Kevin Roberts describes building a consumer brand as a process of instilling “loyalty beyond reason” in the hearts and minds of consumers. As a person, building a personal brand is not that much different — and when working with students this is a discussion we start to have with them sooner than later. Last week I had this discussion with Ray. I have Ray in a 5th semester class and he’s knocking it over the fence. I haven’t seen him since 2nd semester and he was doing well then, but he’s grown even more and he’s entered into a place where he’s starting to put himself out there more and I’m starting to recommend him for things. Last week after class, we had the "building your brand" discussion very briefly and I promised to follow-up with some notes.
Start from the outside
A brand is an outward expression of the values, hopes, dreams and goals of a company… or, in this case, a person. It is how the world sees you and, to some degree how you’d like to be see… although as Marty Neumeier says: “A brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is”. And he’s right. Sometimes the most deft brand-management can’t help a brand with a fractured soul. However, we’ll assume your insides are already in a good place. If you need a re-set on your values, then we need to be having a different discussion, but I’d guess that your head is on straight and your heart is in the right place. How the world sees you — or more specifically how you project yourself to the world — might need some refinement. This is where the discussion starts — on the outside. First and foremost, you want to project to the world what is already going on inside… or conversely, not do anything to throw folks off. There are a few places to start, but remember, this is about accurate projection, not changing who you are. Granted, sometimes the part you’re playing might differ from who you really are (or want to be), so that’s still a valid place of concern, so let’s start there.
Tony during his second semester... he's changed a lot since then.
During his second semester, Tony stopped by my office in a quandary. He wasn’t yet clicking in the program or design-circles in the way that he had hoped. He walked in a with a New Jersey swagger that — as an East Coast transplant myself —I recognized (and thought might be the basis for our first talking point). I asked him to describe what he was doing outside of class. He described his part time job, his hobbies and his friends. I asked him if any if these were helping him to get to where he wanted to go. “No”, he said… “In fact, a few of my buddies have started to make fun of me for being 'the academic' now that I’m in grad school”.
My response: “You need to find new friends."
We went on to talk about surrounding yourself with good people — most specifically people who modeled the attitudes and traits of people you’d like to be associated with. Years later, with initiative, focus, hard work— and the with help of a very patient girlfriend and a set of very good friends and colleagues, the transformation is remarkable. He started with a good head on his shoulders — and a heart of gold (with a St. Anthony medallion to match)… otherwise, he’d not have stopped by for the chat in the first place. But not unlike Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting, surrounding himself with people who had higher expectations for him (even more than he had for himself) helped him to get him where he needed to go. He’s still got a bit of Jersey in him. It’s part of his charm and something that will — and should — never fade away ("You can take the boy out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the boy” as they say), but he wears his St. Anthony medallion tucked into his shirt now instead of hanging out.
He found new friends and these friends helped him to find himself… and ultimately his path. Who are you spending time with? Are they helping you or holding you back?
Social Media (+ your own channel)
These days, a large part of how the outside world sees you is through a browser window. There’s not a lot you can do about that, so you might as well leverage it to the best of your ability. There are places that you need to be, things that you need to keep in mind and some things that you can do to stay ahead of the game and make yourself stand out.
First and foremost, find a “handle” (an media nickname) and stick to it. It starts with a good email address. Get one. Ditch the hotmail account and get a gmail account at the least... or better yet, establish your own domain and start to build your brand there. I simply can’t recommend you to an internship with an email address of fuzzybunny27@yahoo.com. I chose “hlwimmer” years ago and have stuck with it — based on my first and middle initial and last name. My mom can remember it. I purchased hunterwimmer.com (.net, etc.) years ago, too… but failed to capture twitter.com/hunterwimmer and facebook.com/hunterwimmer … check it out. It’s a young woman in the Midwest who… well, looks nothing like me. Living in the shadow of a bald man twice her age must be frustrating, though, and she can have Twitter and Facebook. With the same unique name, we need to share. However, I’d suggest the same to her: find an even more unique handle. That said, keep that handle “appropriate". Years ago, when starting our home renovation blog, I chose the irreverent name redneckmodern.com based on my Virginia heritage and our modernist house… and it sort of took off. I wish I had instead activated the other domain that I bought (NorCalMod.com) and built that out. It’s a bit more appropriate as the name for a public-facing blog. Lesson learned.
