Brand Positioning - Brand Image

This cross-trainer is wearing - one look at the distinctive swoosh on the side tells everyone who you would dismiss. That coffee travel mug you're carrying - ah, you're a Starbucks woman! Your T-shirt with the distinctive Champion "C" on the sleeve, blue jeans with the prominent Levi's rivets, the watch with the hey-this-certifies-I-made-it icon on your face, your fountain pen with the manufacturer of symbol realized in the end ...

You're branded, branded, branded, branded.

It 's time for me - and you - to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that's true for anyone interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of location, regardless of the business we happen to be, we all need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important task is to be the head of marketing for the brand called.

It 'simple - and so difficult. And that inescapable.

Companies can, in turn, Behemoth buying each other or acquiring every hot startup that catches their attention - the merger in 1996 records in September Hollywood may be interested in only blockbusters and book publishers may want to put out only guaranteed best-sellers. But do not be fooled by all the frenzy at the humongous end of the size spectrum.

The real action is at the other end: the main chance is becoming a free agent in an economy of free agents, looking to have the best season you can imagine in your field, trying to do your best work and chalk a extraordinary track record, and trying to establish their own micro equivalent of the Nike swoosh. Because if you do, you'll not only get to all the opportunities in the arm (or laptop) in length, will not only make a significant contribution to the success of your team - you'll also get in a great bargaining position for next season Agency for the free market.

The good news - and it is largely good news - is that everyone has the opportunity to stand out. Everyone has the opportunity to learn, improve and strengthen their skills. Everyone has the opportunity to be a brand worthy of note.

Who understands this fundamental principle? The big companies do. They have come a long way in a short time was little more than four years ago, April 2, 1993 to be precise, when Philip Morris cut the price of Marlboro cigarettes by 40 cents a package. That was on Friday. Monday ', the market value of packaged goods companies fell by $ 25 billion. Everyone agreed: brands were doomed.

Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services - from the auditors in charge of the trainers at our restaurants - are figuring out how to overcome the narrow boundaries of their categories and become a brand surrounded by a buzzing sound like Hilfiger Tommy.

Who else understands it? Every single website sponsors. In fact, the Web makes the case for branding more directly than any packaged good or consumer product ever could. Here's what the Web says: Anyone can have a website. And today, because anyone can ... someone does! So how do you know which sites to visit, such as favorite websites, which sites are worth visiting more than once? The answer: branding. The dating sites are the sites you trust. These are the places where the mark is said that the visit will be worth your time - again and again. The brand is a promise of value you receive.

The same applies for that killer app other side of the network - e-mail. When everybody has email and anybody can send e-mail, how do you decide whose messages you're going to read and respond to the first - and when you plan to send trash to bed? The answer: personal branding. The name of the sender of the e-mail is just as important a brand - a brand - as the name of the Web site visited. It 'a promise of value you receive for taking the time to read the message.

No one understands better the mark of professional services firms. Look at McKinsey for a model of the new rules of branding in business and personal. Almost every professional services firm works with the business model itself. They have almost no hard assets - my guess is that most probably go so far as rent or lease every tangible item they can to avoid having to own anything. They have lots of soft assets - more conventionally known as people, preferably smart, motivated, talented people. And revenues have huge profits - and surprising.

They also have a very clear culture of work and life. You're hired, you report to work, is part of a team - and immediately begin to understand how to provide customer value. Along the way, you learn stuff, develop your skills, hone your abilities, move from project to project. And if you're very clever, is figuring out how to stand out from all the other very smart people walking around with $ 1,500 suits, high-power portable and well-polished resume. Along the way, if you're very smart to understand what it takes to create a distinctive role for yourself - you create a message and a strategy to promote the brand called.

What makes you different?

Start right now: as of this moment you are going to think of yourself differently! You are not an "employee" of General Motors, you are not a "staff" at General Mills, you're not a "worker" at General Electric or a "human resource" at General Dynamics (ooops, there's more!) . Forget the General! You do not "belong to" a society for life, and your primary affiliation is not to a particular "feature". You are not defined by your job title and are not confined by your job description.

Starting today you are a brand.

You're every bit as much a 'brand like Nike, Coca Cola, Pepsi, or Body Shop. To start thinking like your favorite brand manager, ask yourself the same question the brand managers of Nike, Coca Cola, Pepsi, or Body Shop ask themselves: what is it that my product or service that makes it different? Give yourself the traditional 15 words or less contest challenge. Take the time to write your answer. And then take the time to read it. Several times.

