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Lyn Chamberlin, founder and principal partner of skye|PR, is an Emmy-award winning television producer. She has more than twenty years of experience in the design and execution of strategic public relations programs, sales training and leadership coaching. She is a former Director of Communications at Harvard University and a Vice President for Communications at MIT. As Director of Television Programming for The Monitor Channel, she participated in the launch of the award-winning 24-hour international cable news channel. A television producer, writer, and corporate media consultant, she uses her reporter’s eye for finding the stories behind the people and companies that she represents.
A graduate of Columbia University, she lectures frequently on strategic communications and personal branding.
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Ask a group of successful, savvy, college students to begin the process of identifying their own distinctive brand by listing their accomplishments and you can feel the air getting sucked out of the room. Eager faces suddenly turn apprehensive. A couple of people will make self-deprecating jokes. Then, dead silence.
Why is it that world-beating college students struggle so mightily with branding themselves? The answer? They believe in myths – myths that need busting.
Myth #1: If I Am Good, They Will Come. Being good is not enough. Being all of the things you are and have accomplished is not enough. Toiling away when everyone else has gone home will not leapfrog you to the front of the pack. Creating the greatest widget will not by itself drive sales.
You must find a way to tell your story to people who will listen. And your story must be the answer to a question that prospective employers need the answer to. This is the biggest hurdle that most people must overcome.
If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer, in an increasingly competitive, dog-eat-dog 21st century world is a resounding, “NO.�?
Myth #2: Marketing Myself Is a Dirty Business. Successful personal branding means taking a 50,000 foot view of yourself and your aspirations, looking down on yourself from a remote-enough planet that your “buts�? and “not reallys�? and every other self-qualifier you can come up with cease to exist.
Learn how to look at what’s left of the former you as just another product on a very crowded shelf, where every other can of soup is jockeying for position and trying to knock you off in the process.
Successful personal branding means creating a brand identity that is authentic, consistent and memorable, one that you own and are proud of.
Myth #3: I Can’t Control What Other People Think. You must learn to be the marketing manager of your own brand campaign. Why do people associate Volvo with safety or FedEx with overnight delivery? Because millions of dollars were spent to create that association.
Here are several simple steps you can take right now to bottle and market YOU.
1. Figure out who you are, what you stand for, and why you are different than anyone or anything else.
2. Create a story that communicates your value and your market differentiation.
3. Pull the key words that you have used to create that story and weave them into everything that you say, do and publish about yourself and your business.
4. Tell your story relentlessly, passionately and unapologetically to anyone who will listen. You will refine and improve it as you go along, figuring out which parts work and which don’t.
Don’t be afraid to begin your exploration of your personal brand identity. Claim your rightful role as chief flag-waver for for yourself.
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Leave your thoughts here. (17 responses)
- 1 Pingback on Jul 20th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
- 2 Pingback on Jul 24th, 2007 at 8:37 am
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- 4 Pingback on Jul 25th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Didn’t we already flog this horse to death in the comment discussion on the last post?
Lyn,
I agree that there is great power in discovering and writing one’s personal story. It’s even more empowering to tell and share it, as I’ve been discovering lately. But it is difficult to find the courage to do so. Probably for most people. But the thing I’ve found is, people have been listening when I follow this bit of your advice - “Tell your story relentlessly, passionately and unapologetically to anyone who will listen.”
Perhaps the key to telling your story is finding people who will listen. Not everyone will. The ones that do, however, can change your life. Even if it’s just through the empowerment you receive when they listen.
Thanks for the encouragement. Your post is great confirmation that I’m on the right track. As a young professional attempting to relaunch myself, I have found it helpful to follow some advice from Jeffrey Gitomer — I know a yucky sales guy. He said something to this nature, “if your business cards are not the nicest you’ve ever seen, then go get the nicest business cards you’ve ever seen.” So, I bought some unique cards for less than $20 USD from a company in London, and everyone I hand one to says things like “how creative,” “this is the coolest card I’ve ever seen,” “Neat,” etc. You can tell it has left a positive impression, especially with new people and even with old friends.
