain the apex. And those “enemies” you trounced will more than likely lick their wounds and try to retake the hill at a later date. There is responsibility when you are on top. There is more work trying to maintain the number one position than there is trying to get there. So ask yourself if your ready to put in the time to be number one before making your ascent.

You have your brand in place and you have nurtured it to where you want. The reaction shave been good and it has been well received. As it is with everything SOMEONE isn’t going to like it. And they may approach you with their dislike in person or via some kind of notice or attorney. It is something that you will have to be prepared to deal with. When you get into the public eye, it means ALL public eyes, not just the good eyes. So you will have the nay sayers, jealous folks who wish they had thought of your branding scheme first and just all around troublemakers who will try to make your life miserable just because.

The best way to handle this mob is just ignore them. Usually reaction is the only payoff people like this want. Deny them that and you render them powerless. It is a good idea to have a lawyer or a friend who has one to have the wings just in case the detractors go a step further. That way you can keep in step as well and be covered.

The worst thing you can do is try and but heads with people who want to cause problems when it comes to your brand. No need for shouting matches or fisticuffs. It doesnt do anyone any good and leads to unnecessary expenses. On the flip side of this a good public confrontation may be good for your brand.
Why are those two people fighting? What is going on? Like it was mentioned in one other post, people are curious and nothing draws onlookers more than a fight. So if nothing can help an argument at least try to do it in front of a group of people or even the 6 o’clock news!!!!

There are 6 billion people on this planet and that number is growing every day. That’s a myriad of different people all trying to get along on one single floating globe out in the middle of space. With these people come different ideals and different cultures. Different backgrounds and different histories. You could be from a different place than where you live now. Your family may come from a different country than where you live now. This aspect of your life is a perfect way to get noticed.

Let us say you live in A small town in West Virginia but you are from Germany. Your family moved there when you weren’t even thought of then and settled there. You grew up with a mix of West Virginia country people as well as your German heritage. Now you could easily capitalize of those inherent differences in cultures easily. Being different is one of the main vertabrae in the backbone of personal branding.

It is a wise thing to look back on your family history and see where you come from. Now your family could have been residents of this one neighborhood for several generations but they had to come from somewhere. Study your geneology. See where your ancestors come from. Use that knowledge to build a branding philosophy.

Humans by nature are curious. When we see something different we always look, some gawk and other just stare blankly in awe. It is that head tilted wonder that personal branders look for sometimes in their audience. With the head tilt comes questions and when the questions come thats when you go in for the kill. What ever your goal is with your personal brand if you can get people to ask questions about it then you have them in your grasp.

There is no better way to garner attention than to be different. And by studying your culture and background you can almost always find that one thing that can se you apart from others.

Impact is the striking of one body against another; collision. Or the impression of one thing on another; the power of making a strong, immediate impression.

Of course when talking about your brand you want to address the latter definition of the word. You want you brand to leave an impression on your audience so that they never forget who you are. Impact evolves into clout, credibility and loyalty.

Take Marilyn Manson compared to the Ozzy Osbourne of the 80’s. Marilyn Manson’s impact was explosive but subtle. His carnival sideshow goth appearance was recognized as goth but he took it a step further by adding a taste of the deeper macabre. His videos mirror his stage persona. It makes an incredible impact in a crater already made by the goth community. Now take Ozzy Osbourne in the Randy Rhodes era. Bloisterous and harsh and the biting of animals on stage, Ozzy’s impact was as subtle as a MOAB clearcutter bomb. He held people down and made them take his impact. Those two approaches will gurantee their respective fame for years to come. You may not care for their music but you know who they are. That is the effect of a brand impact.

Your image is the most important factor you will have in creating an impact with your personal brand. Think back to your high school days. Who were the most popular kids? Now can you think of who their friends were? Weren’t their friends automatically cool as well for just being around them? Even as small an audience as highschool, impact play a role.

It is up to you how you want to make an impact with your brand. You can be in your face and loud or impact quietly letting it smolder first before unleashing its explosive effect. The how depnds on what you want to accomplish with your brand. You are the meteor, it is up to you where you want to impact. Jst make sure you impact to stun and wonder , not impact to obliterate. Too much impact can degrade into disdain and getting ignored. Just temper your impact to your target demographic and if the impact is huge enough it will draw in viewers from outside the circle.

Well everyone has to start somewhere. Even the most famous people in the world were famous ( or infamous ) in their hometowns first, THEN they branched out to the rest of the world. So whatever your goal is with your personal brand the first step is to get it out to the people. So why not start with your next door neighbors.

