Does Your Brand Pass the Test?

I held two of my personal branding seminars yesterday for a group of senior executives and entrepreneurs at New Directions, a leading outplacement firm in Boston. I was reminded why personal branding is so difficult: we get stuck in the briar patch of our own language. If you have to explain what you do, if you have to explain what your value is, then you haven’t nailed down your brand.

A brand should need no more than one sentence, and that one sentence should produce an immediate "Oh, I get It" response.

As blogger Jeff Gwynne says in his Science of Marketing blog:

On the way to driving my daughter to high school, I passed a
commercial van with the slogan: "If it’s in stock, we’ve got it". I
didn’t think much of it until my daughter asked: "What does that mean?"
I immediately said: "they have whatever you want as long as they have
it. Get it?" "No." was the reply. Further attempts to explain were met
with "whatever’s" and blank stares.

The van also had the company’s name (made illegible by the salty
grime that we endure during New England winters) but there was no other
evidence of its business. So even if I could understand the slogan, I
really had no idea what the company does.

Forget elevator speeches–I’d like to set fire to that maxim and make its use in all future business seminars and how-to books illegal. If you have to make a speech, the only person listening will be you.