The Power of Personal Branding: Creating Celebrity Status with Your Target Audience

“So whether the brand is you or your client, bare in mind that your strongest asset is YOU, The person driving the business or your music.”

Having being in the showbiz for almost a decade now, I have enjoyed my share of success and failures which I learned a great deal of experience. The artists I worked with have grown to be super respected brands in the entertainment industry.

I want to take this time to share one of my success FACTORS on artists’ management and also share the failures that both artists’ managers and artists find themselves in a crater of poor results. We are all mobile business units and Jay Z explains my point adequately on Diamonds Remix a song he is featured on by Kanye West by saying “I sold kilos of coke, so I guess I can sell CD, I’m not a Businessman, I’m a Business, Man! Let me handle my business.

Based on his lyrics he has realized he is not just an artist, but a brand in the hip hop game and perhaps hence the name HOVA referring to himself as the Messiah of the game. My point is this, prominent personalities didn’t just become popular, they worked on crafting their personal brand in order to occupy space in their target audience minds and influence their purchase decision making process.

First and foremost its crucial for the artist to know his or her SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and secondly as an artist/musician/actress etc It is very imperative for you to work with managers who don’t operate like receptionists waiting for prospective clients to phone request a quotation, you need people who will treat you like their brand or company cause after all they make money through your growth.

When someone meets you for the first time, here’s the scoop—good or bad:

• In one-quarter of one second, a person makes up his or her mind about you.
• In the first five seconds, a person’s first impression of you flips back and forth 11 times.
• Your first impression is more important than your next five combined.

Napoleon Hill once said: “People buy your personality and ideas long before they buy your products and services.” Harry Beckwith echoed the same sentiment in his bestselling book What Clients Love. Beckwith reports that even though the statistics overwhelmingly show that most people buy the person first, company second, products/services third and price last, the facts reveal that most of us try to sell exactly the opposite. So what we do most of the time is to sell price first, products/services second, company third and ourselves last.

In simple terms what I’m saying is that in the showbiz your success is determined by the strategy you implement on your Personal Brand and how you market and position yourself, in a nutshell Personal Brand and positioning are far more important than price, product and, yes, even smarts.

A Personal Brand shouldn’t be something you can choose to have or not have. Well my personal believe is that everybody in the showbiz has to create a Personal Brand. What you can choose is whether the Personal Brand is positive, negative or neutral.

What is a Personal Brand?

A Personal Brand is the personal identity that stimulates a meaningful emotional response in another person or audience about the qualities or values for which that person or business stands. For example, when you think of Nelson Mandela, what are the values or attributes that come to mind?

What’s sad is the majority of people think that marketing principles only apply to brands like Coca Cola, MTN, Vodacom etc and they don’t look at themselves as brands.

The single most important step in building an effective Personal Brand is accepting that what you think of yourself is nearly irrelevant: Branding is all about the perception others have on you.

The authors of 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: define the process of branding as “reserving a word or phrase in the mind of another.” Building the Personal Brand, you begin by identifying the emotion you want to evoke in your audience. Then you identify the word or phrase that reflects that emotion, and which you want others to associate with you. Lastly, you must consistently engage in intentional behavior that promotes and reinforces the word or phrase you have chosen.

How to Build your Personal Brand?

What I always did in with all the artists I worked with was to firstly sit down with them, try to comprehend their ambitions, drive, values and their personal vision or dream. Second step was to device an angle for the most important success components namely:

(a)  Strategic positioning

(b) Effective communication

These two are the most important “mantras” guiding brand success in today’s competitive marketing environment. Corporate are ensuring all possible efforts to promote their brands and to grab the customer’s mind share. The impetus is on attracting the customer’s attention and developing positive associations not just to influence recall but also to induce trial and eventually effect purchase decisions.

We living in an era where marketing or promoting a brand is no longer as exorbitant as it used to be. The Social Networking platforms, digital and mobile mediums have bridge the gap between brand and consumer interaction. These very platforms are very inexpensive and their effectiveness is easily measurable.