If your answer does not light up the eyes of a prospective client or command a vote of confidence from a satisfied customer, past, or - even worse - if you do not grab, then you have a big problem. It 's time to give some serious thought and even more serious effort to imagine and develop themselves as a brand.

Begin by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from competitors - or your colleagues. What have you done lately - this week - to make you stand out? What do your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest strength and clearer? Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?

Go back to the comparison between the mark and brand X - the approach the corporate biggies take to creating a brand. The standard model they use is feature-benefit: every feature they offer in their product or service produces an identifiable and distinguishable benefit for their client or customer. A dominant feature of Nordstrom department stores is the personalized service it lavishes on each client. The customer benefit: a feeling of being accorded individualized attention - along with all the choice of a department store.

So what is the "feature-benefit model" that the brand called You offers? Please send your work on time, every time? The internal or external customer gets dependable, reliable service to meet its strategic needs. Do you anticipate and solve problems before they become crises? Your client saves money and headaches just to have you as a team. Have you always complete your projects within the allocated budget? I can not name a single client of a professional services firm that does not go ballistic at cost overruns.

The next step is to put aside all the usual descriptors that employees and employees to position themselves in the corporate structure. Forget your job title. Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forgot your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget the standard steps of progression you've climbed in his career so far. Burn that damn "ladder" and ask yourself: What I've realized that I can unabashedly brag about? If you are going to be a brand, you must become relentlessly focused on what did you add value, that you are proud, and most importantly, that you can shamelessly take credit for.

When you're done, sit down and ask yourself one more question to define your brand: What do you want to be famous for? That's right - famous for!

What is the step for you?

So it's a cliché: do not sell the steak, sell the sizzle. is also a principle that every corporate brand implicitly, those in-the-mail sales program to Omaha Steaks Wendy "We're just normal people" advertising campaign. No matter how robust the skill set, no matter how tasty you've made this feature-benefit proposition, you still on the market the hell out of your brand - to customers, colleagues, and the virtual network of partners.

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 spots and print designed to get billions of "impressions" of your brand in front of the consuming public. If you're brand You, you have the same need for visibility - but no budget to buy it.

So how do you market brand You?

There is literally no limit to the ways you can go about improving your profile. Try moonlighting! Register for a subsequent project within your organization, just to present yourself to new colleagues and showcase your skills - or work on new ones. Or, if you can carve out the time, undertake a freelance project that comes in contact with a completely new group of people. If you can get them singing your praises, they'll help spread the word about what a remarkable contribution you are.

If these ideas do not appeal, try teaching a class at a community college in a program of adult education, or in your business. You can get credit for being an expert, you increase your position as a professional, and increases the likelihood that people will return to you with more requests and more opportunities to stand out from the crowd.

If you're a better writer than you are a teacher, try contributing a column or an opinion piece in the local newspaper. And when I say local I mean local. It is not necessary to make the op-ed page of The New York Times to make the grade. Community newspapers, professional newsletters, corporate publications in your room has a white space they need to fill. Once started, you have a track record - and clips that you can use to snatch more chances.

And if you're a better speaker or writer, teacher, tries to get you on a panel discussion at a conference or sign up to make a presentation at a workshop. Visibility has a funny way of multiplying, the hardest part is getting started. But a couple of good panel presentations can earn you a chance to make a speech "small" only - and there is only a few jumps to a major speech to the annual convention of your industry.

The second important thing to remember about personal visibility campaign is: all the issues. When you are promoting the brand, whatever you do - and everything you choose not to do - communicates the value and character of the brand. Everything from how to handle phone conversations to e-mail sent to your way of conducting business in a meeting is part of the larger message you're sending about your brand.

It is partly a matter of substance: what you have to say and how well you get told. But it is also a matter of style. On the web, do your communications demonstrate a mastery of technology? In meetings, do you keep your contributions short and the point? Become up to the level of your brand is business card: Have you designed a cool-looking logo for your personal record? You are demonstrating an appreciation for design that shows what is important to understand packaging - very - in a crowded world?

The key to any personal branding campaign is "word-of-mouth marketing." Your network of friends, colleagues, customers and clients is the most important marketing vehicle you have, what they say about you and your contributions is what the market will ultimately assess how the value of your brand. So the great trick to build your brand is to find ways to nurture your network of colleagues - consciously.

What is the true power of you?

If you want to grow your brand, you must come to terms with power - your own. The key lesson: power is not a dirty word!

In fact, the power for the most part is a badly misunderstood term and a badly misused capability. I'm talking about a different kind of power that we usually see. It is not power scale, as in who's best at climbing over the adjacent bods. It's not who's-had-a-great-office-by-six square inches of power or who's-got-the-fanciest-title power.

