Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category
Personal Brand Equity: What’s it worth?
I had an interesting conversation with Peter Kim while out at SXSWi last week about my recent personal branding post and the comments he left a comment asking me to expand my thoughts from a corporate perspective and to explore the parallels between corporate and personal approaches. During our conversation Peter said that he thinks that most people will have a personal brand over time, so I asked him what he thought that would mean from a corporate viewpoint. He asked me to write a post on what I thought it meant and, well, you know me, I have lots of opinions and thoughts…so here goes.
I agree that most corporate people will begin to create online ‘personal brands’ by setting up LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, insert next new cool online tool here, accounts. But is that enough from the corporate perspective?
Having these accounts doesn’t automatically grant people with personal brand equity. And I think that’s the disconnect that I have with personal branding. Having a bunch of online accounts doesn’t just automatically equate to equity. But what you do with those accounts including the conversations you have and the people you are connected to does have the ability to establish online personas and reputations that might equate to equity and that’s what corporations are interested in. It’s like the new sales person showing up with an already established network. The sales person is implying that they have established relationships that will help to generate revenue (and their bonuses!). Sales people sell against a revenue number and that’s the potential equity they bring to the table. But what if you aren’t in sales? As a marketer, what does your personal brand bring to the table in the form of equity?
Let’s take a step back and wrap our heads around traditional corporate branding (there’s a method to the madness and boring definition review).
Brand: A name/mark intended to identify and differentiate a product/service of a seller
Brand Mark: The part of the brand that appears in the form of a symbol, design, distinct color/font
Brand Name: The part of the brand that can be vocalized (words, letters, numbers)
Brand Loyalty: A buyer’s commitment to repurchase the brand
Brand Equity: The value the brand adds to the product/service
For generations marketers have been branding with these terms in mind (think Coca-Cola, Nike, Amazon.com, etc.). But let’s look at it from a personal perspective in relation to working for a company, government agency, non-profit, university, etc. (the “corporate” perspective).
Personal Brand: A name/mark intended to identify and differentiate a product/service of a seller
Personal Brand Mark: part of the brand that appears in the form of a symbol, design, distinct color/font
Personal Brand Name: The part of the brand that can be vocalized (words, letters, numbers)
Personal Brand Loyalty: A buyer’s commitment to repurchase the brand
Personal Brand Equity: The value the brand adds to the product/service
So how do the definitions change when “personal” is added? And what should corporations look for or expect? You didn’t think they should hire you just because of your cool online presence, did you?
- What are you selling? How does your unique skill set, experience, reputation, etc. achieve corporate goals and objectives?
- What’s your brand mark? Perhaps you have a personal logo or an avatar (photo). Are you distinct?
- What’s your name? That’s obvious. But is it a well known name that a corporation would embrace? Is it a name recognized and established in the industry?
- How much loyalty do you have banked? Can you bring ready-to-buy customers/prospects to the table upon hiring? Does the brand loyalty you’ve established help shorten the sales cycle? Do you have marketing/PR relationships that help save money or generate revenue?
- What is your personal brand worth in revenue? What value does it add to the existing corporate brand? (Or does it conflict?) Does your personal brand help propel the corporate brand forward or create buzz?
The last one, personal brand equity is of a lot of interest to me. Years ago there was a push to make marketing professionals accountable (brand valuation) for the financial well-being of corporation brands. Wikipedia explains it this way: “[to] measure the brand as a financial asset. In short, a calculation is made regarding how much the brand is worth as an intangible asset. For example, if you were to take the value of the firm, as derived by its market capitalization–and then subtract tangible assets and “measurable” intangible assets–the residual would be the brand equity.”
From the brand equity perspective, what I am wondering is that if you feel strongly about personal branding, would you stake your income on it? Would you be willing to derive a portion of your income based on how much you positively or negatively influence brand valuation from an accountant’s viewpoint? (i.e. if it’s positive, more income; if it’s negative, less income perhaps even termination).