Otherwise, while you always think that it’d be great to check-out from social media for a while, quite simply, you can’t not be here. You also can’t afford to post things that will alienate you to friends, family and potential employers… at least not when you’re 24. At 64, when you no longer care what people think about you, you can re-post all of the cat videos and political rants that you’d like, but until then, look to social media (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc.) as places to connect with like-minded people, stay dialed-in to what other people are talking about and project a face to the world that you’d otherwise be proud of. I know it’s tempting to hit “share” on that political post that made you angry, but don’t.
Make rules for yourself and stick to them... Mine is: If I’ve shaken your hand in person, I’ll find it appropriate ask to link-to you. If I’ve ever had polite, productive correspondence with you, I’ll accept your request. If I’ve never done either, your request will sit in my queue until it becomes somehow pertinent for me to accept the request… and if you’re a student, I’ll hit accept when I see you walk across the stage at graduation… what else do you think we do up there during the ceremony!?. Feel free to borrow mine or make rules of your own, but stick to them… it’s much easier to establish rules and stick to them than to have a devil-may-care attitude about it all — and it avoids sticky situations later on.
Others have rules dealing with religion, politics, etc… Some have general habits about things they post or mantras they follow. My friend and colleague Phil only posts abstract photos — usually of fish. Brian tends to write somewhat self-deprecating, humorous, head-scratching haikus. Mia posts missives on her thoughts about the teamwork and design side of business. Bob posts reminders of the awesomeness of mid-century fine art (with the occasional Debbie Harry image). I post way too many pictures of the antics of my 2-year old, but I also post design-related things and job opportunities, so it’s not all bad... and I’m closer to 64 than 24 these days (insert sad face emoticon here).
LinkedIn: As the “Business side” of social media, this is a must-have, but honestly, I’ve not seen a lot of traffic here for our industry. Establish a profile. Have a professional-ish photo. Keep it clean and up to date. Link to people who you know and don’t spam people you don’t. LinkedIn has also become a popular place for folks to write salient content. My old boss Tim is a frequent contributor and I follow his feed and find it worthwhile. Note: Be careful not to edit too much as LinkedIn has a pesky tendency to send out notices to your linked-friends as to job changes even when you just make a tiny edit to a past job… it’s annoying. People get a “Congratulate Hunter on the new job!” note in their in-box and think I went back to work in Washington, DC and freak out. It has also had some spam issues in the past and I’ve had to revert to a second-tier email address to handle it.
Twitter: I have to admit, I’m not a Twitter fan. To me, it’s Facebook without pictures. The market seems to agree with the latest round of wall-street news. But, if you find it useful, go for it. At the very least, establish a profile consistent with your other social media profiles to round everything out. You’ll need it one day.
Instagram: For me, Instagram is the same is Twitter… Facebook without words. Again, if it works for you, use it… and I do know folks who use it a lot. It even has an unusual buy/sell/trade user-group following.
However, if you think that being on Instagram or Twitter (or both) is a substitute for not being on Facebook, you’re mistaken.
Facebook: Like it or not, Facebook is the party to be at and as a beginning professional you need to be there. You don’t need to be the host or close it down, but you do need to show up for a few reasons: (1) to simply be seen at the party, (2) to see who else is at the party, (3) to monitor roughly what’s going on at the party, (4) to see who’s really stepping out at the party, (4) to see who’s getting really wasted at the party and, (5) to know when it’s time to head home…
As far as your face to the world, it’s simply too much trouble to keep two profiles of any sort, specifically Facebook, so limit it to one and follow the rule: if something is not helping you, it might be hurting you. Chose your friends wisely. You can unfollow people in your feed without actually unfriending them and by doing so you can clean up your newsfeed quite a bit. Cleaning up your feed also has the side benefit of helping you remain positive and preventing a sour attitude about life. Also, by liking design-related content and pages (and un-liking bad ads, political posts and internet memes), you can really tailor your newsfeed to become a bit of a best-of design channel… and really, why are you looking at cat videos anyway? Is that where you’d like to see the things go? Is that what’s important to you? You’re at the stage in your life where: sure, you need to have fun… but the choices you make now will define your life tomorrow. How can that extend to everything you do… even what you follow and click-on on Facebook?
