Prior to the first tsunami in Asia, tsunami is just a word in the dictionary. Most people did not know what the word stands for, how it operates. All of us could not imagine the huge impact an occurrence can have on humanity. This was followed by ‘Hurricane Katrina’ which was the USA version under George Bush.

Since the second outbreak, wise nations have trained experts and put structures in place to forestall further outbreak or minimize its effects. There are lots of ‘tsunamis’ happening right in front us today within marketing communications industry. The level of disruption has caught many brands unaware.

Even when there is clear sign of changes, many brands are still assuming that marketing tsunami does not concern them or will never change the dynamics of the trade. I can not but laugh out loud. Joe Puzilli has once said ‘we are seeing nothing less than a tsunami affecting business of every size, regardless of what they are selling’. Instead of readjusting their contact lenses in order to see well, Many brands will rather pretend it will not affect them. Many brands are still complaining that technology has brought a lot of damage to their business/sales- especially traditional media.

What they have failed to realize is that every disadvantage carries with it a correspondence opportunity. Technology has opened more doors of opportunities to every brand than the ones closed. It I just that they have not taken time to study the parameters of the tsunami. Over concentration on old patterns of news coverage, marketing will not allow traditional media brands to see untold numbers of opportunities to increase revenue despite the influence of social media on their trade.

Also some personal brands will rather continue with ‘resume posting’, looking for jobs on the job boards than building a strong personal, networking, global brand positioning through solid, creative online presence. We are in a stage where marketing tsunami is still changing the dynamics of operation. Wise brands have realized this and are adapting. The new brand marketing trend demands that each brand build strong connection with its consumer instead of talking at them.

The new marketing also demands that brands elevate their consumers from just an acquaintance to good bed fellow/passionate lovers. Brands needs to get over the initial shock of this marketing tsunami disruptions of old patterns and move on with the present demands. The advent of brand marketing tsunami began about a decade and half ago but its effects became pronounced in the last decade and it is not likely to end until its disrupt the old pattern.

Anyway that is my view. A wise brand should make available fund for social media whether it is hundred years old or a start up. Robert Kiyosaki was quoted last year as saying ‘I am a bit old to focus on social media now but I spend an average of two hundred thousand dollars monthly through hired employees or consultants on social media, online reputation etc’.

Today a five minute ad, a five page ad in the Dailies may not create a meaningful relationship with customers. Meanwhile they still need to be part of brands’ communication tools/plans.

In my bid to up my knowledge so I can be of more value to my community, I began a research on necessity of internal/employee branding. It s not  a case that I did not know how vital internal branding is to corporate branding before, but the fact remains that knowledge changes and to be relevant you need to upscale what you know today to be relevant tomorrow. In the course of my research, I stumbled on a research paper by Dr. Harquail and his research paper will form part of my discourse today.

Internal branding is the engine room of any corporate brand. Internal branding strengthens a corporate organization’s position in a competitive market place as well as enhance organization’s effectiveness.   Internal branding is highly essential because like every other branding strategy, internal brand is a form of an attempt to gain further control of niche through shaping internal audience identities. The essence of internal branding is to help employee internalize and truly represent the brand identity desired by corporate brand. It is also aimed at adequately projecting the brand to the customers and other corporate brand’s constituency members. Employee branding helps employee to develop and direct self-images that are in congruent with attributes of the brands they work for. The goal of employee branding is to induce internal branding to create a behavioral and psychological connection between themselves and the brand identity. Without proper internalizing of brand’s idea, concept, it will be difficult for employees to become brand ambassadors for any brand. Expectedly a branded employee is deemed to have the ability to truly represents, projects the corporate brand’s identity through his personal behaviors, appearances while relating with any brand constituent. Work environment has been discovered to aid or mar the effectiveness of internal branding. The management style of the executives, the support and kind of attention they receive from management, management attitudes are some of the thing that will project the level at which internal branding efficiency will be. The level of effectiveness of any internal branding efforts can be greatly marred by executives’ personal attitude and commitment to the success of the corporate brand as a whole. A corporate brand gains better visibility and achieve objectives faster when internal brands behaviors strengthen brand identity as well as promise.

To help achieve better internal branding, management needs to teach ,coach employee about the brand’s identity ,promise of value, expectation, make them understand how to represent the brand in their daily attitudes, offer them opportunity to represent the brand and a continual support to be the best they could be for themselves as well as the corporate brand. A corporate brand that frustrates personal innovation may not get the best of internal branding efforts. There is more to offer in terms of processes and management. Hope to write further next time

Is your employee properly branded?

