A Reason Why is what assures consumers that the brand is capable of delivering its promise. It is also called a Reason to Believe. When a skin cream brand claims that it will keep your skin soft and silky, it also tells you that it has a got some special ingredient that helps it do so. And if you were part of the brand’s Target Audience, that could be enough to push you from a state of dilemma to a state of decisiveness.

Like product brands, personal brands too cannot get away by merely ‘claiming’ to offer benefits. They have to give their Target Audience a reason to believe those claims. Let’s say, the benefit you offer to your seniors in office is “I take initiative and inspire others to do so”, your Reason Why could be “I made three proactive suggestions to improve productivity in office in the last three months” and/or “In the last corporate party, I was the first to volunteer to help in organizing the mega-function and was able to rope in five more colleagues to volunteer ..”

The basis for the Reason Why in the example above is past demonstration of having delivered that benefit, which is a very strong way of building credibility for yourself. There are many other ways in which you can establish credibility: your educational qualifications, a certain kind of training program you attended, a particular company or industry you worked for in the past, a special project you completed for your organization, letters of appreciation you received from someone significant in the company or from clients, past goals you have achieved, a crisis you handled particularly well, your membership in an industry body, even a case of extreme commitment you showed by turning up at office despite torrential rains or during a transport system breakdown – all of these are examples of ways in which you can build credibility for yourself.

As a senior manager during my corporate career, I’ve had team members working round the clock for more than 48 hours to meet an important deadline on several occasions. Those instances were enough for me to gauge the level of commitment of these colleagues of mine. Similarly I’ve had other team members following a strict 9 to 5 schedule and completing their assignments perfectly well and on time. And that convinced me that these people were ‘efficient’! It is likely that all these people did all this without the intention of projecting themselves in a particular manner. As someone who is wanting to develop his/her personal brand you should see how you can leverage your actions to be in alignment with the kind of benefits you want to communicate and Reasons Why you want to create.

As the market becomes more competitive, the benefits brands promise become similar to each other – you end up seeing several brands promising same/similar benefits. Take water purifiers for example – in whatever manner you ‘package’ the benefit, (100% purification – kills 100% bacteria OR purifies water at twice the speed of other purifiers OR maintenance-free water purification OR purifies water without losing essential minerals etc) the core benefit will always remain ‘water purification’ and will continue to be the consumers’ most important need. In such a case the Reason Why for each water purifier brand is what will determine the strength of that brand’s promise.

Similarly there will be other colleagues of yours (your competitors) who may be trying to project benefits similar to yours. And it may not be in your interest to look for other unique benefits which you may not be able to deliver equally well. You may decide to stick to your original benefit but convey that you deliver these benefits in a superior manner simply by way of your stronger Reason Whys. Let’s say you want to project yourself as a person who is capable of creating top-class software programs. If you face competition from a colleague who offers the same benefit, then it would probably boil down to an additional qualification of yours that may establish you as superior to your competitor.

In a world that is becoming increasingly ‘Social Media savvy’ the opportunities for us to create and make our Reason Whys visible are on the rise. The quality of recommendations we get on Linkedin, the nature of our tweets on Twitter, our activity on sites like Facebook and even the kind of email forwards we send are nothing but opportunities for us to strengthen our credibility for what we intend to stand for.

Nothing works like concrete proof in a time when claims from even topmost brands are taken by consumers with a pinch of salt. A photograph of you speaking at a corporate function, a scanned copy of a merit certificate you received, a video of you holding centre-stage at an event will do more good to your personal brand than even what a full-length well-written CV can.

Having said that, it is also true that as your personal brand gets stronger it will need to rely lesser and lesser on a strong Reason Why. At some point in time, your personal brand will cross a tipping point where the inherent equity the brand has built for itself will fuel its growth. But till then, whoever you are, your brand credibility has to be a key focus area in your personal marketing plan.

In my case, the stronger my brand gets, the more it excites me to explore more unique ways of making it stronger and credible. Looking at new ways to build brand credibility is not just an enriching experience, it’s fun, emotionally satisfying and challenging too!

In case you want to share what Reason Why you are planning to create to support your personal brand’s promised benefit, post it as a comment on this article. Not only will you get clarity about yourself, you might just set an example and inspire other readers as well!

But there’s one thing you need to do for your ‘horses’. Keep them interested in you. There’s no point in having a horse that rides fast but shakes off its rider half-way to the destination! The ‘fodder’ for that horse is what you need to focus on.