From the corporate perspective, should corporations pick people with established online personal brands over those that do not? What if their skill sets are the same? Should someone with an established online personal brand be paid more?
From a personal approach, what if you are the personal brand that owns the company? Do you view your personal brand equity stake to be even higher and therefore riskier?
Would a company full of personal brands that were compensated on personal brand equity provide a better customer experience?
What are your thoughts? What am I missing? What would you add?
[Image: iStock]
Even More Goodness! Related Posts:
Personal Branding: Be careful what you wish for
I really didn’t want to be part of this whole “personal branding” conversation because I just don’t believe in personal brands. But after a Twitter conversation last week, I feel compelled to say something. I am not going to dive into why I don’t believe in personal branding here today, but just know that after doing corporate branding for almost 15 years, I struggle with transferring those same concepts, trademarks, theories and applications to…people (other than JLo, Madonna, etc.)
Don’t get me wrong, I truly believe that marketing, PR and communications folks need to have an online presence/reputation especially when it comes to networking. I’ve known so many professionals that let their networks go because they are so busy with work, family, etc. and then when they want a new job or get laid off they struggle to establish or re-establish a network…and it’s usually too late because it can take years to establish and maintain a network of people who know and trust you. Valuable networks require time and nurturing…after all, we are talking about people here. And in this tough economy, it usually takes an established network to help you land a job or to open a door or two for you.
Should marketing, PR and communications professionals develop an online presence and manage their online reputations? Yes and yes. No argument there.
Should marketing, PR and communications professionals develop personal brands? I am not convinced. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Example One: MarketingProfs
As a marketer, I talk to a lot of offline marketers (offline = they don’t have Twitter & Facebook accounts). I often ask them “Do you know Ann Handley or Allen Weiss?” I get a blank stare. Then I ask “Do you know MarketingProfs?” The response I typically get is “I LOVE MarketingProfs, such great information…love their newsletter, etc.” I love MarketingProfs too and have been a member since 2000. And now that I know and have chatted with Ann and Allen both in person (I had the pleasure of meeting Ann at the Digital Marketing Mixer) and on Twitter, my commitment to being a Premium Member is cemented and they can be guaranteed of my ongoing renewal. Even though Ann has her own well-known blog, I get the impression, as a customer, that along with the folks that aren’t in the public eye, both Ann and Allen mainly focus on being MaketingProfs employees and brand stewards. (But I hope they’ll stop by and clarify that for us).
Point: The MarketingProfs brand is solidified by their employees’ passionate and authentic brand management work.
Example Two: Dan Schawbel
Let me just say even though I don’t believe in personal branding, I have a huge amount of respect for Dan Schawbel and his work in personal branding. He’s really done a great job with branding himself and becoming known as a top leader in the personal branding space. His work, I am sure, has helped lots of Generation Y folks get their online reputations in order. But I’ll ask this one question…do you know where Dan works? He works for EMC Corporation, a high-tech IT equipment manufacturer. Honestly, I know more about Dan’s work on personal branding than I know about Dan’s work for EMC. I’ve never met Dan or chatted with him on Twitter, but for the longest time I thought he was a personal branding consultant. So, how does EMC, his employer, benefit from his online “personal brand?” Is Dan utilizing his personal brand to talk with IT data center professionals about how an EMC Clariion solution might work for their data center and to promote the EMC brand?
(Dan, sorry to use you as an example but you are the king of all things personal branding! I hope you’ll stop by and let us know how things are working with your and EMC’s brands.)
Point: Whose brand is more important? The company’s or the employee’s?
Example Three: A personal experience
I was at a job interview over the summer for a job that I wasn’t really interested in, but wanted to see what the company had to offer. The hiring manager came into the interview with my resume in hand and started asking me the typical interview questions. All was going okay until he asked this one question: “Tell me what don’t you like about marketing?”