The main way to get noticed in your hometown or home city what ever the case may be is volunteering. Getting out into the public and into the public eye is the ultimate goal of your personal brand. You have spent countless hours and planning trying to develop your brand so now it is time to put your brand to work.

If you have the time then volunteering is a huge free way to advertise yourself get noticed by your local residents. With any city in any country there are always folks who need help. Getting out there to help them out is one way to show the public who you are and what you are about. Doing a great job in helping others in your town is a great way to get seen. People will remeber not only your appearance but the fact “you were so helpful” and “such a nice person to help out”.

It is a selfish means to an end but in this instance the ends don’t care if the means are justified. It is a mutual partnership. They get an extra body in their tasks and you get to show them your personal brand. Volunteer work is an excellent step in getting ones foot into the local public offices. If you run for office right after doing a large amount of volunteer work it will help out in the local polling.

One may say ” Well, volunteering isnt what I want to do with my brand” If this is the attitude you take then forget about personal branding and fold yourself into the rest of soup of your area and disappear. Volunteering is getting out to meet the other people in your community. Treat it like market research in a raw form. Who are the people you are trying to reach with your brand. What are they like? Who are they? More importantly are these the type of people you are trying to reach with your brand?

There are hundreds of ways to volunteer in your city. Hop out and see what you can do. It is a valuable tool to get in touch with your brand’s target market. Also, you will be doing a great service to the place you call home.

The term is exclusively for men. It means a guy who wants to keep well groomed and shop for clothing basically. I think personal branding and metrosexuality go hand in hand. That is of course your personal branding revolves around body odor and an unkempt appearance. Metrosexuality is the new trend in men of today. I think it will be a common aspect of men in the future. Guys care more about what they wear and look like more and more. Being a man in todays world doesn’t mean you have to be rugged.

Metrosexuality is great for your branding attempts. If you are hip to todays fashion and keep up a good neat appearance people will recognize you for it. Now the flipside is since more and more men are doing the metrosexual thing, standing out will be a little more difficult, among other metrosexuals. There is still your ‘good ole boys’ who think a white t shirt, jeans , cowboy boots and a hat that says “bikini inspector” on it will be the outfit they will be buried in. There are still a plethora of those types of guys. More power to them I say. They make your branding easier.

Being a metrosexual makes personal branding far easier than if you were not one. The ability to try new clothes is the biggest asset. If you want to be hip and fashionable then you will not be afraid to experiment in your look. That freedom will open up numerous doors to your branding attempts. The grooming aspect of metrosexuality assists personal branding as well. You can try different hair styles and facial hair configurations to achieve a look you want to convey to others as well as your branding audience.

The want to look good and feel good in your appearance and clothing is something that was exclusively female for ever, now is becoming a male trait. I am sure the female population is thankful for it as well. If you are dating a metrosexual guy as a female your shopping trips become more fun as you two have something in common and something that binds you together a little more. Now if your man is competing against you to look better then maybe there will be a problem. But until that happens you two can be happy in your mall visits.

One definition of personal branding is, determining who you are at your core authentic self, rather than inventing a brand that you would like to be perceived as. One’s personal brand emerges from the search for identity and meaning, out of which comes an awareness of personal strengths and talents.
To help the unbranded answer questions of personal value, strengths, and weaknesses, some branding consultants lead their students through exercises aimed at making them aware of the impressions they make on others. Fledgling branders are asked to take stock of their personal assets — especially those that set them apart from the crowd. By just raising your self-awareness, branding gurus tell their charges, you can almost certainly kick your lot in life up a notch or two.

Much of developing a personal brand centers on identifying personal values, including a brand-values profile intended to help identify personal values. But a like this checklist may not be enough for everyone. Karl Speak m author of Be Your Own Brand says, “You can go through the checklist and select things you think reflect your values. But one test is how people perceive you and your values. If I ask five of my friends or associates, and they don’t associate those values with me, that should bring into question how much I believe in those values.”

It’s not clear that everyone can or even should be branded, however. Speak, for example, finds it easiest to teach personal branding techniques to corporate employees; other consultants prefer to work with self-employed entrepreneurs. Peter Montoya, for his part, doubts that everyone has the ability to do the soul searching required to become a brand. Although he feels that the ability to look at oneself honestly and openly is the most powerful and important skill in becoming a good personal brand, he says, “Some people have it and some people don’t. I’m not sure if it’s something that can be learned or not.”

But identifying one’s core values is reportedly no big deal if you have the knack, according to Montoya. “The simplest way is to say, ‘What’s most important to me in life?’ The answer that pops in your head is the most important thing. Then ask what’s the second most important thing. That will very quickly tell you what some of your values are,” he says.