There’s one golden rule in life. People like to help people who like to help them. In what way are YOU going to be of help to your Target Audience? In what way do they benefit by their association with you? Sure, this may make you feel like a brand of soap  - “I will keep your skin soft and smooth, so please buy me!”. If it does, good! Time you started thinking and feeling like a brand. That’s the whole idea, my friend!

You are no different from a soap or a toothpaste in that sense. You solve people’s problems, they like you and buy (into) you. You don’t, they drop you like a hot potato! And head for somebody else who does!

Now let’s say you have noble intentions. You have identified which people matter to you most and want to be of help to them. How best can you help them? Should you be the shoulder on which people can comfortably cry? Or should you be the ‘fixer’, the person people run to when they need quick-fix solutions? Maybe you should be the ‘walking browser’. They google YOU for information because they think you’re the one who always seems to have loads of information about anything and everything.

Do you realize there could be a MILLION different ways in which you could benefit people? The good thing is, we just need to pick a few of these. And as usual the starting point for this exercize is your very own strengths.

There’s no point in trying to help others with figuring how to get the best out of Microsoft Excel, when you yourself are an amateur at it! Your focus should be on what you’re good at. Everyone is good at something or the other. Many people are good at saying that they’re really good at nothing.. I don’t buy that. That kind of talk just stems from lack of self-esteem or even laziness, which in any case are universal problems.  You ARE good at a few things. Dig deeper.. figure out what your strengths are. If you come up with none… dig deeper again.

Once you think you have a few strengths, apply these filters:
1) A strength is a consistent pattern of behavior. Is what you call a strength a consistent pattern of your behavior or do you see that behavior only occasionally?
2) A strength must be demonstrated even in times that test you. Does your strength help you in tough times? Or is it something that doesn’t work at the first sign of trouble?
3) A strength must be perceived by others. It’s not enough that only you think you are strong at something. Others around you should believe that as well.

Once you have a few strengths that pass these filters, figure out if these could lend themselves to create benefits for your Target Audience. Let’s say one of your strengths is that you are very good at public-speaking. And that is VERY GOOD considering that the number one fear of most human beings is the fear of public-speaking (the number two fear is DEATH!). Could you help your Target Audience improve their public-speaking ability? Perhaps you could give them tips. Or constructive feedback. Or even encouragement. You think they’d value that? You bet they would!

There has to be a match between what benefit you offer (and have the competency to offer) to your Audience and what benefit they desire and look forward to. If you have that match, you are on your way to creating a bond with your Audience. If what you are doing to help is not being valued, change what you are doing! Perhaps there is something else you can do well that will click well with these people.

When you help people, help them in a way nobody else can. Set high standards for yourself. If you want to be seen as a resource your management can count on in a crisis, you must be able to handle extreme situations in order to live up to that image. If delivering commitments on time is a benefit you offer, then you must be able to do that 99% of the time. At least you should endeavour to do so. If you think you can’t deliver high performance on this, look for something else that you can do really really well.

Your aim should be to continuously improve the way you deliver your benefits. Just the way a consumer electronics brand offering the benefit ‘user-friendly technology’ would work harder and harder to improve the user-friendliness of its products. Philip Kotler once said “In the new millennium you have to run faster to stay in the same place”. And that applies to you as well! You are not the only one trying to get the attention of your Target Audience. Nor are you the only one delivering the benefits that you do. Your Target Audience is likely to get those benefits from others as well. If you don’t improve over time, chances are one day you will not be as good as someone else in your circle who is constantly improving.

As brands mature over time, they reassess their relevance to their consumers. Depending on the changing needs of their consumers they tweak what they have to offer, the manner in which they deliver that benefit, without fundamentally changing what they stand for. You need to be open to reinventing yourself too over time. Since you are at a very early stage of brand development you have the luxury of experimenting with different kinds of benefits before you figure out what really clicks with your Target Audience. Once your personal brand is strongly established you may not have the flexibility to do so.

One last thing. As a human being you are much more multi-dimensional than a physical product on the supermarket shelf. It is possible that you are very talented and after working on and understanding yourself, you may uncover several strengths and therefore several ways of benefiting your Audience. Should you look at maximizing the ways in which you benefit them? The point to remember is that any brand, whether it is a product brand or a personal brand is likely to be remembered for just one or two benefits (maybe a Max of three). You would therefore be better off focusing on just these two or three benefits than projecting yourself as a Jack of all trades, in which case you run the risk of being remembered for nothing in particular.