Otherwise, keep a semi-professional photo. Share some personal success stories and triumphs, but don’t brag too much (and avoid the “humble-brag”). Keep most things set to “friends only” (and some to very small sub-sets of friends — so, spend some time making groups), but set a few things to “public” that you might like a potential employer to see. Monitor your privacy settings once in a while because sometimes you might post something via your phone and a setting might slip and let everything else slide. Never play games or participate in anything that wants to install extensions that seem dubious — it will simply spam your friends and get you unfriended. No one wants to know how much candy you are crushing. However, if you set everything to “private” you might as well not even have a profile. One cover photo and one profile photo needs to be public. Make a few personal details public, but not too many. Share articles that you find inspiring (and set a few to public), but be careful not to “bandwagon” (overshare an already overshared post… especially an old one). Share some personal stories, too… and this is a good place to incorporate some of your own content, too.
Your own content (i.e.: your blog): Designers are now seen as content creators. What’s your role in all of this? In addition to the above, how can you positively contribute to it all even with good photography or simple missives? My colleague Sandra has made a name for herself making exceedingly amazing lunches for her children. It’s kind of part of my “fund your bliss” philosophy in that keeping interests outside of the 9-5 design world actually makes your more interesting at the office… it also gives you street-cred in other places as well. Sandra is a mother of three children. Being the bento-queen has its privileges in her circles. It’s kind of a big deal. Going to the other end of the spectrum, Brian has adopted a persona and has created some of the most noteworthy design-art this decade. Armin has transformed a career in design to one of design authorship and stewardship. Jeremy has a Tumblr and provides advice to design students. Christopher likes to parallel design with the consumption of hamburgers, although I’m beginning to suspect it’s a ruse as an excuse for poor eating habits.
How to: Once you establish these side spaces, you can also establish Facebook pages to support them which allow you to share content from your own channel on Facebook, then share it on your personal Facebook page. You can even set up auto-tweets from Facebook, so you can have presence in a few spaces with just a single post. For instance, once I finish this writing this essay, I’ll post to Room557.com (blog). I’ve established a Room557 Facebook page to support the blog and I’ll post the URL to the essay there and share it. I’ve also established a Room557 Twitter feed and linked the Room557 Facebook page to it. Facebook will auto-tweet the post. Folks who liked the Facebook page will have it show up in their Facebook feed. Folks who follow the Twitter feed will have the post show up in their twitter feed and they can share it as well. I’ll also share the Room557 content on my own personal feed and set that to “public” so that even non-friends can see it when they view my page… and of course my own friends will see the post in their own feeds. I’m not doing this every day, so hopefully people won’t think I’m a self-promotional monster. So far, it seems to work pretty well. People have unfriended me for a variety of reasons, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t one of them.
Looking inward: Choices and Impressions
Once you begin to establish a more tailored face to the world, you can begin to look a bit more inward and begin to think about what your choices might project about you. It's more of an impressions-thing than a fact-thing... however, in branding, we’re not really talking about facts — we’re talking about impressions. In our branding class, we openly discuss: It’s all bullshit, right?… but it’s bullshit that people not only readily accept, but that they seek out, are willing to pay a premium for — and folks that create it are rewarded highly. How can you be a productive part of it…or at least make it work for you? If this was constrained to commercialism, we’d not be able to sleep at night, but when good branding can help to motivate voters or remove the stigma around social or health issues, then there’s a bright side to it all. In the end, you want to make choices that (1) add up to something more positive and (2) make a good impression.
What choices are you making every day that can truly help to project to the world the kind of person you are on the inside… or the person you want to become? And how can these choices help you to become that person? This could be from a consumerism point-of-view and you could “vote with your dollar”. Where are you shopping? What are you buying? How are you getting to work? What are you watching on TV? Who are you voting for (or are you voting at all)? What are you spending your time doing? You could even extend this to the things you surround yourself within the “stuff” realm. Do you really need that?
This pattern of thinking could be teased out into almost every aspect of you life. Nothing should be “just because”. Everything you do is either helping or hurting your goals. Make choices that help you. It might sound exhausting, but it really isn’t… in fact, once you get it going, it’s quite automatic and one good choice begets another — in the same way one bad choice begets another. And who is the most genuine person you know doing it well? The one you most admire? It’s the person who does it like it’s no big deal… like there’s no other option... and doesn’t get sanctimonious about it.
My colleague Mary often says to students: “Make good decisions”… I couldn’t agree more. She’s also IDed by our students as a person from whom that decision seems to flow naturally. No doubt it’s after a lifetime of taking her own advice to heart.
Walking Walks
As designers, we become critical thinkers and the idea of critical analysis becomes second nature. We use this to help slice and dice complex concerns to make them understandable and deliverable to our audiences… and part of that is helping to craft the voice or the channel itself — the brand.
Turning that on ourselves is an interesting exercise.
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