Do you know that you have the POWER of creating a brand for yourself? That’s right. It’s a play on the old fashioned idea of “making a name for yourself,” but making a brand of yourself can be more than that...it can be sustaining.

In the study of Marketing, Branding has its roots in consumer packaging. A service and/ or a product can be “packaged.” But according to my old Marketing bible of a text book,
“Basic Marketing by E. Jerome McCarthy, Fifth Edition,” (you can bet that there have been many more editions since this printing!), “...there is much more to packaging and branding than just buying a cardboard box and sticking a company’s name...packaging and branding decisions may be more important than physical product decisions. They may enable a firm to differentiate its homogeneous physical product or service and avoid pure competition.”¹

A brand in concert with an effective branding campaign, can make the difference, i.e. they can create a differential for you being you...

In business and in life we have the ability of having an indelible effect upon others. I’ll limit my discussion to business. That “indelible effect” can actually be your brand. Simplistically speaking, if you break it down, you can be known for the work that you do and for your personality. How you combine the two, can be the foundation for creating your own brand. Immediately before I joined BannerView.com, I was president of my own retail consultancy firm, the Ring Retail Advisory, LLC www.ringretailadvisory.com. Catchy name. I deliberately wanted to create a distinctive and memorable name for myself in the sea of management consultants in Nevada. By tying myself to an area of expertise in a town where there was virtually no others, I was able to create a memorable differential. When anyone needed help in retail, I was the one they called, including gaming properties having retail components on them. Of course, I had an entire public relations campaign intact to perpetuate my “image,” my brand. Part of that campaign was networking. I made sure that when I networked that the effervescent side of me was always there.

You don’t have to be an founder or a president of a company to have your own business brand. If you are a member of middle management or just starting on the corporate ladder, making an effort to distinguish yourself from the pack, can work in your favor. This is not about disengaging yourself from being a team player. But there are things you can do to make people remember you in context to your professional abilities. It’s up to you to make that assessment, develop a plan and act on it. You have the POWER to make you a brand!

Here is a checklist of considerations for distinguishing yourself as a brand:

1. Be good at what you do and define what it is that you do
2. Analyze how what you do differentiates you from others in your field and/or office
3. Identify ways in which you can leverage and promote that differential
4. Be consistent in your campaign in order to create a memorable impression
   (of course you want the impression to be a positive one!)

Who do you know who you think has achieved brand status? Let us know...

Footnote 1: “Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach”, by E. Jerome McCarthy, Ph.D, Fifth Edition, Richard D. Irwin, Inc. Homewood Illinois, (c) 1975. Chapter 13, page 244.