The good thing about a personal brand is that the basic product (YOU) is already in some form (unlike product marketing where you have to develop the product from scratch after working out the concept for the brand). You can finetune your product (read that as working on your strengths and your abilities) even as you parallely work on shaping your brand positioning.

Working out what benefits your brand delivers is at the heart of the personal brand positioning process. The nature of your benefits will predominantly define what your brand will stand for. Spend time on this invaluable step. Do it well and you would have built a strong foundation for creating your own destiny!

In case you want to share what benefits you are planning to deliver to your Target Audience with myself and readers of this Blog, post it as a comment on this article. Not only will you get clarity about yourself, you might just set an example and inspire other readers as well!

Not all marketers would want to care for all kinds of consumers. That, would be a BIG waste of time. And highly inefficient too. Because there is no such thing as an infinite marketing budget. And a smart marketer would want to use it only to address a select section of IMPORTANT consumers rather than the whole Universe! That, would be more focussed. That would help him cater to the needs of that segment of consumers really well. That segment is what the Marketer would call his Target Audience. An audience he would CHOOSE to address in his marketing efforts. Rather than being everything to everybody (which would end up being nothing to nobody), he would want his brand to mean SOMETHING to SOMEBODY!  To cater to 20 consumers well he would happily sacrifice the remaining 80!

That’s something you ought to do as well, as a personal brand. Like the brands mentioned above, you too need to have your ‘Target Audience’. Not everyone you interact with in life should be part of your Target Audience. That would be YOUR Universe. A Target Audience has to be CHOSEN. And when you choose something, you necessarily have to give up something else.

A Brand chooses a Target Audience because it has the highest chance of success with that Target Audience. And it stands to gain immensely when that Target Audience engages with it. Who would you as a personal brand gain immensely from? In the Marketing world, Brands are a means to business profitability. In the personal branding world, your personal brand is a means to achieving your own individual goals. Those goals may be monetary or non-monetary. Either which way, if there is somebody or some group of people who are likely to take you closer to your goals, they are good enough to be included in your Target Audience!

Let’s say one of your short-term goals is to become Head of your Department in the next 3-4 years. Questions you would want to ask yourself are.. Who would take the decision to make you Head of Department? Who all would influence such a person to take that decision? Which people would actively help you and your work be visible to all these influencers? Which people’s lives would be positively affected in your own journey to your goals? ALL these people should be part of your Target Audience. Sure, some people would behave differently from others. They would all have broadly similar or different value systems from yours. Doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is that there is something about you that appeals to all of them; that they all value. And which will make them WANT to facilitate your growth. You need to find out what that is. You need to understand their mindset, their beliefs, their needs. What is it that motivates them, keeps them going, what problems do they face and how do they tackle these problems? You need to understand how they behave with other people competing with you. And how in turn these competitors of yours are engaging with them. More importantly you need to be clear about what it is that you can do to help them, serve them so that they in turn propel your growth.

You must assess how you are communicating with them currently. Are you visible to them? Are you reaching out to them? Are you building a relationship with them? How would you know? Have you ever cared to find out? Have you sought feedback about yourself from them? What do they think about you and perceive you as? Do all of them have the same perceptions of you? Are they different? How widely do these perceptions differ? Why?

There may be various sets of people who might matter to you, who are all part of your Target Audience. Which of these are more important than others? Why? In what way are they different? Do they need special focus from your side?

Sounds like a truckload of questions doesn’t it? It is likely that you may have answers to all these questions. Or you may have answers to none. That is not the point. The point is to be aware that such and more questions exist and that finding the answers are all part of the personal brand development journey.

In the previous part we discussed how it is critical to first define your own role in life. Which in turns shows you how colourful your landscape is. Can you see now how this has a direct bearing on your choice of Target Audience. The wider your landscape, the bigger the role you define for yourself, the larger your Target Audience, the more the segments therein! If you are a teacher, your Target Audience may consist only of your students OR your students and other teachers OR students, teachers and the principal OR all of these and the Ministry of Education! Depends on how wide you have set your playing arena.

If you were a non-smoker, Zippo wouldn’t give two hoots about you. Neither would Hot Wheels if you were a grown-up nor would Castrol if you didn’t own an automobile. Part of the game! Similarly why would you want to worry about people outside your Target Audience? Don’t be disrespectful but don’t get stressed out over what these people think. Your focus, your energy, your priorities have to be directed towards your Target Audience and only your Target Audience.