Even though arrogant, I couldn’t help it…I chuckled and said “Have you read my blog? Have you Googled me?” He said “no.” I answered with “Well, I can tell you there is nothing about marketing that I don’t like…” He said “that’s impossible.” I wanted to answer: “Well, I like everything about marketing except for people with marketing titles that ask silly questions like that of another marketer and especially of one with a blog called “The Harte of Marketing.” But, I didn’t say that aloud because that would have been totally rude and uncalled for. I let it go and didn’t debate it because there are lots of marketers who don’t like everything about marketing and he was just doing his due diligence. But what it showed me was that this particular company didn’t care about a potential candidate’s online savvy or the passion that was behind the blog. It just didn’t matter…at all. And it never would.
Point: Even when you have a so-called online “personal brand” (or reputation) some companies just don’t care.
Let’s face it…when you start talking about brands egos are involved. Are you willing to give up your personal brand for the brand of the company that pays your salary (whether it’s an employer or a client)? Or on the flip side, should a company be willing to give up their brand when an employee’s brand is stronger and holds more recognition and influence? Is this a situation ripe for a brand conflict? Or can there be a balance between personal and corporate brand (I am thinking Richard Branson/Virgin might be a good example here).
Where do you fall in this branding debate? What additional examples can you share?
Even More Goodness! Related Posts:
Social media transparency: How realistic is it?
I embrace social media 100% and as a business owner social media has been proven for me. But, I know that a lot of marketing and PR professionals who are now just sticking their toe in the proverbial social media pool have questions; especially around the meaning and implementation of transparency.
As social media evangelists we talk about social media transparency and the importance of being forthright, authentic and honest. We also discuss that it’s about the “who” (people) not the “what” (brand or company), an important part of being transparent when it comes to social media.
That said, recently two incidents have happened that are making me re-think the term transparency.
As a business owner the first one is personal, but I think it’s important to share. In early February my father-in-law passed away and I was offline for over a week. A lot of people were contacting me because it wasn’t the norm and they were worried. When I jumped back online, I finally left a comment on Jason Fall’s blog (Kevin Palmer’s guest post) that I had told Kevin weeks before that I would write. Kevin might not have even notice that I hadn’t commented, but I wanted to keep my word. In commenting I apologize for the delay “due to a family situation.” And in retrospect, that was probably a mistake. Honestly, I didn’t want to be transparent…it was a private family matter, not for public consumption (even though there was a very public obituary). But, in trying to be transparent, I might have ended up seeming non-professional. I should have just said “sorry to be late to the party” the usual comment for tardiness. The thing is, people did know what had happened and offered their condolences online, it wasn’t a secret if people were paying attention to my Twitter stream. I have talked about my family before on Twitter, but this was different for me.
The second incident happened just yesterday. During the ghost writing debate, I was publicly annoyed because I felt that Heather and Mike Whaling were not being transparent in their use of social media (Twitter) while debating me (i.e. meaning that they were tweeting as two representatives from two agencies versus a married couple). I found out after the fact from Mike’s client, Eric Brown, that Heather and Mike were actually married. When I learned that, I just felt that the situation was disingenuous (not that they are disingenuous mind you, there’s a difference and I don’t believe that at all). Mike left a really nice note in which he explained that he didn’t think it was necessary to mix personal with professional. I totally get that, but I stated that in this particular situation I thought it was indeed very important to be transparent. But at the end of the day, it’s Mike’s personal decision to determine the level of transparency that’s best for him, his business and his family, right? Not all of us are on the same page for how much transparency is appropriate.
For a brief moment, let’s think about these situations from a non-social media perspective. Would they have happened in a traditional, offline environment? I bet they would, but would have been handled differently. We understand business conduct and yet we are still trying to work out how social media best works for business when we all have a voice and the desire to be “real.”
