Jurassic Brand
It was a high watermark in the evolution of film, ironic really given the subject matter!
I also believe we are experiencing another high watermark but this time in the world of business and I’m going to use one of the scenes at the end of the film to paint you a rather gory picture!
See when people first watch the movie they think the T Rex is the big scary monster, the way it's introduced is terrifying.
But it’s not.
The real threat is the velociraptors and here's why...
Traditional B2B marketing - The T rex.
Big, powerful with huge jaws able to snap up prey in seconds.
But it’s slow and lumbering, it needs huge budgets to sait it’s colossal appetite. It needs legal and sign off from too many people. In short it’s outrun, outbeaten and outplayed by these little blighters...
The Employees Personal brand - The Velociraptor.
Small, nimble, agile. They work in packs, producing content at a scale and speed the T Rex cannot hope to keep up with.
And they require zero budget or approval, they are trusted and that makes them dangerous.
They’ll run circles around that lumbering beast of marketing and tear it to pieces in seconds. It’s not a pretty picture.
And if I hear one more person say that thought leadership is the preserve of the C suite or just senior people I'm going to feed you to the dinosaurs. EVERYONE has the ability and responsibility to be thought leaders within your company. More often than not it's the junior people that get this stuff right away and are rockstars at it. I think senior people try and gatekeep it for the ego boost. Yep I said it.
Marketing needs to start to realise their job role has changed, they need to own this and step up to the plate becoming a content curation engine for their employees. Stop fighting them and work with them to unseat their competitors.
And that all starts with allowing the employee base to build out their personal brand.
I want to talk about the philosophy behind a personal brand, unpack it and see what makes it tick!
Can it be fabricated or manufactured? Sure. Ask Kim K 🤣
But I think the best ones (take Oprah for example) come from a deeper, more philosophical place. Hers is built entirely on authenticity.
Many times, Winfrey has voluntarily told stories of her personal life, from experiencing traumatic abuse to her adult journey with weight loss. Her candour in sharing experiences with the audience — even the hardest ones — paid off. These admissions became not just a characteristic of her talk show, but of Winfrey’s brand.
And isn’t it much easier to just be yourself.
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." Oscar Wilde
It’s very difficult to build a strong personal brand without first discovering who you are. But also don’t expect this stuff to emerge straight away. It can take time.
The very act of creating content strengthens your voice and in turn your personal brand, it becomes a feedback loop. One informs the other and really starts to help you get clear on who you are and how you can help. Also what you’re passionate about and you’re an expert in.
Think about your core value sets. Mine are -
FAMILY - TRUST (something I have always struggled with)
CHARITY - COMMUNITY (a sense of belonging I never had)
WORK - LEADERSHIP (a role I never thought I was ready to step into)
You might notice a pattern here. These are all things I lacked growing up. So now I overcompensate for them as an adult. Simple when you use a teeny bit of insight.
A DeMartini test can help with this
Ultimately though it’s how people feel about us, we can put ourselves out into the world but it’s how people perceive that that we have no control over.
I break that down into
Core Values - Who we think we are, based off our core beliefs and socio, historic upbringing. These drive our behaviours. Either consciously (when we understand where they come from) or unconsciously and that can leak out into our content.
Perception - How we are actually seen by others, the mental image we make up in our mind of who that person is and do I know, like and trust them?
Perceived Intention - How we would like to be seen by others either consciously or subconsciously when curating our personal brand.
And a personal brand sits between all three. We can only put ourselves out into the world, we cannot control what we get back.
We can only act with good intention. I like to think of it like digital karma, you get back what you put out. So every piece of content, every interaction or comment on someone else's content is an opportunity to either strengthen or erode your personal brand.
Think of it like an ever multiplying organism, allowing you to scoop up more followers and add to that amoeba like substance.
It’s about building a feeling, deepening relationships and forming trust. I think the very definition of what dictates a personal brand is this…
This is a quote I have used before and it’s Lisa Brennan-Jobs talking about her late father Steve Jobs and this sums up the mechanism beautifully.
"My father gave a speech in which he said that it wasn’t love that brought people together and kept them together, but values—shared values."
When you strip it back (and I’m a big fan of simplicity) it’s that. Any more than that is window dressing. Do I hold the same belief systems as this person I interact with and do I trust them enough to do business with them? That’s it!
Nothing more, nothing less..
I wanted to try something different today, I am currently writing a book so each week one of the chapters in the book will be turned into an article, that way I can gauge how well the content is doing before I publish. Thought it was worth a punt 🤷
Stay frosty humans and see you next week for more ⚡️ dreams 🤘
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