In the course of dealings with individuals in the area of personal and executive branding, I have noticed a flow of thought prevalent among many. People need a quick fix it answers. A tip of a sort. A wheel that one can swing in minutes and get result. My response to that is that there is nothing like overnight success. Every overnight success takes nights to birth. No half-hearted effort can supply great results. I draw a parallel that even HIV does not become a full blown AIDS in a day.

So if an individual really mean to promote his/her personal brand and excel in this, the followings will be worth considering.

1. Distribute value: do you have a unique value, plan to distribute this as much as possible. Never odd the value that you have. Personal branding is not all about you. It is about others who buy your unique value.

2. Focus your skills and promote yourself as a go-to-person: Do not sow your skills in a haphazard manner. Be versatile and yet focused. When you over-stretched yourself in different directions, there is a possibility of brand position coloring and people will not know where you actually belong.

3. Treat your brand like a corporate brand: You may not be Nike, chevron, Oando, Cadbury, but find out what they are doing ethically and apply most of these principles to your personal brand.

4. To be remembered, be noteworthy: Many voices are out there trying to impress others. Identify your uniqueness and manifest this in your own way that will make people remember you. Manage the impression well also.

5. Get a personal website/url: No brand can be out rightly successful without a web presence today. A local brand can in some cases though. Take your brand to the global arena. Go to the village square. The World Wide Web is now the new village square.

6. Record positive events, interactions, feedbacks: Some may feel this is arrogance when they document their achievements for others to see. That is also equal to arrogance to some. There is no evil in this if you know how to do it well without attracting negative comments.

7. Measure and implement: constantly measure your personal results, get feedbacks and act on them no matter how much of your ego is affected

Every personal brand has greater potential force of reckoning than we all acknowledged. Each given personal brand has innate capability to impact the thoughts, deeds and actions of those around us. Interestingly, when we do our parts, the law of psychological reciprocity which states “human beings are instinctively impelled to return to others the feelings and emotions they give us” work in our favour. This is where brand’s effectiveness, influence and rewards come from. This begins with being ready to serve.

The statement above calls for deliberate action on the part of the individual personal brand to strengthen the position of its own brand. This ensures the brand garners much gain and influence within the target market. There are three noted avenues that personal brand can use to strengthen the brand and that formed the focus of our discussion today.

1. Listen: listening is an effective tool in communication. Those who keep speaking without listening never learn anything news and as time goes on they lose credibility, followership and attention. They are associated with a notion of always wanting to dominate, lack of concern to others’ feelings. Listening involves seeking to clearly understand what others are saying and how they are feelings. When a brand does this, it solidifies its relationship more with the target and the brand gained more attention in the process.

2. Awareness: This has to do with brand’s ability to empathize, being in tune with itself as well as those around it. A step further is an attempt to always understand who you are becoming and the necessary sacrifice that needed to be made for your future that will add values to the target audience too.

3. Healing: The society is hurting. Your niche is inclusive. Thanks for being a great brand evangelist, but your brand achieve more when it becomes a healer, solving problem by removing hindrances, discovering better way that can make life better for the niche. There are ways to do this; we will discus this in the nearest future. Do you have experience here? Share yours with our community.

As the battle ground begins to shift from traditional mainstream mass media to digital media, the fierceness of the battle will soon be felt more on the cyberspace because customers now have a say. It is wise for brands to develop a strategy on how to play the game according to the rule. I must admit as I commented on a forum recently that in our environment here, the battle is more pronounced in the mass media broadcast advertisement than in the digital media. But soon, as we have in advanced countries, the scope of the marketing channel will change for good.

Brand engagement marketing will become the answer to the above. It will create avenues, privileges, rights to enhance marketing effectiveness to a new elevated level. Brand engagement marketing will mop up the merits in online social phenomenon available through dialogues, forums, blogs, vblogging, podcast, YouTube. This requires adequate training and know-how though.

As a form of digression, I want to point out that the re-branding of Nigeria project can annex this opportunity. There are a whole lot of opportunities to gain here. Brand marketers who are not versed in this new phenomenon will not be able to offer much value to the brand. I do think every employee should be brand’s marketer at a various degree. A guru has noted  ‘a brand has two major functions: innovation and marketing- every other activity is cost’.  For Brands- personal, corporate, service, product, national- to be successful brand engagement marketing should be the backbone of the brand’s savvy marketing activities. This is because brand engagement marketing permits the marketers to establish a virile, vibrant brand and create loyal users, fans with upward revenue drive for ROI on marketing.

In a recent research publication by Silverpop, they define “Engagement Marketing” as ‘a marketing approach which -is in contrast to traditional brand and direct marketing strategies- allows a brand customers and prospects to shape the company’s marketing…this start when someone takes an action and initiates a dialogue in requesting information about the brand’.