Here’s the one way we could potentially look at the spectrum of outbound communications (I am basing these loosely on light transmission definitions since we are talking about transparency):
- Opaque – where most companies lie in the spectrum. One-way conversations (i.e. normal marketing/PR)
- Translucent – Forthright, not revealing all, but still two-way conversations. (Ex: a person can be very professional on Twitter, engaging, but still not discussing his/her personal life)
- Transparency – Crystal clear, real two-way conversations (you know about this person’s personal life, business experience, product/service they market/brand, etc.).
From a business perspective is being translucent okay when it comes to social media? Are we using the word transparency correctly? Do we need to know everything? Do we care or not care to know everything? Do you want to feel like you have a transparent relationship with a brand/company? What happens when transparency goes wrong? What works?
Who decides what the appropriate level of transparency is? Who makes the rules? The person, the company or the community in which they interact? Where are the boundaries?
Lots of questions here…
Even More Goodness! Related Posts:
Social Media Ghostwriting: The Great Marketing/PR Debate*
Yesterday, after hearing that there was a discussion around ghostwriting up at the recent PodCamp Toronto, I decided to share a post on Twitter that I had written for MarketingProfs’ Daily Fix on Ghostwriting, Social Media and Ethics.
From the MarketingProfs Daily Fix post:
In Richard Johannesen’s book “Ethics in Human Communication,” he analyzes the ethics of ghostwriting with a series of questions**:
- What is the communicator’s intent and what is the audience’s degree of awareness?
- Does the communicator use ghostwriters to make herself/himself appear to possess personal qualities that she/he does not have?
- What are the surrounding circumstances of the communicator’s job that make ghostwriting a necessity?
- To what extent does the communicator actively participate in the writing of her/his own writing?
- Does the communicator accept responsibility for the message she/he presents?
Those questions and the ethics surrounding them are easily answered in the traditional marketing and/or public relations arena. But what happens when you add social media into the mix? How do the ethics around ghostwriting change when companies are supposed to be authentic and transparent?
(To read the examples of how social media ghostwriting can potentially harm a companies’ reputation while they are trying to engage in social media, head on over to the Daily Fix…besides, there are a lot of great questions, comments and conversation! )
**Source: Public Relations Writing: The Essentials of Style & Format by Thomas H. Bivins
Traditional Media vs. Social Media
From an ethics perspective, most people know that marketers and public relations professionals write (or it’s outsource to an agency) the information they receive on a daily basis…whether it be a radio commercial, a TV ad, a magazine article, etc. And from a PR perspective, if someone takes credit for a byline they didn’t write (thinking about the co-worker who struts around with his/her article in hand), that’s unethical (see #2). But, most people aren’t stupid…when they know someone well enough, they can tell who really wrote it and that just makes the person making the claim look like a dishonest idiot among other things.
The issue here is that you cannot take that same marketing/PR team and say “okay, now go do social media.”
Why? The transference doesn’t work well. Let’s remember that social media tools were around long before the term social media even existed. People, yes people, not companies, used weblogs (blogs) as personal diaries, to communicate with their friends, to share information, etc. And people (there’s that word again!) used social networks like forums, Yahoo! Groups, chat rooms, etc. to be social with…people. Social media’s history lies with individuals who used these tools to communicate, solve problems, debate, etc. If you haven’t read The Cluetrain Manifesto, I highly suggest it. Within its pages you’ll find the history of the online world that I am talking about. That said, with today’s social media comes an inherent trust, authenticity and transparency that companies, marketers and PR professionals need to learn to embrace. This new form of communication is messy and it’s not your mother’s marketing or PR!
I have witness first-hand and have untangled myself from, and you probably have too if you were involved in social networks pre-2008/2009, social network attacks on people who appear to be sharing fake information or using these places for underhanded reasons. These situations (people-on-people) are typically quite vocal and verbally violent…and it’s not pretty. Typically when these situations happen, some of the people are banned from the forum or group.
