Build Your Own Life Brand! A Powerful Strategy to Maximize Your Potential and Enhance Your Value for Ultimate Achievement

Chapter One: Build a Brand Name for Yourself When I was playing high school basketball many years ago, there was one name that stood out in every game: Chuck Taylor. Chuck wasn't a big scorer or a great rebounder. In fact, he was constantly underfoot on the court. More accurately, he wason our feet.Before there were Nikes or Reeboks, Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars wasthebrand. It was the most popular basketball shoe of my high school generation.Back then, when you made the varsity team, you just had to get a pair of Chuck Taylor high-tops. All the players that I admired in high school, college, and the pros were wearing them, so I associated Chuck Taylor with success on the basketball court. I grew up like everyone else, with hundreds of other brand-name products around me -- top brands such as Wheaties, Pepsi, and Ford Thunderbird -- but my desire to have a pair of Chuck Taylors marked the real beginning of mybrand awarenessas a consumer.A brand product is one with a unique identity intended to set it apart from similar products. The cereal brand Wheaties is "the breakfast of champions." The Pepsi soft drink brand is "the joy of cola." Compaq brand computers offer "better answers," according to an ad in a magazine on my desk. We are so bombarded by product brands that we are hardly conscious of them much of the time, but most of us have at least some level of brand awareness. We can sing the jingles of our favorite brands.It's the real thing!We can repeat their ad slogans.Just do it!Most important for the companies that make brand-name products, we look for them when we shop.Increasing a product's brand awareness is one of the jobs performed by my management and marketing consulting company, S. Graham & Associates. Marketing and working with brands are the primary roles of my firm, which provides strategic planning, marketing, consulting, and program execution to companies seeking to target general and multicultural markets. Our clients come to us for help in creating, expanding, and revitalizing their brand names. Our speciality is to build upon what they have already accomplished with their brands by helping them sell their products to multicultural consumers whom they may not be reaching effectively. We also help new companies develop and establish their brands by determining what their primary target markets are and how they can best explain the value of their product to consumers. A BRAND-NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT YOUR LIFE "Everything is a brand. Most people don't recognize that. Where you live, the house you live in, the street you live on...they are all brands. And people are brands," Frank Delano, president of the New York-based Delano & Young, a brand-image firm, told theChicago Tribunerecently. "We're all brands, in the sense that we have a certain identity, have to maintain a certain quality and have to bring something to [radio station] affiliates they can't bring to themselves," said broadcaster Charles Osgood at a 1999 advertising industry conference entitled "Brand Building for the 21st Century." The business world has long recognized the value of creating a recognizable and clearly defined brand. In recent years, the principles of branding increasingly have been applied to individuals too. Just as Coca-Cola, Apple, and Tommy Hilfiger have brands with assets that they develop and pitch to consumers, you too have assets that you must build upon, market, and expand. It may sound strange to you at first, but think about these situations: When you apply for a job, aren't you trying to "sell" the interviewer on you and your particular brand assets, which include your talents, knowledge, training, and personal characteristics such as your energy, your determination, or your leadership attributes? When you meet someone whom you find interesting or aGraham, Stedman is the author of 'Build Your Own Life Brand! A Powerful Strategy to Maximize Your Potential and Enhance Your Value for Ultimate Achievement' with ISBN 9780684856988 and ISBN 0684856980.