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

Dear Readers,
I wish each and everyone a happy Easter time. Hope you’re using the few days off to recharge your batteries and get a push for the summer rally. I’m just pushing my mind with a lot of old and new books dealing from Jesse Ventura to legal issues in the entertainment business. I’ll probably review one or another book on the blog.
PJ Harengel

One of my first postings on this blog pointed to some speeches by Karen Hughes. Now, after all the ellection issues, she’ll get back to Washington on an almost impossible mission. To “sell” America in the Muslim and Arabic countries is certainly one of the hardest jobs today imaginable. I’ll keep an eye on her.

Just another celebrity trying to make money with his brand. Anyhow, Bono approached it in a very authentic way. The fashion line is “made in family-run factories in South America and Africa with fair-labor practices.” It’s a risky business. If there ‘d be any suspicion, that anything isn’t as fair and social as he promotes it, his own image will be hit hard. And he certainly did a great job in establishing himself as a great personal brand with a strong focus on social responsibility.

The Paris Hilton “hack” has had some influence on the sale of the Sidekick. As the New York Post reported, “T-Mobile stores in New York are selling out of Sidekicks (a handheld device that stores information online) despite or, more likely, because of the fact that celebrity phone numbers and naughty pictures were stolen off one belonging to bad-girl heiress Paris Hilton.”
Fred Durst is working on his new album. Suprisingly, a little sex tape was released. He pretended someone at this computer repair store had found and stolen it, but others assume that it had been the same “hacker” who hacked Paris’s Sidekick.
For me it looks very odd:
1 Durst is working on a new album
2 The tape was released about a week ago but didn’t get much exposure
3 Now he starts suing some file sharers for distributing it and demanding an absurd sum of money
Looks like the good old PR stunt of “insuring” one’s ass for a few million bucks just got a new “face.”
Source

While Michael Jackson will keep us entertained over the next weeks, there are some background things going on. His father, Joe Jackson, is currently in Germany negotiating about concerts for Michael in 2006. Yesterday, he had talks with the German Soccer Association, to arrange some concerts during the Soccer World Cup in 2006. Well, let’s see how this will end.

Michael Jackson has always been a revolutionary personal brand. By his appearance, he seemed to be somehow like a supergender, without being male or female. This was certainly one of the factors which made him appealing to such a broad audience. Also, his color shift from black to white certainly supported this. It will be really exciting to see if he will ever get as big as he had been at one time.

… and understands it the right way.
He rebrands his name with his fashion brand “Lagerfeld.”

Lagerfeld has often said his public image is a caricature, but he consciously feeds it with witty self-referential touches.

( Source)

Looks like he really understood what it means to be a unique personal brand.