The foundation as I want to believe is brand’s internal brands, personal brands and by extension visuals like websites, emails, product packaging which through their activities affect point of contacts perception. My submission is that brand engagement begins with every internal brand though the responsibilities may be heavier on marketing, brand management, corporate communication department.

Personal assitant/Executive Assistant evolved over the years as result of pressure on senior executive and the need to have someone who can help them solves other important details that they may not have time for. At the beginning, what is today called Executive/Personal  assiatnt is called Confidential secretary among other names.The role they played then was to help type document, keep some documents secret, manage people and the bosses’ itinerary. As time progresses, the role of a Personal Personal Assistant/Executive changed with greater demand for knowledges of activities like scheduling, task and project managements among others. Greater qualifications are now being demanded from an individual who want to fill this role. As long as we still still have executives, the job will remain but at a greater degree. It takes a choice person to get the best in this job. Particularly with the advent of Persaonal digital assiatants/phones. It is easier for executives to schedule their meetings with the assitant of a PDA now. So if all an individual knows is just scheduling, his job is already on the line.This has informed the need to have a strong personal brand as a differentiating factor.So lets examine what counts for a Personal Assistant.

1.Trust,High Integrity: Because a Personal Assistant will have access to clasified information of the senior executive, it is important that the brand You of a personal assistant have a greater dose of Trust. Once again, trust is relaibility and Dependability. If this social capital account is in red, the PA is already out of the job.

2.Excellent People management skill: The role of executive assistant is like the role of chief-of-staff.He must know how to manage internal staff as well as external audience well. Many will insist on seeing the executive because they were old classmates before meanwhile they may not have an appointment. Ability to be diplomatic with such people is important. Many may even claim you are hoarding the executive.

3.Social intelligence: this has become the greatest intelligence that is now required today.Senior executive always attend parties, functions, get together among others. Part of the job duties of PA is to accompany the executive, manage the event to the advantage of the executive so that the image of the executive does not become dented; social intelligience, public relations skill will be required to handle all these so get it by all means.

4.Presence: this has to do with dress sense. Working with top executive demands that you dress for the office. Even if you do not like glamorous lifestyle, your jobs demands that you dress for the position. But if I may add caution here for ladies in this profession, avoid dressing to kill, you will end up in many beds or you may lose the job if you mainatain a ‘no’ stance. One can dress well without unnecessary exposure.Get wisdom to know what is right.

5.Computer skill, correspondence management: For some, their jobs will require preparing presentations for their bossess, this is where a great knowledge of computer skills and corresspondence management will work for your brand. Being a ‘pro’ in managing meetins, organizing will be good for your brand.

6.Constituency relations: The executive always have large constituency. Personal assistants must be able to screen information, liason with several associations, units.

#The other points will be featured in my soon to be released free e-book “Personal Branding For First class Professionals”.

We have established that sitting on the fence when it comes to conversation marketing today is dangerous. It is like taking a position in the middle of a highway road. I do understand that for some, it appears we are speaking a foreign language with all the terms we are using here such as web 2.0, conversation marketing etc. because of these set of people, I hereby give my opinion and what those terms translate to in a lay man’s language as well as make open what the rules of the game are. Like we have established, conversational marketing takes place on the web. Interestingly the web has moved from web 1.0 for beginners to web 2.0. To add insult to injury for many, web 3.0 is around the corner in the western world. This requires that those of us here must quickly update our knowledge as fast as possible so we can play in the big league. I must say I am not a web savvy individual neither do I study science related course in the university, my passion is only on how brands can take advantages made available to harness visibility and relevance. This I have being doing in the past three years before I start talking about it today. Not to worry, individuals out there will not need three years period to learn, all you need do is to closely follow issues here and drop comment if you do not understand anything. So to be a player in this game, take note of the following as brand owner or a brand.

1. Have basic knowledge of the internet: You do not need to be a guru. I am not one. There are things I wish I know that I do not know.

2. Understand your brand, business and its users.

3. Be keenly interested in your niche and listen to the conversation going on around the world.

4. Develop a strategy to partake. This will help you to measure results.

5. Delegate responsibility: you either get involve –personal brand, or delegate responsibility as corporate brand owner. Get a social media consultant or community manager as it is called now. If you can not get any, send your people to us for training. It pays greater dividends.

6. Utilize integrated social media method: There are great numbers out there i.e. forums, social network, ding, discussion group, blogs. These require adequate training to get best results.

