What about personal branding?
My firm had an opportunity to speak at the annual Investment Funds Industry of Canada (IFIC) Conference in early October. With a banking background, I was intrigued with the opportunity to share some of my firm’s insights on what makes for successful strategic branding in the financial sector.
To our delight, internal branding and employee engagement (a progressive area of brand management and a recent CMA White Paper) intrigued our audience enough so that a Director, from one of the major Canadian banks, later approached me requesting help to build a ‘personal branding seminar’. His Learning and Development Team had an upcoming financial advisor recognition conference and he wanted to expose seminar participants to the professional management tool that is ‘personal branding’.
This made me think, what is personal branding’s linkage to business branding? How does one distill the most impactful elements of business branding to a personal service level? The answer I have found is to not over think it but ‘make it real’ by adapting the most focused branding processes to an individual level. For example, just as companies will ensure their core strengths are aligned with the business brand, individuals must ensure their skills/strengths are aligned with their personal brand. This will help a personal brand be more relevant, actionable, and value adding to the business brand.
To ensure individual ‘personal brands’ are successful and relevant, there must be a support network in place for individuals to learn from each other. This can be accomplished in a follow-through session where they can share their successes and discuss their challenges together. This likely is a new professional development endeavor for many thus this support network will be very important to help ensure any ‘personal branding’ initiatives remain relevant and strong.
Have other fellow bloggers and readers had similar experiences with personalizing their business service offerings?
