PERSONAL BRAND AUDIT (yes, it does hurt)
Thought I’d give you an update on what’s happening with the masterclass webinar and personal brand.
This week, I’ll see the final edit. That means I’m going to be going through it, giving notes, making sensible suggestions. Then doing that all over again to make sure the first round wasn’t my insecurities, ego and paranoia talking. It will launched soon if I haven’t lost my 2018 launch window. I’m concerned that we’re going heading into a pretty manic news cycle in the US. And America is my biggest market. Then in late November, it’s Thanksgiving. We all know Thanksgiving is the precursor to the silly season, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah and all that good stuff.
The industry shuts down. People don’t want to spend their hard earned cash on professional development. They’d rather spend it on presents and good times with their nearest and dearest and who can blame them. We’ll see. Haven’t decided yet.
I’m off to HK, BKK and Shanghai for three months on November 1. As I’m going to be talking up my master class, I’ll be doing a lot more public speaking. Time to start paying attention to my personal brand. I had to do this exercise called a personal brand audit. Doesn’t sound much fun, I’ve been putting off for awhile. I finally got through it and my personal brand’s in better shape than I thought it was. The reason why I’m interested in personal brand is because we all have one. You have one, whether you think you have or not.
If you doubt me, Google your name.
Put your name into Google and see what comes up. That’s your personal brand. That’s where your rep is right now. You might as well start managing it. Personal brands are tricky for creative people. Advertising agencies have never been able to brand themselves. They’ve all tried it, but with minimal success. The only agency that I can think of that’s ever had a consistent personal brand its whole lifetime is Ogilvy. And that was thanks to David Ogilvy himself. Maybe Leo Burnett, same kind of thing. But for the rest of them, you know, it’s one thing agencies struggle to do.
They all tried to create their own methodologies, proprietary technology, and ways of talking about the same thing. It’s all rehashed bullshit. I remember when I was at BBDO, they had this thing where we go into every meeting and talk about, “the work, the work, the work”, when everyone knew it was about, “the money, the money, the money”.
As a creative, what do you do for your personal brand? Most creatives try to win as many awards as they can. Not a bad short term strategy, but unless you’re John Hegarty or David Droga, it’s not sustainable long term. Even then… It’s something that I realized that I had to do early on at JWT. My USP as a creative, was to become exceptional at pitching new business.
New business is the lifeblood of every agency. It’s something that senior management both at national and regional level get super engaged about. It was easy for me to own that niche. It had a massively positive impact on my career. It meant I got to hobnob with the president and all the country managers at regional level and fly around here, there and everywhere. And generally do quite well for myself. Moving forward, I decided to do an MBA in Melbourne. Being an executive creative director with an MBA was a very powerful combination. I’m still the only one I know. You can talk to clients in a language they understand and respect. In a vernacular they hadn’t heard from a creative person before.
I’m interested in personal branding now for a couple of reasons. To consolidate what I’m doing on my brand. And I’m working with a couple of director clients on how they can create a more compelling brand for themselves. Like a lot of agency creatives, directors can produce great work and powerful branding for others. But they struggle to do it for themselves. And one director is much the same as every other director. If you want something done like that, all you have to do is hire the DOP that shot something like that. So what’s the real points of difference? Conceptual not concrete. Props to Tom Peters who called it in a piece called BRAND YOU back in the late nineties. ANYWAY I’m going to be exploring this over the next few weeks. If you want to hear more about it, keep an eye out on my GHOSTLOG….