Several years ago columnist Lucy Kellaway, writing in The Financial Times, labeled personal branding “a hybrid of homespun psychology, self-help and dressing for success.” She went on to say, “It is born from the idea that each of us ‘owns’ our career and that we are never going to get anywhere unless we set out consciously and strategically to market ourselves for all we are worth.” But, she added, “I am not a brand and neither are you. We are people, which is not the same thing at all.” Her conclusion: “Personal branding is distasteful for being blatantly ambitious, sneaky and superficial. Worse, it is surely bad for business… The more you focus on Me Inc., the less you are likely to be focusing on the job in hand” (The Financial Times, 4 December 2000).

Denise Kingsmill, deputy chairman of Britain’s Monopolies and Mergers Commission and a strong advocate of personal branding, also saw a downside to the personal marketing strategy. Kingsmill told The Financial Times in 1998, “Conscious personal branding can turn into an ego trip unless you are very clear about your objectives.”

Certainly the results of personal branding can leave the person feeling more empowered. According to branding consultant Chuck Pettis, one recently branded middle manager, referring to a conversation with her boss, reports, “Previously I… simply said ‘I’d like to do more training.’ 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.’ ”

Judging by the proliferation of books and seminars devoted to the subject, personal branding’s popularity has yet to peak. According to Speak much of the current appeal of this latest form of self-marketing can be traced to the current economic slowdown. “As more people are out of work, they search who they are in order to make themselves more attractive — with a new veneer — to a prospective employer.” But, he adds, many workers who have been laid off are also asking themselves who they are in an honest attempt to find employment consistent with their values.

A brading legend has it that Tommy Hilfiger’s clothing brand enjoyed a $100 million sales climb over a one year period after rapper Snoop Dogg appeared clothed in a Hilfiger logo rugby shirt on television program “Saturday Night Live.” The dramatic sales coup and successful partnership with music celebrities was largely attributed to Tommy Hilfiger’s brother, Andy Hilfiger. In 2001, Andy Hilfiger went on to work with celebrities who wanted to create fashion companies based on their own image. First recruit? None other than Jennifer Lopez.

For those who haven’t heard, Jennifer Lopez, also known as J. Lo, has earned unprecedented success as a music and acting phenom, including a debut album that went five times platinum and a commanding salary of over $12 million a film. She is easily one of the most talked, photographed and written about celebrities for fashion trends in the US.

J. Lo’s first perfume “Glow by J. Lo,” released in 2002, was an instant hit among 15 to 21 year old females – the same group who buy her albums. While no exact figures are public, in early January 2003, industry observers estimated that her fragrance sales totaled $44 million in the scent’s first four months.

In March 2004, Britney Spears and cosmetics maker Elizabeth Arden Inc. hoped to repeat similar success with the fragrances Curious and Fantasy. Too bad Spears hasn’t put out any child care products of late. Of course the inherent downside to a celebrity-name brand is that when the name is no longer the public’s darling or encounters personal problems and/or scandals, the brand has a much tougher time convincing the public that the “name’s” current problems do not reflect on the brand’s name itself. Martha Stewart’s empire knows this problem all too well. But she is back stronger than ever with her TV show and while people still make Martha Stewart prison jokes all over they still revere her for her business savy.

Take Michael Jackson and Pepsi way back when. If Pepsi knew then what Michael Jackson was about today, the allegations and the ghoulish appearance he has now, they probably would have wanted him to burn completely up instead of just his hair.

Associating a celebrity to a brand is a dangerous thing. While during the star’s upside your products will soar and if that same star decides to fall so will your customers. The same equation applies to a personal brand. If you decide that part of your overall look includes a Tommy Hilfiger logo shirt and then Tommy Hilfiger gets filmed clubbing baby seals in Alaska then you will have to change. So it is wise to pick and choose emulatees carefully. While anymore we just wait to see what new scandal will pop up next for a celebrity, it is still safe to roll the dice and copy certain aspects for your personal branding.

Who doesn’t like movie stars. They are famous, they are good looking and more importantly we all want to have sex with them. Now there are a few character actors like Linda Hunt , Wilford Brimley or that one desperate housewife that we could pass on but for the most part Hollywood is all about looking good and personal branding. You have to ask yourself, Why are some movie stars famous? What makes them likable to the public?

