DONALD Trump wants to be President of the USA. He is banking on something to get him elected – his brand. Long before he said something about Mexicans, he wrote in 2008, “The truth is, everything you say and do is important. Actions matter. You are, literally, your own brand whether you have a business yet or not. If you are serious about what you are doing, taking responsibility for building your own brand starts now.”
Brands
Brands started during the feudal times. The rich branded their cattle and slaves, by printing with hot iron on the latter’s bodies a mark or logo, to signify that the rich own them. Today, brands have become important assets of big businesses – often more than their cattle or people. Some known brands have a brand equity worth billions of dollars.
Brand equity is the brand’s power derived from goodwill and name recognition, which translates into higher sales and profits against competing brands. Of the top ten brands in the world today, six are in the Technology industry – Apple (#1), Microsoft (#2), Google (#3), IBM (#5), Samsung (#7) and Facebook (#10). The rest are Coca-Cola (#4), McDonald’s (#6), Toyota (#8), and General Electric (#9). Apple has a brand equity worth $145.3B, while Microsoft ranks second with $69.3B.
Personal brands
A personal brand is like reputation. Henry Ford said, “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
A personal brand is developed over time, not so much by what you do, but by what you achieve. Professionals serious about their careers must know how to build and grow their brands. The best time to think of building a personal brand was yesterday. The next best time is now.
According to Dr. Don Sexton of Columbia University, a personal brand must have three important things: a) identifiers, b) attributes, and c) associations.
Your personal brand must stand for something. If you are in HR, your personal brand should identify you and differentiate you from other HR practitioners. You can develop a reputation for being the best negotiator for collective bargaining, or the guru in managing compensation, but not necessarily “everything to everybody.”
When a CEO feels a need to hire a great HR professional, he thinks in terms of certain attributes. Your personal brand must be able to highlight great attributes of top HR professionals. You develop these over time as you produce value-adding results in your job or engagements.
Your name or personal brand must be clearly associated with best solutions to pressing problems of organizations that sorely need HR expertise. You enhance your brand through associations with possible customers’ needs as you deliver best HR solutions with consistency, over time, and over a wide array of industries.
Develop your brand
You establish your brand identity through a process of brand strategy. Great brands don’t develop overnight or sporadically. Be clear about the desired brand position you prefer, and develop a strategy that will help you achieve that objective. Try the following:
• Coordinate. Ensure some coherence in everything that you do or say, and package them in such as way as to create a consistent, recognizable brand. Make sure that all your activities are working together to help you establish and maintain a strong personal brand.
• Concentrate. Ensure that all your resources are used effectively to manage your personal brand. Choose your clients, projects, and activities that will help you build a strong personal brand. You cannot be everything to everybody. If everybody is your customer, you might end up with no customer.
• Communicate. Your target audience must know your brand. As a Human Resources (HR) professional, it is not enough that your CEO knows your contributions and expertise. Join professional HR organizations and showcase your talent. This will enhance your personal brand and you expand your market opportunities.
The PMAP brand
In 1956, a handful of personnel practitioners formed the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines. Over time, it was known as the premier HR organization in the country. The founding fathers never talked about developing a PMAP brand, but soon enough PMAP developed its brand. Its Institute of Personnel Management (IPM) became the first choice for training and education in human resources, where experts in HR run public seminars. IPM later became known as the Center for Human Resources Management and was about to become a school. Today, it is now called the Asian Institute of Human Resources Management. It continues to run probably the best HR courses.
However, HR courses are no longer the sole domain of PMAP. A few other organizations have sprouted to challenge the dominance of the PMAP brand. These training outfits claim to organize the biggest gathering of HR professionals in the country, ahead of the PMAP annual conference in September or October. They have succeeded in getting PMAP past presidents and officers to speak in their seminars and annual conferences. Some PMAP past presidents’ business organizations are also running events that should be appropriately run by PMAP. To their credit, these private organizations that compete with PMAP are doggedly focused on getting a bigger share of the market that PMAP used to dominate.
I still believe that the PMAP runs the best seminars and conferences for HR practitioners. At the same time, it’s difficult to argue against free enterprise. You can’t blame other PMAP past presidents and officers from helping other organizations. PMAP today must learn to compete in the free market. Today’s market has rendered irrelevant age-old values of incumbency, seniority or longevity. HR practitioners must have a compelling reason to patronize PMAP.
Positive reputation
Trump and Sexton seem to agree on one thing – that brands are the foundation of most organizations.
Sexton wrote, “Brands are your reputation – what you stand for – in the minds of your customers and in the minds of your investors. If your reputation is negative, then you will have difficulty achieving your business objectives. If your reputation is positive, then you will see the impact on your future cash flow.”
Sexton continues, “Most measures in business tell you where you’ve been – backward control. Understanding brands and making smart branding decisions give you forward control of your business. They allow you to maximize your revenue, your profits and your cash flow. In some organizations, top managers understand how brands work, and in some organizations they don’t. It is especially important that the owner or CEO understands what brands do for their organizations. If they don’t understand the relationship between their brands and their financial performance, their brands will likely wither and eventually their organizations fail.”
Positive reputation creates a great brand. When leaders’ or organizations’ reputation is questionable, brand equity is reduced.
Branding in ASEAN
Last week, a UK-based journalist interviewed me about personal branding. Vicki Arnstein writes in a new publication from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, a well-respected organization for HR professionals in the UK.
I told Vicki, “HR practitioners in Asia are becoming more conscious of personal branding. The ASEAN economic integration will take place in a few months. The AEC is not just about integration – it is also about competition among professionals. Careers in Asia will become more competitive. Personal brand will perhaps be the HR practitioners’ most valuable resource. Success in managing personal brands will mean success in careers – long-term growth, revenues, and personal satisfaction.”
(Ernie is the 2013 Executive Director and 1999 President of the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP); Chair of the AMCHAM Human Capital Committee; and Co-Chair of ECOP’s TWG on Labor and Social Policy Issues. He also chairs the Accreditation Council for the PMAP Society of Fellows in People Management. He is President and CEO of EC Business Solutions and Career Center. Contact him at ernie_cecilia@yahoo.com)