Now transfer that to today’s social media situations and consumers or the media uncovering that a company, its brand or its CEO has been less than authentic and transparent and their blog or network communications were fake (i.e. ghostwritten)?
Would you want to be the agency or consultant advising them on how to survive an attack?
Or worse yet, do you want to be the agency or consultant that put them in that delicate situation to begin with?
Yes, it seems extreme, I know…but what can I say, people are people and it is human nature to act out when you feel betrayed, used, carpetbagged, etc. And in today’s social media world, that can happen in a nanosecond! And ultimately the “ghostwriting” disconnect occurs when marketers/PR folks try to force traditional media ‘norms’ onto social media, which is anything but the norm.
The Twitter Ghostwriting Debate
After I shared the MarketingProfs Daily Fix post, an interesting little debate between me and Heather Whaling (@PRtini) took place***. Heather is a traditional PR person and a new blogger. I got the sense that part of our debate disconnect lies within our different backgrounds. I admit it, I am a purist. Having spent the past 5 years of my life spent in online social networks & blogging (no, there weren’t any companies networking & no, THoM is not my first blog), I can’t disconnect from my belief that today’s social media/social networking needs to be from a “people” perspective, not a “business” perspective.
As a point of debate, I pointed out the Edelman/Wal-Mart debacle to Heather as an example of why ghostwriting is a potentially bad path for companies engaging in social media to go down and her first reaction was “but that was a fake blog.” Yep, it was…but consumers didn’t know that at first, did they? When professionals who monitor/analyze Wal-Mart started seeing a disconnect between Wal-Mart’s typical business stance and the rosy posts showing up on the blog they knew something was up. Some of the words used were: misleading, deceptive, skepticism, and questionable practices. In retrospect not very rosy, at all.
Here’s the point: If you are going to ghostwrite, you better know that company inside and out and know their negatives and positives—as viewed by the market/community—not the CEO or the company. Because if you just listen to what the company’s marketers tell you (which is always an inherently skewed view) and you don’t do your own homework, your writing will shine a spotlight on any inconsistencies that might exist and that customers, analysts, investors, etc. might find once that ghostwritten content is public. I mean, after all, you’re just writing as the CEO. Really, what’s the harm for them or you/your agency, right?
Geoff Livingston of Livingston Communications and The Buzz Bin said it best:
“Social media forces ethics upon people. There’s little mercy once things get exposed.”
Convinced yet? What do you think? Is this a valid argument against ghostwriting?
Added 2/24/09: Dave Fleet (@davefleet) has a great post on “Why Ghostwriting is Wrong” on his blog. Check out the debate going on over there too! 
***************
Note: I am not opposed to helping a company with social media consulting, providing a guiding hand when they want to blog, etc. Heck, that’s what I do for a living! But what I am opposed to is writing blog content from scratch (i.e ghostwriting). I didn’t develop the ethics around public relations, I am just a great believer in following them. And yes, I believe we are talking about the public when it comes to social media.
*I say “Marketing/PR” because that’s who is trying to transfer the idea of ghostwriting into social media. Folks who have been engaged in social networks/media as “people” for 2-10 years know that there isn’t a debate…they tend to side that ghostwriting is not acceptable.
***Others included in the debate/conversation included: Mack Collier (@mackcollier), Mandy Vavrinak (@mvavrinak), Josh Sternberg (@josh_sternberg), Amber Watson Tardiff (@jerseymomma), Justin Goldsborough (@JGoldsborough), 30Lines (@30Lines), Marita Roebkes (@MaritaR). I hope I didn’t miss anyone…
Even More Goodness! Related Posts:
Tags: Brand Management, ghostwriting, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media | 
74 Comments »
Is social media the same as marketing?
I’ve found as a blogger sometimes when I let something swim around in my head for a while, all the pieces I need to make a point or share my thoughts seem to come together like a puzzle. I’ve been pondering this post since early September, but yesterday and today it finally solidified (for me anyway).