 On the last note, do not enter conversation as a marketer delivering a sales pitch, it will boomerang. People do not like to be sold to. Learn to respect privacy terms too. 

It’s a great new year. It is a year that promises great dividends for those who know how to harness opportunities inside it. Despite the economic crunch. Knowing what to do will pay. Individual brand must know how to build emotional attachment to its own brand. The foundation of every emotional connection has been traceable to psychology-persuasion in this instance. No brand can actually survive without emotional interaction with the target audience. But the recurrent issue is that many brand strategists do not place emphasis on this foundation. This has accounted for many brands’ failure.

In a recent research by Ulli Appelbaum, he established that ‘reaching, engaging and bonding with customers is becoming increasingly challenging for marketers…consumers have become savvy, critical with higher expectation…evolution and increasing complexity of today’s media environment represent new challenges’. So to be successful in the journey of persuasion, Ulli identified the following steps.

1. Rewards: This is a common motivator for human being. Brand owners must emphasis the reward or what we all call benefits. The advantage of the rewards must be hammered so well that it is clear to all.

2.Threats: No one enjoys a threat to life, so when a brand owner identifies the threat to human existence that the brand can help prevent, emotional connection can begin from here. Antiseptic soap makers have stressed this to their own advantage.

3. Expertise: the brand must demonstrate its expertise and use it to the maximum benefits of the target audience. What is in it for me-WIIFM still holds water.

4. Liking: Be a likeable brand and you will have followings. People sometimes bend rules for those they like and this includes brands too.

5. Scarcity: We all believed that something that is scarce is valuable. That is general perception. Limit your level of exposure, availability. Know when to withdraw your service and your brand from the market.

6. Social proof: One of the reasons why people get connected to a brand is social proof. This has to do with what others have to say about a brand, offerings. Long queue in front of a shop always convince people that it must be a great one while others do not have one customer. Think of how to start building emotional connection with your brand today.

For those who have discovered, given focus to their personal brands, its time to communicate or promote the brand they believe they have created. No one appreciates something that is not visible or known. But before the promotion, it will be good to look at the following guidelines or tips that can really help in the brand promotion process.

1. What you have to offer: It is important to bring something great to the mix. That something must command attention of the target market. If it is not great, it must be able to attract great emotional attachment. As you do not need to be the greatest guy in town to be successful, you only need to gain high level emotional followings. It must be valuable to them. Otherwise you will become a commodity, one of the items in town.

2. How you offer it: How you offer what you bring to the mix is also important. Never position a precious jewel before a pig. It will not be appreciated. No matter the level of noise you make, the pig will not understand. Your effort also will be wasted; many precious man-hours will also be wasted. Take great care of your channels.

3. Promise delivery: By all means keep your promise. Your brand is as good as your delivery. People’s memory is not that short as we think. It is true that many have short-life span memory, but some will always compare the promise with the delivery. God helps you if these few are opinion leaders or those who are vocal, your brand will never remain the same in this age of several digital communication channels.

4. Tell a supporting story: Forget your resume when it comes to personal branding promotion. Resume is good but how many points in your own resume do you know off hand. But we always remember a good story told with delight. Be sure to tell a great story about your brand that will stick. This is a platform that gives an edge to great story teller. I guess this help. With love from me. Happy New year in advance.

Every great brand-corporate, product, personal-starts out small. The problem is that many make the mistake of churning out services or go ahead to pitch a client they hardly known.

We are going to look at two major angles to this. For a successful pitch or sales, the audience is important as your storyline (content) is also vital. There is a necessity to get the audience to believe in your brands and the possibilities for their turnaround in your content.

Realize that no matter how great your brand is, you must know the desire of your audience and be able to capture their imaginations well. Be able to conquer the usual wisdom. The usual here means that we all have usual thought pattern that guides our ‘receptability’ to a new idea.

 Get to know the audiences well before you start the pitch. Life is becoming easier in this regard. Internet is everywhere, log on and find out something about the client. Do your homework. Many have forgotten homework since they left school. Home work will always be part of our lives.

 Understand their corporate culture or understand the person’s personal values. There are things that the corporate brand intends to be in the eye of their publics. Do they have stated goals? Apart from this, note also that every person, corporate organization has unwritten constitution that guide behaviours. No one will tell you this but it is always there. So it helps to know the scene very well as much as you can.

Promote your “likeability”. We will talk about this later. People want to help people they like. Being polite, courteous and a good listener makes a whole lot of difference. When this and more are done, your pitch will somehow become familiar to them and will have answered their questions. People who do not know you will begin to perceive you as someone who pays attention and an authority that you are.

I have got to run, my schedule today is very, very tight.