Personal & Corporate Brands. They Interdepend on each other

             [Personally branded. Scoble ponders what it means. Photo by Shel]

There's lots of talk these days about corporate and personal brands and in my opinion some of the speakers have very different ideas about what a brand is than I do. It takes me back to my last years in PR when the dotcom bubble was being inflated by dumb money backing dumber ideas. I remember more than one conversation in which someone holding a senior marketing title would talk about increasing brand presence on the internet. What they actually meant was making the logo in the banner ad bigger.

The way I see it, historically, a brand has connoted how people feel about your company, it's products and services. It is an emotional thing, rather than rational as a corporate position may be. Prior to the current Conversational Era, few individuals impacted a company brand--perhaps the CEO or some luminary in an advertising campaign.

But then social media erupted. Some companies had highly tainted brands before blogging such as Microsoft, who was generally regarded as a monolithic, heartless, Borg-like entity. But Scoble and a few thousand other employees started blogging, and that allowed outsiders to see there were real people inside Microsoft, trying hard to serve customers and make products that sucked less. These mid-level employees accomplished two things:

1. Collectively, they improved the Microsoft brand perception. They added a sense of Microsoft comprised of humans who cared.
2. Individually, some of them established significant personal brands.

It got interesting when Scoble left Microsoft. His personal brand traveled with him into his new endeavors. But it also stayed behind. Microsoft continued to retain a more human image.

This is different. Because of social media, a corporate brand can be reshaped by it's current and former  employees. For the individual, their social media contributions have become vital resume attachments. Potential new employers learn a whole lot more about you than that neatly typed resume ever served up.

For the company, the core of the bran is moving from the contrivances of marketing departments to become the sum total of the people who work for and have worked for a company. I am not certain how this will evolve, but I'm pretty certain that it means that how we feel about companies will be based on what we know about its people rather than what an ad agency's creative team can foist on you.

I think that's a good thing.[

Comments

[Dan Schawbel]

You know I had to comment on this post. If you've never heard of a company, then you base almost 100% of your perception on the people you interact with and what they reveal about the company.

People get us closer to company's because they work there. When it comes to recruitment, I think social media has paved the way for applicants to almost "touch" recruiters. Now instead of applying the traditional way, the jobs will come to you (after you build a powerful online brand).

This happens a lot of Shel. He gets special opportunity's by having a "place" online, where he shares his thought leadership.

Personal brands are transferable. For instance, many Yahoo! employees build very strong reputations and were then recruited by Google. The same goes for Google employees and Facebook.

In order to be successful these days, you need to not only help your company be successful, but you have to command your career by standing out alongside the company.

[Hutch Carpenter]

Shel - I really like this post. An army of individuals participating in social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc.) really does change the perception of companies. "Oh AT&T, that's where john68 works". The qualities of that person connote to the company in two ways: (i) I respect the worker out on social media, so there's probably good products/services produced by his employer; and (ii) if he works there, it must be a decent place in general.

Microsoft is a great example of a large company with many workers who participate in social media. Will we see the same dynamic in non-technology enterprises?

[shel israel]

Hutch, Thx for the kind words. You take my thoughts a step deeper. With some exceptions, we tend to follow people we like online. So if I know John68, from ATT, I'm prone to be on his side and that makes me know someone I like in a company I currently don't like. Think that through, and there's a whole new aspect to the braiding of personal and corporate branding.

[George Athannassov]

Well, some things you say are solid business definitions and rules. God, how well I spend the money buying the "naked .." :)

This was one of them - "Because of social media, a corporate brand can be reshaped by it's current and former employees." Thanks for the great work again...

[frank]

Excellent post ...

I recently read his post by @trib (http://www.acidlabs.org/2007/04/20/blog-resum/) also seems to be in the same vein.

Our 'resume' will be enhanced by our personal brand that is built online - through social media tools.

This means both employees and organizations need to step up and pay more attention to what is happening in the world of social media.

From my experience a large portion of employees don't have this on their mind at all. In managing my team I've recently begun looking at how we can jump in and begin to use social media tools to better our service to customers as well as improve our overall brand.

This get's me thinking that i need to really evaluate & build each persons personal brand ... if we can build that ... then the company brand will also be improved.

The post and the comments were very thought provoking. Thanks!

---
http://twitter.com/franswaa

[Walter Akana]

Hi Shel! Great post! Having had the opportunity, over the past year, to coach several hi-potential Microsoft individuals on their personal brands, it’s clear to me that it’s truly the people who can bolster the company’s image by aligning their own brands in a way that drives the corporate brand forward with more diversity and energy! Knowing this, it seems that Microsoft (or any company for that matter) needs to find ways to move beyond marketing/advertising solutions to bolster its brand. Like you, I’m also not sure how this will evolve, but it seems that leveraging employees (and customers for that matter) as brand ambassadors is a big part of the solution!

[Douglas Karr]

I think the Corporate Brand is actually somewhat of a myth, Shel. I've been in business in large corporations for over 20 years and have watched very few purchases and relationships that have been built from 'a corporate brand'.

We've always purchased from people, had relationships with people, worked with vendors, support staff, etc. It's always been about people. Corporate brand was simply something to show everyone else when there wasn't any efficiencies in communicating the people behind it.

Now that mediums are progressing and one-to-many relationships CAN be managed effectively by corporations, personal branding IS the corporate brand for those companies willing to allow it.

[laurent]

Seems like the issue of personal brand vs company brand is quite hot lately. I was just reading Brian Solis's post around the topic...http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/socialization-of-your-personal-brand_28.html
and I saw a few more posts on it in the last few days.
Companies are built around teams and they need to network outside the company as a team of individuals so not one voice is ultimately in control.

[Toby Sterling]

A few thoughts from the world of the mainstream media:

It just strikes me kinda funny. After all the effort large corporations put into presenting a "unified" front toward the media (and hence the world) _ rerouting every phone call from the press to "trained" media spokespeople who know little or nothing about what's actually going on, but have been well-coached by lawyers and marketeers to stay uncontroversial and "on-topic" _ the result is a worthless brand and worthless news.

Surprise surprise.

So what's the future for the companies and the press, who are both dis-intermediated while employees talk directly to customers, suppliers, collaborators?

Surely companies should have some say in crafting their own image, while the press has to be able to quote a unitary "Microsoft," no matter how elusive and diverse the reality is.

How to strike the balance?

[shel israel]

Toby,
I think the world is rapidly changing and adapting. What went wrong for "one voice strategies," is that people neither liked nior believed what they heard. Changing this to real people speaking about their real jobs, dowes not eliminated the professional communicators it increase the need for them, so long as they speak with honesty. I think there's great need today for good reporters and corp communicators today than ever.