Brand new?

 

      Just when you thought you were safe from hearing about Miley Cyrus..Yes I'm going there. NTR was at the event in Gatlinburg when the VMA's aired and while we were not watching live, we were just as sucked into the controversy as everyone. Fortunately for You Tubes sake we were able to watch this piece of American iconic history in an instant replay. I addresses this masterpiece in a post the following day. Was it career suicide or marketing genius? After all, the entire country, it seems was talking about her, many still are. So mission accomplished. The saying even bad publicity is still publicity rings true here. So what does this have to do with you and your marketing you might be asking? Miley Cyrus  recently signed with a new manager, Larry Rudolph, who coincidentally was the same manager that ushered Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake from their squeaky clean Disney image to full blown pop super stars. Her performance was all very strategic. She was in no way building  personal brand. Personal branding is on the way out.

 

     The word brand comes from "brandr" which actually means to burn,  like to burn a brand into cattle. Not that long ago companies  adopted branding as a way to leave their mark. So to build a personal brand is to boil your entire personality into one symbol?  Building your business brand is to take all that you are and minimize it?  How impersonal is that? By trying to manage your branding you can end up in an identity crisis.  The new branding is to build a public personality. 

      Instead of distilling everything you are into a brand, and then trying to make it personal again why not take who you are at the heart of your personality and decide what you would like the world to know. What you would be happy shouting from every media site you own. That every time you cultivate your public personality you ask yourself "What should others see, to see the true me?" Not what should I put out there, to be what others want to see.  So the personal brand is becoming a myth and cultivating a public personality is the new branding. By staying true to yourself it leads you to your authentic self, building a transparent public personality that will automatically make you more endearing to your audience. I know when working with a blogging coach She asked me which posts of mine were most popular. When I reviewed them I realized the posts where I was most open and honest about the struggles, of not being perfect, or even close had the most views. The ones I was really uncomfortable sharing. The ones I asked my inner circle, is this career ending? When I was most open in my weakness I gained my strength. More support and more followers. So in building your public personality for your business what is at the heart of your business, it's soul.  Don't think of what everyone else is doing, chances are most of them are wrong. Create your own image, a distinctive fresh take on why you do what you do and why people should come to you. Be bold, be aggressive and be authentic. Because that's smart marketing.