It's influence power.

It 's been known to make the most significant contribution in your particular area. And 'the power of reputation. If you were a scholar, you would measure the number of times publications are cited by others. If you were a consultant, you would measure the number of CEOs have your business card in their Rolodexes. (And better yet, the number of those who know the beeper number by heart.)

Getting and using power - intelligently, responsibly, and yes, powerfully - are essential skills for growing your brand. One of the things that attracts us to certain brands is the power project. As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose powerful presence creates a halo effect that comes off on you.

It 'the same workplace. There are power trips that are worth taking - and that you can take without appearing to be a selfish, self-shooting enlarge megalomaniac. You can do it in small ways, slow and subtle. Is your team having a hard time organizing productive meetings? Volunteer to write the agenda for the next meeting. You're contributing to the team, and you get to decide what is inside and outside the program. When it's time to write a post-project report, not all team members to head for the door? Beg for the chance to write the report - because the hand holding the pen (or tap the keyboard) gets to write, or at least shape the organization's history.

Most importantly, remember that power is largely a matter of perception. If you want people to see it as a powerful brand, act like a credible leader. When you're thinking like brand You, you do not need org-chart authority to be a leader. The fact is that you are a leader. You're port!

One key to growing your power is to recognize the simple fact that today we live in a world of design. Almost all work today is organized into small packets called projects. A project-based world is ideal for growing your brand: projects exist around to provide, create measurables, and leave you with braggables. If you are not spending at least 70% of your time working on projects, creating projects, or organizing your (apparently mundane) tasks into projects, you are sadly living in the past. Today you have to think, breathe, act, and work in the projects.

Project World makes it easier for you to assess - and advertise - the strength of brand You. Again, think like the giants do. Imagine a brand manager at Procter & Gamble: When you look at the activities of your brand, you can add something to increase your power and felt presence? Want to be better with a simple line extension - taking on a project that adds incrementally to your existing base of skills and accomplishments? Or would you be better off with a completely new product line? It 's time to move abroad for a couple of years, venturing outside your comfort zone (even taking a lateral movement - damn the ladders), tackling something new and completely different?

Whatever you decide, you should look to the power of your brand new look as an exercise curriculum; management - an exercise that you start doing away once and for all with the word "curriculum". Do not you have an old resume more! You have a marketing brochure for brand You. Instead of a static list of titles held and positions occupied, the marketing brochure brings to life the skills you've learned, the projects that you presented, the braggables you can take credit for. And like any good marketing brochure, your need for constant updating to reflect the growth - breadth and depth - of brand You.

What is loyalty to you?

Everyone says that loyalty is gone, loyalty is dead, loyalty is over. I think it's a load of crap.

I think loyalty is much more important than it has ever been before. A 40-year career with the same company once may have been called loyalty, hence it looks a lot like a lifetime of work with few options, very few opportunities, and very little individual power. This is what we used to call indentured servitude.

Today loyalty is the only thing that matters. But is not the blind loyalty to the company. And 'loyalty to his colleagues, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your project, loyalty to your customers and loyalty to oneself. I see it as a much deeper sense of loyalty that blind loyalty to the company logo Z.

I know this may sound selfish. But being CEO of Me Inc. requires you to act selfishly - to grow yourself, to promote themselves, to reach the market to reward yourself. Of course, the other side of the coin is that selfish any company you work for should applaud every effort that you do to develop themselves. After all, everything you do to grow Me Inc. is sauce for them: projects that lead, develop networks, customer delight, the braggables create generate credit for the company. As long as you're learning, growing, developing relationships, and delivering great results, it is good for you and is great for the company.

That goes for win-win all the time you happen to be in that particular company. Which is exactly where the age of free will comes into play. If you're treating your résumé as if it were a marketing brochure, you learned the first lesson of free agency. The second lesson is one that professional athletes of today have learned: you've got to check with the market on a regular basis to get a reliable reading on the value of your brand. No need to be looking for a job to go to a job interview. After all, do not even need to go on an actual job interview to get useful, important feedback.

The real question is: How is brand are you doing? Put together your "user group" - the personal brand You equivalent of a group of software revision. Ask for - insist on - honest, helpful feedback on your performance, growth, value. It 's the only way to know what it would be worth on the open market. It 's the only way to make sure that when you declare your free agency, you will be in a stronger bargaining position. It's not disloyalty to "them" is responsible for brand management for brand You - which also generates credit for them.

It's this simple: You are a brand. You are responsible for your brand. There is no single path to success. And there's a right way to create the brand called. Except this: Start today. Or.