To answer that you have to ask that simple question; Would you have sex with them? Take Anna Nicole Smith. If she wasn’t a Playboy playmate at one time with her nice curves and big breasts could she be famous? Her acting ability is nil ( Have you seen Skyscraper? Droning through her lines like someone with Down’s Syndrome. If half of the cast didn’t have her naked and bent over the set through half the movie I wouldn’t have even have watched it…twice!!) And yet she is famous. Why? because she plays to the male urges of sex. She is very sexual and the fact that she nailed a 98 year old oil barron gave average Joe’s a inkling of hope that maybe she would want to sleep with them as well. Of course she branded the fact she was a moron as well as sexual from her show that was on E! .

On the female end you have Arnold schwarzenegger. A face only an Austrian mother could love. An acting career that is a study in novelty rather than serious theater BUT he is built like a russian tank and gives off the gentle giant feel. Now that he is in power he is all that more attractive to women now. He branded himself into the Kennedy family and a state governorship, how good is that?? He branded off the fact numerous women wanted to have sex with him and guys wanted to emulate him to get that result as well.

There are so many examples in Hollywood of this it isn’t funny. Hollywood stars know the average person want to have sex with their stars. How cool would it be for a person to get the chance to have sex with Nikki Cox or any one of the other desperate housewives or any of the cast of Freinds. Why do you think “personal” sex tapes get released. Paris Hilton, Chyna, and the very lame stunt by Fred Durst. All attempts to get back into the public eye. There is even an Eve sex tape as well as a Collin Farrell one. But that wasn’t for Colin that was for the hottie Nicole Nerian I’m sure. Career in a slump, nail a famous person on cam and let it leak out onto the Web.

The basic equation is this; Hollywood = Sex. And stars brand toward that all the time.

One of the most powerful branding tools is sex. Let’s face it, it’s what drives humans. It is the one basic thing that unites the world. No matter what country you are from or what language you speak, everyone has sex in one form or another. And there is no better way to appeal to humans’ memories ( and their wallets ) than to invigorate their sex drive.

To be blunt the one basic underlying question that both male and females have when they meet another person is, ” Would I have sex with this person?” With males that question is kind of fixed because males as a species will pretty much have sex with any female given the right circumstances. It could be opprotunity or intoxication but 9 times out of 10 the male species will have sex with anything. Females are a little more discerning as instinct kicks in and she wants to seek out the most virile males to have sex with. Now there are some females that do not care and do it for the love of sex, and God bless you promiscous ladies as far as I am concerned. I hate to sound base in these generalizations of the male and female gender but we are just a small burp in the timeline of the planet from being cavemen. The fact we use PDA’s and drive cars now does not mean that species survival instinct of procreation hasn’t subsided.

Now your personal brand can cater to these basic human traits and win support and garner noticability. In this the females have the upper hand.

An example: You are a woman who is moderately endowed and has a nice figure. You wear a summer dress that is unbuttoned enough to show cleavage and the dress is hiked up enough to show your upper thighs. Your hair is done up and your make up is on. You are going to get noticed by every male ( and most females ) you walk by.
Put a man in the same dress…….. not so much or you get noticed for the wrong reasons.

When building your brand around sex appeal, accent your assets. If you are a well build guy who takes care of his body, dress accordingly. Tight shirts to show off your muscles, tight pants to accent your rear end and keep well groomed.

If you are female, your breasts should be cleaved in clothing as much as possible, dresses should accent your endowments, show as much skin as you feel comfortable with and you will get noticed. Makeup should be done to fool the onlooker that you aren’t even wearing makeup. There is no sense in trying to suggest ideas for this as there are dozens of monthly publications that can help you out in that regard.

Try different looks and see which one gets you the most turned heads. There will be a few that will just jump into a persons brain and never get out. I can still vividly remeber a young woman I once saw in a summer dress walking down 6th Avenue on summer day in 2002 in Daytona Beach Florida. She was wearing a red and white flowered pattern summer dress. She had brown hair, wore white heels and was carrying small handbag and sipping of some drink of some sort. She filled out the dress so nicely that it stuck in my brain until this day and that was almost 4 years ago. So I know first hand that sex appeal as a brand works and of course the first thing that went through my mind when I saw her was ” Wow, I would like to have sex with her!!”

Next - Stars and Sex Appeal

Ok I came across a website that proves a point. You can mutate and bastardize your personal brand. I do not know if any of you remember the television show Saved By The Bell. Well there was a character named ‘Screech’. An annoying nerdish type played by Dustin Diamond. Now Dustin hasn’t done as well as some of the show’s Alumni. Here is the link to a site featuring Dustin Diamond.

The story is he is losing his house due to some shady dealings from an attorney and he is trying to raise 25,000 to pay the back mortgage. Now either this is a BS website or this is just sad. He touts himslef as a “celebrity” to begin with and that is using the term loosely. Type casting yourself to such a degree is his own fault. He should have stood up when the show went to the college years and tried to legitimize himself as an actor. But he is forever cursed with the nerdy acting. At least the guy who played Zach went hardcore when he was on NYPD Blue.