Who all could be part of your Target Audience? Your spouse. Your family members. Your friends circle. Your peer group in general. Your neighbours. Your club members. Your boss. Your office colleagues. Your employees. Your business associates. Your customers. I’ve even seen management form opinions about employees on the basis of what canteen staff felt about certain people!

When you choose your Target Audience make sure you are objective about it. Don’t choose a particular segment because you don’t want to leave them out. Because whoever you choose, you will have to be committed to. And make an effort to mean something to them. For example, don’t include your family in your Target Audience just because you don’t want to neglect them in your efforts. You need to play to WIN, not play NOT TO LOSE! If they are not going to play a role in facilitating your success, out they go! They are an important part of your life, they may even be dependent on you. You don’t have to neglect them. But they may not necessarily be part of your Target Audience.

You and only you can decide who YOUR Target Audience can and should be. Because only you know what your Universe is. Only you can sense what role (if any) people in that Universe are capable of playing in your life. Nobody else can decide that for you. Nobody else would have a clue about it. And if you apply your mind and take the effort, working out your Target Audience will be cakewalk.

There’s no point in creating a strong personal brand if you don’t know who you’re creating it for. After all brands exist only in the minds of their consumers. Whose minds do you want YOUR personal brand to exist in? Which people in your life do want your brand to bond with? Define them today. Tomorrow they will help you define your future!

In case you want to share who your Target Audience might be with myself and readers of this Blog, post it as a comment on this article. Not only will you get clarity about yourself, you might just set an example and inspire other readers as well!

At a basic level, positioning of a brand is all about creating a unique place for the brand in the consumer’s mind. That’s because, like brands, positioning too exists only in the consumer’s mind. If a Brand Manager says “We are launching a new brand of washing machine that is positioned as a water-saver”, what he means is that the company INTENDS to make consumers believe that the machine is a water-saver. Positioning is created only when consumers as a group start relating certain attributes and parameters to the brand in their minds. The Brand Manager may think that he HAS positioned the washing machine as a “water-saver”, but if consumers don’t think that it is a water-saver and buy it primarily because it is good-looking, then the brand positioning is that of a ‘good-looking’ washing machine and not of a ‘water-saving’ washing machine. And that may or may not be desirable to the Brand Manager depending on how many other ‘good-looking’ washing machines exist in the market.

There are thousands of books on the concept of positioning if you want to get into the details, but here let’s straightaway look at how positioning is relevant in the context of a Personal Brand. Answer these six questions and you will have the (desired) positioning of your personal brand in place:

1) What is my role in life?
2) Which people matter to me most?
3) In what way(s) do I benefit those who matter to me?
4) Why should these people believe that I truly offer these benefits?
5) What personality do I project?
6) In what way am I different from people I compete with?

Doesn’t sound like rocket science does it? Or marketing mumbo-jumbo? Hopefully not! Let’s cover the first of these components in this article.

What is my role in life?

Now that sounds like philosophy! Yet your role in life is a critical component of your personal brand positioning and is fact its foundation. We all play a certain role at every stage of our life. And we see others playing a certain role too. We see “office goers”, “businessmen”, “students”, “working women”, “housewives”, “children”, “retired people”.  We also see “sales people”, “computer operators”, “managers”, “trainees”, “receptionists”, “engineers”.. How about “industry leaders”, “decision-makers”, “team leaders”, “socialites”?

We have our own way of slotting people into these roles. The catch here is, if you are not clear about what role you are playing, people will slot you according to their convenience. You tell them “I’m a real-estate professional..” and that leaves them confused. They’ll still have hundreds of ways to slot you! Are you a senior person or a junior person? Are you a sales person or business analyst? An innovative thought-leader or a seasoned veteran? Even without knowing your personal traits, people would like to form a fundamental impression of what role you play in life, what life space you occupy and might probe you to know more.

Trouble is when they don’t ask and form their own conclusions on the basis of what you talk about, how you talk and other verbal and non-verbal clues. And then you’ll have a situation where ten different people will think of you in ten different ways. Is Coke a thirst-quencher, a fun-drink, a party drink, a celebration drink, a hang-out drink, a kids’ drink? What is Kelloggs? A packet of cornflakes, a breakfast item, an evening snack, an in-between filler, a health-food, a nutritional supplement, a meal in itself? What is Dove a brand of? Soap? Skincare? Beauty care? Personal Care? How about Nokia? Is it a brand of cellphones, entertainment gadgets, communication devices?