Again, I think this post is a little over the top, but there are some great points made.
Creating and communicating a story is excellent advice. Everyone is unique and everyone has an interesting story, its a matter of clearly articulating your story in an engaging way. Finding the right forum to tell your story is the hard part, but the increasing popularity of niche blog communities is making this much easier.
My father is a trained public speaker and non profit executive. He attended an amazing week long invite only story telling workshop devoted to the art of storytelling. The workshop included wealthy CEO’s, Entrepreneurs, students and even the ex leader of the gang, “the crips” (is that how it’s spelled)
He told me the advice learned and stories shared during that week were both touching and life changing. People were more or less sharing their unique life stories. I tried getting in, but couldnt get the invite!
The link to workshop organizer is: www.ddavisstoryteller.com
Hmm, so as asked in the last discussion: how do we do this?
I think, Devin, that she gave four steps on how to do it.
I thought the first post was a little harsh too, but now I am thinking that perhaps we are looking for some magic bullet to be able to promote ourselves, when really it just takes a lot of work. That seems to be the point. And in the spirit of self-promotion, I just posted a new piece on this very topic- check it out! 
Rebecca’s post on self promotion is great! Go check it out.
-Ryan
I’m not sure these are really myths anymore.
Still, Lyn brings up things that need to be reinforced.
You do need to set yourself apart from the crowd.
But you can’t BS it. Look at what you’ve done, what you’ve accomplished,
your past jobs and internships–why were you a good employee? What skills do you have?
Think of your strengths…Highly organized–give examples! Great work ethic?–give examples! Something like this…”One time at work we were shorthanded so I…” These are just basics, but if you’re a fresh-out you have to start out somewhere.
I’m not sure I agree with step #4–depends on the receiver–know your audience. and don’t be obnoxious, be human. Be someone people want to work with–that’s the forgotten message.
Great book to read:
Brand Yourself: How to Create an Identity for a Brillant Career.
by David Andrusia and Rick Haskins.
Still, for the most part, Lyn’s post is a good start–though still a little panicky for me. Your brand will really start to build as you progress in your career.
She left out step#5. And it’s the most important one.
Just make sure you disinfect the area with alcohol before you brand yourself or it could get infected.
J.J.
Yes this is over-the-top. It only applies to those who are itching to run their own companies, be the VP or CEO, or want to pull down the 6-figure salaries.
For regular jobs and regular career paths, people will recognize that you do good work. They have to! No one works in a vacuum. You have status reports and team meetings, right? You have to account for your time in some manner, right? When your boss asks what you do all week, you can tell him, right? So then SOMEONE knows what you are doing.
Maybe that isn’t enough to become CEO, but it is enough for 99.9% of the jobs out there.
This kind of dog-eat-dog and kill-or-be-killed mentality is just stress inducing nonsense.
I would further submit that FedEx and Volvo got where they were by doing good work FIRST and marketing SECOND.
FedEx and Volvo don’t market any more than any other shipping or car company out there. They have the same number of comercials and ads that everyone else has. What really drives their comapnies is not the image but the product.
FedEx and Volvo are NOT sucessful due to marketing. They are sucessful because they found a niche and perform well. A reasonable amount of marketing just communicates their true strengths to the public.
I would say that the normal amount of marketing that FedEx and Volvo do is similar to your everyday interactions with your coworkers and supervisors. Explain what you are doing. Stay on track. Complete your work. There is no need to go over the top to create a personal ‘brand’. No need to badger your executives with 30 second ‘elevator speeches’. No need to treat every business interaction as an opportunity to be a crass salesman.
Focus on your work, communicate well, and you will be reasonably sucessful.
Pardon my spelling in the previous posts.. I didn’t have time to run a spell checker and I can’t edit my posts after I submit them.
The problem is that perception is king when it comes to branding yourself. How others think and feel about who you are and what you can achieve is what will either land you a job or have you applying to others.