A personal brand is the story people think of when they hear your name. What are you known and remembered for?
If you’re a top executive and hope to be a thought leader in your industry, building a personal brand is imperative in this day and age, as surveys reveal declining trust of corporate brands. Recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 62 percent of millennials trust brands less today. Millennials are increasingly looking to experts and individuals, who they trust over corporate brands, to guide their purchasing decisions.
According to another report, “Millennials are more than three times as likely as Boomers (22 percent vs. 7 percent) to turn to social channels. They’re on the hunt for feedback from experts and people with common interests – not just personal connections.” And millennials matter because by 2017 they “will have more spending power than any other generation.”
Given millennials’ spending power, individuals who leverage their personal brand to create an authentic connection between their company brand and target audiences/consumers will be significantly more effective in building trust and increasing sales. Consider, for example, the often course, raw and insightful John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile. Legere has leveraged his personal brand to the benefit of T-Mobile – from the magenta t-shirt and outspoken critique of his competitors, to his direct engagement with customers via social media. The results show he has built trust, driven customer acquisition and increased revenue for T-Mobile.
These days, people want to buy from brands that align with their values, and CEOs especially should authentically live and breathe their respective brand’s values. As Shelly Lazarus, former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather shared in a Harvard Business Review article about personal branding for your career, “When you’re leading people toward something important, losing your authentic voice is the last thing you want to do.”
So how do you develop and promote a personal brand and thought leadership platform? Below are four steps to get you started.
1. Identify issues and topics you’re passionate about and that move the business forward. First you need to identify a topic that resonates deeply with you, that you are passionate about, and that you have the credentials to comment on or a topic on which you have a unique perspective. Make sure the topics are authentic and true to you.
Consider, for example, Arivale CEO Clayton Lewis. As a competitive triathlete and a seasoned venture capitalist with many years of experience on the Board of Trustees for Harborview Medical Center, he has a unique perspective and passion around scientific wellness. Clayton lives and breathes the brand values of Arivale, a company that “uses cutting-edge science, personalized data, and tailored coaching to deliver prioritized, actionable recommendations that inspire its clients to achieve and sustain their wellness potential.”
2. Create a mission statement and ensure your personal brand topics align with this statement. A personal mission statement will help to keep you focused, be a guide for decision making and provide direction. A mission statement will ensure you are consistent and do not go off topic or get pulled into activities that do not align with your mission.
A famous and well-cited example is that of Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group – “To have fun in [my] journey through life and learn from [my] mistakes.”
There are numerous articles that provide guidance on how to develop a personal mission statement, including Scott Wylie’s article “Why Business Leaders Must Set a Personal Mission.”
3. Contribute your perspective on your industry’s most important problems. To build your personal brand and become an established thought leader, add value to ongoing conversations by offering solutions to address problems that plague the industry via networking events, contributed content and social media. Ensure that proposed solutions or predictions are insightful, evidence-based and provocative.
Cindy Gallop, former president of global ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), is actively contributing her perspective to address the lack of gender diversity in the advertising industry. She has leveraged a variety of mediums to drive the conversation including an article in The Guardian, “White men running advertising only pay lip service to diversity,” as well as a podcast interview by The Takeaway and broadcast via NPR.
4. Keep it authentic. Authenticity is key to personal brand management – clients and the general public can sense inauthenticity and a lack of sincerity and veracity. You cannot build meaningful connections if you are not authentic.
“Authenticity is not the product of pure manipulation,” offers Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, authors of Managing Authenticity: The Paradox of Great Leadership. “It accurately reflects aspects of the leader’s inner self, so it can’t be an act. But great leaders seem to know which personality traits they should reveal to whom and when.”
Furthermore, research indicates that authenticity is correlated with higher self-esteem, lower stress, and greater life satisfaction.
Social and digital media have made it easier than ever to connect an executive to the company where that individual works, but the separation of personas has become harder to maintain. Companies would be well served to educate and guide their executive teams on how to manage and build their personal brands in order to better reinforce and build the company’s brand perception in an authentic manner.
Intentionally building and managing your personal brand may seem daunting, but it’s vital and worth the investment. Take positive action toward the above steps and then work closely with your marketing/PR team to help define your platform and amplify your activities. It will dramatically help build your personal brand and that of your organization.