While you will obviously slot these brands the way you perceive them, you can bet that Coke, Kelloggs, Dove and Nokia will make a conscious effort to help you slot them, the way THEY WANT YOU TO. Why? They don’t want a thousand people slotting them in thousand different ways. It helps them in one more very important way. It helps them limit or expand the number of brands or products they compete with. If Nokia calls itself a brand of entertainment gadgets, it keeps open for itself the possibility of launching gaming devices!

You wouldn’t want different people to understand you differently either. Well before they understand who you are, you need to understand yourself. Ask yourself: Are you a student? A sportsperson?  A symbol of changing youth? A person with a thousand dreams? Whatever you are, if you limit to calling yourself a student, you limit the possibilities you create for yourself. If you think about yourself in a particular manner AND communicate that to others they will think about you in that way too.

You might say, “I’m just an assistant teacher at a local college. Wouldn’t it be a bit far-fetched to call myself anything more than that?” Not at all! If you think you are an assistant teacher, you will always be seen as an assistant teacher. You don’t have to always describe yourself to the outside world (and more importantly to yourself) on the basis of who you ARE. It’s perfectly fine if you describe yourself in terms of who you WANT TO BE or who you are TRYING TO BE. “I’m a faculty at XYZ college and a coach and mentor to some of the brightest students there.” The point here is: If you don’t have an interesting enough job profile, YOU create one for yourself. Nobody ever got sacked for doing that! On the contrary the environment around you will support you and help you make that desired job profile a reality!

If I were to hire an accountant, all things being equal, I would any day hire one who calls himself/herself an ambitious and experienced Finance professional than one who calls himself/herself an accountant (with 7 years work experience). I’m not saying fool yourself (and others) into claiming who you are NOT. On the contrary, I’m saying create a new possibility in your mind about who you can be and want to be and start living that possibility.

You may be a Regional Sales Manager, but remember, you are not your designation (and nobody cares anyway)! Don’t confuse your designation with who you really are. Designations mean NOTHING! I see them merely as hollow labels created to define hierarchy within an organization. Believe me, you’re better off ignoring that label, and creating one for yourself that you desire. A label that is deeper, has more character and defines you more completely. Instead of calling yourself a Regional Sales Manager you might want to call yourself an inspiring leader for a dynamic team irrespective of whether you are that or not. Before you BECOME something in reality, BE that person in your mind. You do that and the world will already start seeing you that way.

Like the Brand examples we discussed earlier on, the larger and sharper your definition of who you are, the wider is your own base of competition. When you say you are a highly networked youngster as opposed to saying you are a management trainee, you don’t compete with other management trainees, but with people across levels who are highly networked. And that makes you visible on the radar of those who are looking out for people who are highly networked!

If you are an Investment Advisor, think of your job profile. Would it suit you better to think of yourself as a Financial Advisor, or perhaps as a Wealth Coach or even a Prosperity Consultant? Can you see how the scope of your work, the potential size of your Clientele changes on the basis of how you tag yourself? And mind you, you may even be able to change these role definitions without much change in your knowledge base and expertise. It may be quite likely that you already have that expertise and by thinking of and projecting yourself differently you are now making a larger part of that expertise visible to the world.

Whatever role you assign to yourself mentally, be comfortable with it. If you are say, a manager in a middle management position, you may initially want to play the role of a team leader. As you get more comfortable with that, you may want to redefine your role to call yourself a key person in the management think-tank and later perhaps an industry professional who is the hub for coordinating events in your industry. As you change your role, the landscape of your playground changes. It becomes small, large, plain, colourful, boring, exciting depending on the role you have assigned yourself.

The bottomline: When life looks like one large arena and you feel intimidated by the competitiveness within, just become LARGER THAN LIFE. Nobody can stop you from being that. Except you yourself!

Here’s an exercize for you: Think about what YOUR role in Life is. Write it down. Then think of a few possibilities that add a new dimension to that role. Possibilities that make your landscape more vibrant. Pick up one that is in line with your strengths. Start living that role. Start noticing if the world around you is changing the way it sees you. Note down the changes. Do this and you would have taken the first step towards strengthening your Brand YOU!

