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What Are They Saying About Your Brand?

July 24, 2008 on 5:33 am | In Brand, Branding, Personal Branding | View Comments

I’m working on a presentation about personal branding for delivery at My Creative Team University. As I was doing the research, it became clear that in today’s working world you must take control of your own brand. If you don’t position yourself, someone else will position you. That’s not always a good thing.

Whether you are a freelancer, a small business owner, or an employee, you have a brand. Do you know what people think about your brand?

Sometime back I asked 10 colleagues what their impression of my brand is because you need to know where you are before you can make any adjustments. Same as in any kind of brand work. I’d encourage you to do the same.

I learned that people think I’m assertive, intimidating and very “alpha.” Perhaps I need to tone that down a bit. They say I have a strategic understanding but am very tactically oriented. Might need to work on the strategy piece. I’m conservative, principled and honest, they say. Not changing that.

Below are anonymous and unedited comments about the brand called Harry Hoover, in case you are interested:

- “Three T’s”– Trustworthy, truthful, timely. Does what he says he’ll do, when he says he’ll do it, and does it well.

- Down to earth, logical thinker. Strategic understanding, but more tactically oriented.

- Sense of humor, easy to work with. Always have new ideas.

- Authoritative, in charge, commanding, capable, competent, confident, professional, not just doing things right, but doing the right things, a leader and a strong communicator. On the lesser side, perhaps intimidating or very alpha male!

- “Out of the box”, balanced, solid, integrity

- I think of Harry Hoover as extremely savvy and good-hearted. He understands the power of the Internet and knows how to effectively represent his clients in dealings with the media. I also admire him greatly for making a successful transition from journalist/broadcaster to small business entrepreneur, which is no small feat.

- Confident, consistent, information resource, reliable, strategic, assertive, easy to work with, focused and professional.

- You and your brand are:

chock full of fabulous and never-ending ideas
early adopter technologically “ almost too far ahead of the curve so must teach/explain/pull others along
extremely well-versed in all the advertising/pr/media-related disciplines. You know how to put all the pieces together and provide a comprehensive, strategic plan and all the necessary tactical pieces as well. You can strategize, plan and execute, from start to finish.
you are inventive, creative, persistent, patient
you communicate clearly and express yourself well both in writing and verbally
you have a passion for technology, deep technical knowledge and are an aggressive self-teacher. You know how to use technology to drive business processes.
you are a leader
you are also a teacher
you have morality and ethics (personally and professionally) – a rare commodity lately, it would seem
you are flexible – if it doesn’t work this way, then we can do it that way
you deliver what you promise, when you promised it. And if you can’t, you communicate why and when.

- To me, the HH brand is 1) Conservative, 2) Sage, 3) Clever and 4) Honest.

- The Harry Hoover brand revolves around integrity, honesty, open communication, thoughtful strategy and flexibility.

- I think that the Hoover brand consists of:

– optimistic focus on the task at hand

– openness to others’ ideas to improve the ultimate product

– loyal and fair, yet bound to a set of principles (albeit sometimes Republican-influenced)

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Good thoughts Harry. An interesting twist to the personal branding is what affect does your personal branding have upon the brand of the company you work for?

I summize that my personal brand has a large impact, especially with social media, on the brand of my employer. A search for Jim Deitzel, or a search for my employer ends up with many of the same results.

The impact on me is that I now need to be very careful with my personal branding and, for better or worse, I have to keep my brand within the guidelines of my employer.

Interesting….

Comment by Jim Deitzel — July 24, 2008 #
Great point, Jim. In our digital world your brand is hanging out there for everyone to see pretty much forever and it does reflect upon your employer. I noticed Spokeo is promoting its services to HR people. Savvy HR people are using it to search out candidates on the net to see what tracks they have left.

Comment by Harry Hoover — July 24, 2008 #
I own and run two small businesses (SmartFlix.com and HeavyInk.com), and I recently started using an executive coach (Josh Kaufman of personalmba.com). One thing he suggested, and which I did, was to do a 360 degree review of myself – asking all of my employees what their perceptions of me were.

…which is pretty similar to finding out your “personal brand”.

I found some good stuff, and I also found things like “doesn’t listen”, etc.

Discovering and fixing your personal brand is hard work … but worth doing!

Comment by TJIC — July 24, 2008 #
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Comment by PINTAOZHANG — July 28, 2008 #
[...] Courtesy of Morguefile Personal brands have been on my mind a lot recently, as you can tell by my posting last week. A couple of episodes of late have me thinking about how people evaluate your brand and how many [...]

Pingback by THINKing » How Is Your Personal Brand Batting Average? — July 30, 2008 #
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