Dustin Diamond is abusing his brand however weak it may be at this point. He is using the brand of his celebrity to beg the public for money. If he is such a celebrity why does he have to beg from the general public for cash. The show is in syndication all the time and he should be making mad money from royalties. This may be the straw that break the proverbial camel’s back.

Now I will play devil’s advocate here and say that the whole thing is a publicity stunt to get back into the public eye. It worked for me because I had never heard anything from this actor since his embarassing appearence on “Celebrity Boxing”. But to do it this way probably won’t garner much attention aside from the chuckle and eyeroll of the audience. He is going to be on Howard Stern to cry about his money woes I guess and this will be another embarassing moment.

The outcome of this whole event will probably validate or counter the title of this post. But my personal feeling is I will be justified. We will have to watch and see.

What is WOM you ask? Well basically it is Word Of Mouth. With the Internet and the Web the power of word of mouth has risen exponetially. Anyone can comment on any given subject at anytime from anywhere in the world. That is a huge network of opinion and potential. And in a massive market like this the immortal words of Oscar Wilde come into play, ” The only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about.” Now you have to ask yourself. Are you ready to be talked about?

Mark Di Somma, a mamber of the Audacity Group, lays out 11 questions about your brand and its WOM potential. They are:

What sort of reputation do you actually want? In other words, what do you want to be known for? And what do you want to see spread? To an extent, that’s something you can’t control. But it’s something you should think about, and train your people to think about - because it’s great discipline for behavior.

Do you have a sound-byte brand? Can others describe what makes you special in a sentence - because if they can’t, how do you think they’re going to get everyone interested quickly? If you don’t, then you need to start circulating those thoughts in your email sign offs, your newsletters, the way you talk about your business, the way you introduce your company to others. Impressions are too important to be left to chance.

Do you make news? What are you doing to give your brand and your business gossip-ability? Who’s going to listen to your story - and why? Do you have RSS feeds or blogs to help your customers quickly gain access to what’s new in your world?

Are you listening? Word of mouth brands thrive on interactivity. That means encouraging your customers not just to talk amongst themselves, but also to talk openly and clearly with you. What are you doing to encourage feedback? What measures have you put in place to help those who do interact with you feel that their opinions are valued, sought and actioned?

Are you intriguing? People spread news because they want others to know things, but they also want to be judged on what they talk about - negative, positive or just plain interesting. How will talking about you enhance the status of the person spreading the word? Will you bring people flocking?

Are you findable, forwardable and linkable? No point in talking and being talked about if people can’t access you. Can you be reached by those you want to do business with and who discover they want to do business with you? If not, you may well find the frustration of not being able to get hold of you becomes the new point of conversation!

Are you commentable? Are you saying things that capture people’s attention and get you posted and referred to? Are you taking a stand on things that matter to the people who matter to you? You don’t have to be controversial of course. You may be whimsical, pointed, scathing, authoritative, insightful . but if you’re going to declare an opinion, make sure it’s orginal and that it’s one worth having!

Are you being honest? There’s nothing wrong with seeking publicity. There’s everything wrong with being deceitful and chances are, you will be found out.

Can you take the criticism? Because it will come. Inevitably. If you’re prepared to take advantage of communal chatter, then you need to be prepared to take a little flak as well.

Have you made being remarkable a feature of your brand? Have you incorporated outstanding thinking, actions and commitments into your way of doing business - and are they consistent with the reputation you’ll looking to achieve? If not, then you’re going to fall short or go unnoticed - both of which completely defeat the point!

Do you know what’s being said about you? Have you searched your company name to see what’s already out there? Are there impressions circulating about you already that you want to capitalize on or counter? Or are you starting from a clean slate?

Answering and addressing these questions will help you hone your personal brand WOM potential.

While researching for blog topics I came across a list of brand-buildings big dogs. One of them was Regis Mckenna. Regis Mckenna is chairman of The McKenna Group in Mountain View, California. He has spent more than 30 years in Silicon Valley, marketing such innovations as Intel’s launch of the first microprocessor and Apple’s launch of the first PC. I thought I would share an excerpt of his branding philosphy here.