In case you want to share your current or desired Role in Life with myself and readers of this Blog, post it as a comment on this article. Not only will you get clarity about yourself, you might just set an example for other readers as well!

And it wouldn’t matter if the world were 100 people or a whole 6.7 billion. Still 99% of them would be confused. (Count me in that!) And nothing surprising about that too. It’s basic human nature. Now that’s one great starting point!

Most of us live our lives trying to get out of that confused state of mind and search for clarity in the purpose of our lives. Sometimes in doing so, we get even more confused. And when someone else discovers how confused we are, it gets very embarrassing, doesn’t it? More so when that ‘someone’ is the one who’s interviewing us. (Who is in all likelihood as much or more confused than us!).

I have a friend who’s very comfortable being in such a state. “Why change?”, he says. “And why believe you’re confused. Why stress oneself trying to keep the plane on a steady flight path? Why not just drift along in life?”

Many of us aren’t comfortable with that. Nobody wants to spin around randomly like a balloon losing air! Which is why we sometimes seek help. We read motivational books and blogs, listen to motivational audio, watch inspiring videos. Some of that really helps. At least as long as we’re reading and listening to that stuff! After that it’s back to Square One.

Change is difficult. Especially if somebody else is telling us how to. Haven’t we all come across articles and books like ‘700 ideas for a purposeful life’, ‘70 traits of a successful leader’, ‘7 habits of…’. Very rarely do we disagree with what we read in this kind of teaching. The tough part is to be able to live our lives the way they teach us to.

The Marketing folks who manage brands cannot AFFORD to be confused. They’re paid to figure out in what way their brands can help consumers. They need to be very very clear about that. And they need to communicate that in a very clear manner to consumers. Imagine if Axe suddenly starts showing a family image, Coke starts showing sexy young women, and Dove starts looking middle-class.. That’ll really confuse all of us consumers.

The basic foundation on which Brands are built doesn’t allow for confusion. Brands are all about giving a clear ‘meaning’ to products. And you can’t give multiple meanings to something, can you? On the contrary, Brands are a great way to REMOVE confusion. Brands help us decide what we want to buy, and what we don’t. So what if there are 34 brands of soap side by side, it’s still easier to choose between them, because our brains relate to the ‘meaning’ each brand has and makes the decision to pick up one in a split-second. What would happen if you were to walk into a supermarket and find thousands of products with no names on them, just some colours and designs on their packaging? THAT would confuse the daylights out of you!

Now imagine you’re sitting in a large conference room with let’s say 25 of your office colleagues. Big Boss walks in and gives one look at all of you, wanting to choose ONE of you for a special high-profile project. Wouldn’t you love it, if he spots you and in a split-second decides.. You’re the one for the job! He would, if you’ve created a ‘meaning’ for yourself. “Henry is a calm, patient, perseverant guy and has a great eye for detail which is what this project needs.” OR “Jane is an enthusiastic, aggressive, dynamic person who can push this project through in record-time.”

Creating a meaning for yourself helps. I’m sure the Boss will agree. There are enough confusions in his/her life already. You wouldn’t want to add to that, would you? He/she may not see you as the best resource for all kinds of jobs.. that’s okay. As long as you’re seen as the right person for ‘a’ particular kind of job, that’s fine. 

We, human beings created the concept of Branding, so that consumers are not confused about what they should be buying. And now we’re looking upto these abstract concepts called Brands to help us, human beings clear the confusion in our own lives. Ironical, isn’t it? The truth is, the way in which brands stand out from one another in the marketplace, the consistency with which they single-mindedly send us the same message about themselves over long periods of time, the intangible value they create for themselves by building emotional bonds with consumers, are all something we should learn from.

There was a point in time, when one didn’t have to resort to all this. The world was less crowded, less-competitive and people were in general less confused about themselves and everybody else. You got a job, you stuck to it and most of the time you left it only when you retired. Today, we’re living in an era, where it’s safer to become an entrepreneur than to hang on to a job. Job security is a thing of the past. And if you’re one who wants to be in the corporate rat race, you have to clearly prove your worth and convince the Bosses HOW and WHY you fit so well in the team.

You HAVE to know what uniqueness YOU have to offer. If, over five days, five different people ask you in what way you are unique, you can’t be thinking on the spot each time and cooking up five different answers. It has to be the SAME answer each time. It should be so well internalized in your system that the one phrase or the three words that define your uniqueness should come out spontaneously.