I have said more than a few times that I am not a fan of the term “Social Media Marketing.” Maybe it’s just semantics. Maybe I am just being staunch in applying the marketing and communications definitions and principals that I learned long ago and have implemented for ages.
Here’s the reason why the term social media marketing is not working for me: social media is about sharing and discussing information. It’s communications, not marketing. And yes, of course, companies can indirectly market themselves through communications; we’ve been doing it for eons (at least one-way). But a good communicator does not always make a good marketer nor does a good marketer always make a good communicator. They are two different disciplines.
After all these months, what is cementing this notion for me? Well, for one it was the comment that Eric Brown (@eric_urbane) left yesterday. He, and rightly so, is very upset about ‘social media marketers’ not delivering. Eric commented:
“… Social Media 101 tells us, as business owners we need to be transparent, we need to participate in the conversation and allow what we do right and do wrong to hang out there on rating sites, blogs, and forums for the whole world to evaluate, yet very few Social Media consultants or agencies are willing or have done the same, at least I don’t think so. So, after running around in my underwear for the last three years while practicing Social Media for all to see, I would like to see the same from the Social Media firm or consultant I am contemplating to hire.” He goes on to comment “…our small business paid out a lot of money to folks who didn’t know what they were doing, but claimed to. I see this forthcoming as a huge issue in our industry, and think a lot of money will be spent on the carpetbagger side of the fence, giving this Social Media space a black eye.”
The issue at hand, as I see it, is that a lot of people are adding Social Media Marketing as part of their service offerings, but they haven’t spent a day doing the marketing part and because of that they struggle with implementing social media as part of an overall marketing strategy. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t consider a company being advised to set up a LinkedIn or Facebook group or to have a Twitter account marketing (and in some cases, it’s not social media either). There’s much more to marketing (like product, distribution, pricing).
The second thing was this video from Ogilvy PR Worldwide that I came across today (via Shel Holtz/Social Media Today):
Yes, I know. The video is about PR, not marketing (or is it?). But, last time I checked, PR fell under the ‘P’ in marketing that is ‘Promotion.’ Shel also included a link to John Bell’s (Ogilvy) post on The 13 Skills of the Public Relations Pro of the Future, which includes a link to a post discussing how PR folks need to understand Creating Integrated Marketing and Communications Strategy. (Integrated marketing communications [IMC] was introduced in the late 90s by Don Schultz, Clarke L. Caywood, et al–it’s not a new concept. It may be new to some or it could be, in some cases, that social media is finally forcing the implementation of it).
John writes:
“The walls between marketing and communications are dissolving. A new marcom organizational standard is already appearing where multiple disciplines, most notably public relations and advertising are rolling up to the same leader inside brands.”
Really. Huh. Really? I guess I am fortunate enough to have always had marketing (including product development/management/branding), communications and PR in one department (very small and very large companies). That said, I have heard from marketing friends who work for large companies and agencies that the brand managers don’t always report into marketing and that PR sometimes reports into the CEO, or horror…HR. No doubt these types of reporting structures always present communications challenges.
I am not beating up on Ogilvy or John Bell…not at all. It’s a great series that John has and given my recent rant about the PR industry, I think A LOT of PR folks need to listen to what John has to say. But, what all of this says to me is that this mashup of social media, communications (advertising, PR, WOM) and marketing is going to cause a lot of issues and people like Eric Brown (and his budget) will experience the brunt of it.
Why? Because the mashup will allow for people to offer services like Social Media Marketing or PR Communications or Marketing Relations or… (really, you don’t want me to go on right?) without having a firm grasp on any of the disciplines that they are trying to deliver or implement.
Trust me, I agree with John, the walls need to come down and the need for two-way communications is forcing a sledge hammer through the walls.
But at what cost?
Even More Goodness! Related Posts:
Tags: communications, Marketing, PR, Social Media |
86 Comments »
The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