(taken from DarwinMag.com )

” Branding is overrated. On average, U.S. corporations lose half of their customers every five years, half of their employees every four years, and half of their investors every year, according to Frederick Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Effect. That doesn’t sound to me like a lot of loyalty. And I thought that branding was supposed to keep people coming back for more. Meanwhile, we champion entrepreneurs because we want them to establish new brands. In effect, venture capitalists are betting hundreds of millions of dollars every year that people will be disloyal and forgo the brands they’re now using in favor of something new. Traditional marketing and branding strategies haven’t helped most big corporations either. If you look at the top 50 of the Fortune 500 in 1989, you’ll see that 10 years later, 39 had dropped from the Fortune 50. These are the companies that spend the most money advertising and promoting their brands.

So what is a brand supposed to do? Encourage customers to be loyal? Help a company build its position and long-term viability? The $300 billion or $400 billion spent on promotions annually during the past 20 years has not achieved much in terms of lasting corporate performance.

Take the branding of coffee in the United States 10 years ago. Today, we’re all drinking Starbucks—not Folgers, not Maxwell House. Those might still be brands bought in grocery stores, but the brand most people identify with is the one that popped up on a corner in their neighborhood. And that brand didn’t make its presence in our lives through promotion and advertising; it did so by actually building service centers in our communities.

Branding has become a religion in most corporations, and it’s very hard to dislodge it, because people believe that the brand itself is something that changes consumer behavior. We tend to think that branding comes first and the company’s success follows. In fact, when you look at most businesses, the products came first, they built their infrastructures, and their brands evolved along with the success of the products and services over many, many decades. Let’s take Coca-Cola as an example. Every day around the world, 1 billion people buy a Coca-Cola product. Now, take away Coca-Cola’s bottlers. Take away its distributors. Take away its retail centers. Take away its 130 years of experience dealing with the retail environment, and its constant attempt to create new products. And Coke’s ads wouldn’t work. The belief today is that you can create a Coke simply by running ads. And I say, no, you have to build that infrastructure, and that’s not easy. It’s expensive, and it takes a long time to develop so that it becomes a presence in people’s lives.

The Internet has certainly changed the way in which you brand products, but not in the way most marketers think. The Internet is not a broadcast medium like television. It is much more of a service medium in which you allow people to interact and exchange information with you. And it’s going to take another decade before we really learn how to use the Internet effectively. We have had more than 500 years to learn how to use print as an effective medium, and it took a long time for the radio and television to become effective.

Everything that companies are doing on the Web today is practice. People criticize the dotcoms, and so do I. But the fact is that they were social experiments. And social experiments with technology have gone on as long as I’ve been in Silicon Valley—more than 40 years. Intel was once in the watch business; Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor were in watches, toys and games. There’s a lot of technology that we believe has applications, but then the marketplace experiments with it to see how you can deliver those applications or technologies in useful forms. And that isn’t an instant conclusion. It often takes the experience of failure and time to learn and evolve. ”

So the way I read this is that Regis is saying that too much branding can be dismantling for a large business. The same could apply for your personal branding activities. Focusing your branding toward the package rather than the substance is a mistake. Once you finally get people to see you, you should deliver something worth while.

If having a baby wasn’t enough to get you noticed how about breaking up with someone you are married to dating. This is another trend in Hollywood to get press. Most recent of note is the Locklear/Sambora/ - Sheen/Richards lovers quadrangle. I mean they broke it off, how much press could they get. Well quite a lot actually!!! Then there’s Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. And the tabloid press is asking the important questions…. like who should Jessica date next and is that really David Spade with Locklear? And the public is eating it up!!!

I guess a trend in Hollywood is who can you break up with in the most explosive fashion. Sure all participants involved are damning the “press” and asking for privacy. But you know thier respective publicists are grinning ear to ear seeing thier clients’ names in the paper so much , along with photos to boot.

Whats just as effective as a breakup is a secret hookup. Is Jennifer Aniston dating Vince Vaughn?? The suspense is killing the grazing public. very effective. Goes along with the Spade/Locklear thing. Are they just good friends or something more. The questions in and of themselves are mundane but add a spot of fame and humans natural curiosity and need to know the answer and you have an instant captive audience.

If they really wanted to bastardize the whole break up / hook up angle they would start wearing Namebrand clothing in plain sight or Gargoyle Shades sipping a Coke or Pepsi. Sell their relationship woes to the highest corporate bidder to wear their logo.

” My heart is broken that Anne Heche left me, but to get through the day I use Summer’s Eve”

So want to make a name for yourself. Have a baby!! All the big name stars are doing it now. It is a virtual baby factory in Hollywood right now with the two biggest stories being Angelina Jolie and Britany Spears.

Brad and Angelina and their time in Africa has assured them front page status on every tabloid in every country. I mean you could do a collage of the different stages of Angelina’s pregnancy just from Star Magazine alone. Their trek across the dark continent has been tabloid fodder and recognition fuel for the couple. Their next movie should be a smash just from the exposure they have received.