There is this concept of ‘Elevator positioning’ you must remember. You’re in an elevator and headed for the ground floor. At the first floor the elevator stops. An old  acquaintance walks in and casually asks you “Hey Tom, where are you these days and what do you do for a living?” You have exactly 15 seconds before the elevator reaches the ground floor and you lose him. What will you tell him about yourself?

“I’m a Senior Manager - Customer Care at XYZ Company” OR “I address and resolve concerns of blue-chip Clients of an MNC company I work for” OR “I’m involved in raising the bar of Customer Service standards in the ABC industry of which my company XYZ is the market-leader.” Each portrays a different image of you. And you could improve on that. You could actually work out a hundred variations of that. You could create hundreds of possibilities for yourself, about who you are. And choose ONE of them. Express it in ONE clear line and that becomes your elevator positioning. Good corporate executives are clear about what their company’s elevator positioning is. Sometimes a sharp 15 second, one line description of what their company is all about, could land them a million dollar contract. Maybe it could land YOU a million dollar contract. Or at least a job of your dreams. Or a promotion. Or anything else you desire.

Be clear about WHO you are, WHAT you stand for and there’s really no limit to the number of ways it could help you. Or maybe you’re yet to decide what you WANT to stand for. Remember the genie in the book ‘The Secret’ who says “Your wish is my command!”. If he were to ask you, WHAT would you wish for?

Don’t get lost like Alice was in Wonderland. Decide where you want to go. Otherwise somebody will tell you, like the Cat told Alice – “If you don’t know where you want to go, any road is okay”. You’re a human being. Not a piece of logwood that should just drift along randomly on water. Neither are you a tree, that’s stuck in one place. Nor are you a lost balloon wandering in the sky.

Surely these analogies will help you understand what you’re NOT. But there’s definitely one analogy that’ll help you understand what you ARE or CAN BE. The analogy of you being a Brand! Living like a Brand helps you be clear about yourself, about what you stand for, which people matter to you, how you are of help to them and in various other ways.

As for me, I love living like a Brand for one more reason. Because it’s fun! Really! Living like a Brand is fun. Because in general the world of Branding is fun. Especially if you de-jargonize it and follow the basics!

Who says self-improvement or personal-development has to be serious or stressful? Yes, I do want to improve and develop myself. And help others do that too. But life is too short to do this in a serious manner. Or get stressed out over it.

Why live like a brand? Why not? Especially if it’s a fun way to self-improvement! An interesting way to live life. And a great way to get into that elite 1%!

Highly unlikely. Even if you wanted to, it would be too embarrassing to handle the funny looks people would give you. No.. it would be easier to just pick up something familiar and head for the billing counter.

Now imagine you’re shopping for a car. Hey.. you wouldn’t exhibit your toothpaste buying behavior here, would you? Nah, the car salesman would suspect something fishy if you were to just walk into a Honda showroom, put the cash on the table and drive out with the car. He’d expect you to ask him a thousand intelligent sounding questions instead. Like… “Do you give an instruction manual on how to drive this car?” And “How do I know for sure that it’s run out of fuel?”  You know, stuff like that!

That’s true, we behave very differently while buying different things. And we react very differently to different Brands. Some Brands satisfy us, some delight us. We are frustrated by some and indifferent to some others. Some we hold very close to our hearts. To some we trust our lives. To many Brands we are loyal and of course there are some we hate.

Marketers understand all of this. Or at least they try to. They study ‘consumer behavior patterns’ and follow the ‘trends that affect consumer decision-making’. Oh yes, Marketing is full of stuff that sounds like jargon. It’s loaded with it. Hey there are thousands of people out there who make a living out of playing with jargon. Ask me.. I was one of them!

I spent 15 years of my career living in the complex world of Advertising, Marketing, Branding.. I loved it, I hated it. At times I was thrilled, but very often  I was pissed. You would be too, if you were asked to create an ad for a herbal Brand of face-wash that had 0.0001% herbal ingredients or for a toilet cleaner Brand that killed 99.99% germs (I always wondered why the legal team wouldn’t allow us to claim 100% !).

In my career I was involved in the marketing of dozens of products/categories. Milk, steel cupboards, televisions, pharmaceuticals, detergents, tea, newspapers, shampoo, lubricants, lingerie.. But despite all the fun one got in creating and shaping Brands, the competitiveness in the market was killing and the dishonesty in Brand communication was disturbing.
 
Watch this television and cure your eyes! Use this fairness cream and get laid! Eat that biscuit and improve your IQ! Use so and so credit card and live the life of your dreams (and then suffer forever trying to cope up with the rising interest bill!).

But man, I’ll tell you what. It works. Marketing, Branding.. the fundas, the tools, techniques. They work like magic. Even if consumers take what marketers give them with a bucketful of salt, somewhere Brands are able to make a connection with people. Despite all the crap these poor souls get bombarded with day in and day out.

And now they tell us. Live your life like a Brand.

What! Are you kidding? It’s bad enough that even when I go to a public washroom, there are five and a half Brands wanting to create a ‘BRAND EXPERIENCE’ (Ouch!) for me, now I have to live my entire life like a Brand! And now there are Personal Branding Gurus waiting to tell you how to dress like a Brand, how to use body language to convey your ‘Brand Identity’, how to ‘tweet’ your personal Brand and so on. And suddenly you realize that the world of Personal Branding has become as complex as the world of Product Branding!

But, I’ll tell you honestly. Despite my love-hate feelings for the world of Marketing, I love Brands. I love the fact that Brands are intangible, abstract. And that you can’t touch them, feel them, smell them.. They exist only in our minds. Isn’t that amazing? To be able to create something out of nothing!!! Something which exists only in thin air, or at most in the hearts of people. Take a bow, Coke!

Being a Marketing professional myself, I always wanted to create at least one Brand from scratch. Without interference from Ad Agencies and Marketing Directors and pessimistic research reports. I wanted my belief in the fundamentals of Marketing to work for the Brand I create. And I wanted that Brand to reach out to the hearts and souls of every human being. Tring! Tring! Aha.. Personal Branding! I couldn’t escape it!

Hey, I decided to build Brand Milind. I wanted help on how to. I surfed the net hoping that online Personal Branding Gurus would spare me of the complex dos and don’ts and tell me the basics. It did help. Not that it didn’t. But somewhere I longed for a teacher who would cut the crap and tell me how to apply Branding knowledge in my own life, in a simple, easy to understand manner. I was very sure such a teacher would be able to help lots of people all over the world. After searching all over the city and all over the internet, I finally found my teacher.

He is a Marketing professional of course. What gave me confidence in him was that not only had he spent years marketing products and services, over these years he had in his own way mentored many young people and had helped them create distinct identities for themselves. And that he was just the kind of no-jargon, just-clear-fundas kind of a person I was looking for. That teacher was me. Brand Milind.

I decided to be my own teacher. And one for others as well. This time formally. The more I helped people understand personal branding, the more I realized that people were open to the idea of living like a Brand, but wanted to learn these concepts in an easy, relaxed manner.

Where am I? Where do I want to go? How should I get there? Aren’t these questions quite stressful to answer? And very serious too. Man, I’d love to have one beer before and after each of those questions! Yes people did want to learn about ‘core proficiencies’ and ‘my unique discriminator’ and ‘brand consistency’, but without all of that sounding like an aircraft maintenance manual!

This blog is an outcome of that desire to demystify the magical world of Marketing and the inspiring subject of Personal Branding, especially for people who don’t know where to start. One thing I can assure you of- the internet is over-loaded with information. Including that on Personal Branding. There’s tons of it out there. So much that it will psyche the hell out of you. Hopefully I will be able to throw out the crap and bring you the best of Personal Branding, in my own light, easy-going, fun way! And certainly I want to capture the latest trends in Personal Branding and keep you abreast of them. And most definitely I want to help you create trends that will make you stand out as strong Brands in your own spheres.

I also want to help people be more honest while creating their own identities. Very often as a recruiter I have seen things like ‘I am a highly committed, friendly, reliable, trustworthy, intelligent, go-getter and smart team-leader’ in resumes and most of them made me puke! I would rather admire a person who projects his personal Brand as ‘I am a maverick most of the time and I am capable of driving you nuts, but you’ll still like me’. Honesty is refreshing, these days. Very refreshing!

If you want to learn why (and how) to live like a brand or if you are already living like one and want a helping hand (minus the BS), are willing to digest some amount of preaching and are open to receiving some crazy ideas on how to Brand yourself, follow my blog. There’s lots to come. Simple, relatable, fun, easy to implement fundas on Personal Branding. That’s a Brand (oops!) promise! From Brand Milind.