Britany has made a different splash with her child rearing exploits, or lack thereof i should say. Even negative exposure is exposure and Britany is proving that point in spades. Every picture of her has her baby being held in a precarious position or riding in the back of her car in some dangerous fashion. What is she thinking? Does she not know how to carry a baby? All of that time on the tour bus and she didnt think to read even a pamphlet on basic child safety? The fact I am even writing about Britany in this way shows that the exposure she is getting will almost doom her next project be it a movie or CD or dare I say a child care how to book!!!

If Britany can redeem herself in the eyes of the public before she accidently kills her baby she may just save her career. But for now shes just seen as a poor mother holding a booze filled drink in her hand. If I wanted to see pictures like that I would just walk around a welfare office!

Of course BradJelnia’s baby could probably be accepted as the next messiah if they wanted it to be.

If you have a baby in Hollywood make sure you can show the folks who are paying your million dollar salaries that you can still take care of the more important things in your life, like your children.

3. You’re not just building a Web site. You’re starting a conversation.
You’re not building a site just so that Web crawlers can log your presence on the Net. The whole point is to generate conversations with other people. So ask yourself, Is this site going to make people think? Is it going to make them want to talk to me? Is it going to make them want to refer the site to someone else?

Other people have to be able to reach you: to rebut you, to challenge you, to inspire you, to entertain you — and yes, to hire you. You’ve got to design your site with those goals in mind. That’s why most so-called community sites don’t work: They don’t truly foster conversation.

But the ones that do work take this principle and run with it. Some of them are touching, such as Abbe Don’s Bubbe’s Back Porch (www.bubbe.com) and Derek Powazek’s Fray (www. fray.com). Others are frivolous but somehow satisfying, such as Derek’s Kvetch (www.kvetch.com). Whatever the specifics of each site may be, they all offer their audience a voice. They all invite conversation, although you don’t need to participate in these sites to appreciate them. This lesson is one that publishers are already starting to learn: If you don’t give people an opportunity to participate, when they do come to your site, they’ll just move on.

Another rule: The more personal the conversation, the better. But making a conversation personal requires involvement and accessibility — two attributes that scare most people. And opening yourself up to feedback can sometimes be unpleasant. The kind of feedback that most people get from their site is usually encouraging, interesting, and thoughtful — but sometimes it can be vitriolic and nasty. Some people will interpret your having a site as an open invitation to be mean. But that’s not enough of a danger that you should avoid creating a site altogether. After all, none of us enjoy all of the conversations that we have in our offline life, but we don’t use that fact as an excuse to refrain from all conversations. And in business, conversations are essential to getting anything done.

4. Authenticity matters.

The sites that work best are the ones that are authentic. Here’s where a lot of corporate Web sites run into trouble. When you look at the average corporate site, you get the sense that somebody in the marketing department put it up — and that no one who actually runs the company has seen it. I often hear people at companies joke about what’s on the corporate Web site. “Yeah, right,” they’ll say. “Like that’s true.”

This may sound weird, but you can learn a lot by comparing the sites of porn stars with the sites of mainstream film and music stars. Porn-star sites are often more personal, more intimate, more authentic, and more interesting than the sites of traditional stars — which usually read as if a pr department had created them.

Compare, for example, the site for the porn actress Aunt Peg (www.auntpeg.com) with the site for the singer Michael Bolton (www.michaelbolton.com). Aunt Peg’s site may or may not have been created by a publicist, but when you experience it, you think that you’re interacting with an actual person. Porn stars are, literally, not afraid to expose themselves — they have nothing left to hide! Of course, they’re characters: They’re trying to create and maintain a persona. But the lesson here is real: If you’re reserved, if you worry about revealing the real you, then you’ll create a site that isn’t authentic, complete, or representative.

Why be authentic? Because if you’re not, that fact will become apparent very quickly. The literacy rate in this medium (and in media generally) is soaring. As more and more people create their own Web sites, they start to understand this medium better — and they lose their patience with disingenuous stuff.

So, as you design your site, ask yourself: Are you talking about what really matters to you? Or are you talking about what you think should matter to you? If something matters to you, it doesn’t matter how you say it. The personal and the professional are so inextricably linked that the core of your professional brand will always be the most personal expression of “you.”

5. You change. So should your Web site.

Your site is a representation of you — and “you” is not static. The person you were last month is not the person you’ll be next month. And your Web site should operate on the same principle. Read some of the many diary sites out there, and you’ll see that some things in people’s lives change, while other things remain constant. Apply that lesson to your Web site: Make it easy for people to see what’s changing. And make sure that the things that don’t change speak loudly about your brand.

Some changes are cosmetic. That’s fine. Your site doesn’t have to reinvent itself totally. It can record the small, even superficial changes that you’re experiencing. But don’t leave it at that. Suppose that somebody visits your site and comes back a year later to find that nothing significant has changed. That’s no different from running into an acquaintance after a year apart — and realizing that she has no new ideas, no new perspectives, no new experiences. She’s exactly the same: She hasn’t learned anything, or taken any risks, or grown one bit. How boring!

Unfortunately, Web tools today are so bad, they don’t allow you to change your Web presentation very easily. So you may have to satisfy yourself with adding a few more links or with getting rid of some links — depending on what’s in your head space at that moment. For instance, if a personal page has a dead link, think about what message that broadcasts to the world: “Hi, everyone. I’m not paying attention!” That’s not the kind of free agent that a client would want to hire. And that’s not the kind of person that anyone would want to have a conversation with.

Personal Web sites, and the brands that they represent, are new. They come from a tradition, but they’re new. That doesn’t mean that something else might not supplant them in the next 10 years or the next 50 years. But whatever form such communications take, they all speak from the same human need — the desire to identify yourself, to tell the world, “I’m here. This is who I am. And here’s what I have to say.”

1. Know thyself.

Designing your personal Web site is only the second step. Before you do anything else, you’ve got to figure out who you are, and then you’ve got to embrace that. Everything else flows from there. People outside the mainstream — gays and lesbians, women, ethnic minorities — have always had to confront this issue. There’s a point in their lives when they have to say, “This is who I am. If you can’t handle it, move on.” Before you begin designing a Web site, think about what kind of life you want to lead and what kind of career you want to design. The secret to having a compelling Brand Called You is to know thyself. Otherwise, you’re promoting someone else’s brand with your name on it.

2. The personal is the professional.

There used to be a clear boundary between the professional and the personal. But the line between the two is blurring, especially for free agents and entrepreneurs. When you go to design your personal Web site, don’t let your site sink into this false divide. You are what you do. That’s not all that you are, but it’s a very important component — and a very powerful expression — of who you are.

If you want to see how some people have put this principle into practice, just look at such sites as Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com) or Harry Knowles’s Ain’t It Cool News (www.aint-it-cool-news.com). The site, the brand, and the person are all bound up together. And that’s precisely the point. Matt Owens’s Volumeone (www.volumeone.com) is another great example. It’s a beautiful Web site — but it’s more than that. As well as being a portfolio, it’s also a kind of online magazine about design. His views, his experiences, and his tastes come through as much as his work does.

This principle has slowly begun to take hold. That’s why having a personal domain to associate with your email address or URL has become the most prestigious domain that you can have — so much so that people are having to register their domains in other countries, since the ones that they want are already taken in the United States. If work is personal, why shouldn’t domains be personal too? Few of us want to hide behind the banner of a big company. More of us want to hang out a shingle. And if you hang out that shingle, you probably want to put your name on it.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to run out right now and register TrudyLopez.com or DigitalDan.com. But you should think about the way you present yourself online. So, for example, if you’re not going to get your own domain, pick a service that’s compatible with who you are. If your brand is identified with raging against the machine, you don’t want “att.net” or “msn.com” as part of your URL. And if you want to keep some aspects of your online life private, as many of us do, you may want to establish double domains: private.nathan.com and public.nathan.com.

The underlying design principle: Be direct. Tell people who you are, and don’t try to separate the “work you” from the “you you.”

When creating a personal brand you may not need to change anything about you personally. You could get noticed just by an extra item added to or on your person. Anyone remeber Flava Flav? One member of the rap pioneers Public Enemy. Always had a huge clock around his neck as his “medallion”. Penn Gilette, one half of the magic duo Penn and Teller, has one pinky nail painted red. And the most famous accessory of all would be Micheal Jackson’s white glove. You too can get noticed just be adding some item to yourself and doing it constantly just so people can put your face with your accessory.

Just as with fashion, an accessory will be strange at first until people get used to it and accept it as a norm. It could be a ring on an odd finger, or a piece of jewelery like a nose, ear, or tongue piercing. It is up to you and your target audience what you want to add to yourself to get you to stand out and be noticed. There is no limit to the scope in which you can accessorize.

The main thing is to keep it constant. If you do not get noticed right away then do not change it. Act like it is something YOU do normally and you do not care what other think about it. Sooner or later the basic human curiosity will take hold and you will get asked why you have that certain accessory. And then the networking can begin and your brand can take hold.