Here are 10 steps you can use to develop a successful online and mobile marketing campaign:

Step #1 - Define the purpose of your online or mobile marketing campaign

Step #2 - Develop a clear call to action

Step #3 - Personalize your e-mail message

Step #4 - Develop an interesting subject line

Step #5 - Remind your subscribers where and when they opted-in

Step #6 - Provide an unsubscribe link or short code

Step # 7 - Check and test your mobile, digital and e-mail

Step #8 - Use fixed-pitch font and proper formatting

Step #9 - Track all sms, mms and email links

Step #10 - KISS (Keep It Simple and Short)

(I will share more details on how to apply these key points on my next article)

Information overload

Considering the daring fact that an average person is being sold different things everywhere he or she is. While driving billboards on the side of the roads with different brands, radio commercials promoting campaigns, while at home television advertisements, sms promos on their mobile phone, it is not hard to see that everyone is gunning for the same consumer you’re targeting.

Information overload is the third reason Personal Branding is essential. Each of us will be bombarded with 3300 e-mails this year. The average person will have watched well over one million commercials by the time he or she is 18 years old. The amount of information available on the web doubles every 45 minutes. As the availability of time shrinks, the importance of Personal Branding increases.

A Personal Brand plays an invaluable role in simplifying the complexity of the buyer’s choices. An effective Personal Brand is a safe haven amidst the world of information chaos. The Personal Brands that win today are those that filter out what Beckwith refers to as “the noise.” The best Personal Brands offer something specific and simple. They present themselves as the safe choice.

The Triple C Interactive Marketing approach

I remember in 2003 every Wednesday night at 20h30 we would sit as a family glued to the TV screen while being entertained by WWE wrestling super stars. Well I’m certain of one thing though, this was not a weird thing to do because we were not the only family in my neighborhood that enjoyed wrestling at the time I mean almost every house hold watched it.

It was so interesting how you would see parents dressed their kids in John Cena or Undertaker branded T-shirts, caps, shorts even snickers and these kids ranged from 2 Months to 13 Years of age. Most clothing retail outlets enjoyed a pinnacle of success and high profit returns on those wrestling branded T-shirts, while young girls preferred Hanna Montana cloths.

I think I remember having this weird funny feeling after seeing old married men who would wear the same wrestlers branded T-shirts proudly, however as a non judgmental citizen that I am I wont disclose identities of these men to you. What matters is that they too just like their sons were influenced by these wrestlers.

What I’m highlighting is the fact that certain celebrities have influence on people especially when they epitomize cool and their brand appeal exuberates to every age group, perhaps you as well went to a point were you bought the wrestlers or Hanna Montana branded underwear (drums rolls for my dry humor).

We living in a technological era, we have access to the tabloids more than ever before. There are television sets, magazine covers, Internet blogs, and movies screaming to be read and watched, and they are plastered with images of celebrities.

While doing my research for this article I came across a lot of studies and articles which convey celebrities as having bad influence on teenagers. One article went on to say: a first grade teacher even noticed her students using derogatory language, singing suggestive song lyrics, and even flirting with each other. With celebrities creating impossible standards of beauty, more and more young adults are feeling 'less confident, more angry, and more dissatisfied' with their looks (National Institute on Media and the Family). Based on a poll, 40% of nine and ten year-olds had tried losing weight and at age thirteen (Body Image and Gender Identity, 2002), 53% of girls were unhappy with their image (National Institute on Media and the Family).

My question is this: who was conducting this research and what happened to parents taking responsibility in raising their kids, I mean first grade pupils flirting with each other, even trying to lose weight at the ages of 10 years and thirteen. As the specialist in the show business does the study suggest that my two beautiful girls are doomed and they will soon form part of these stats? Should I be worried since our first born is 8 years old and second born is 3 years, wait should I worry even more since their mother is a celebrity.

Well I wont be worried at all because we know that we are good parents and we parent our girls ourselves we don’t relinquish our parenting blessings to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears since some American parents and the theorists who wrote the findings seem to put the blame on celebrities.

Well enough of poor parenting and lousy theorists who take their time to bash and lambast celebrities who have worked hard to create names for them selves and lucrative careers subsequently. My article for this week is more focusing on illustrating the positive impact and influence that certain credible celebrities may have on your brand. With a proper new media plan including but not limited to social media, mobile phone advertising and interactive brand activations, brands can benefit immensely in leveraging on celebrities influence to their fans.

At Celebrity Talk Tone Media we have a simple “modus operandi” Called Triple C interactive marketing approach. Our method of operation in the digital space is more on bridging the gap between Consumer and Corporate brands using Celebrities. In simple terms we add value to this tripartite dimension by making sure that South African artists don’t just embrace their fame but make fortune in the process.

We consult to different brands and advertising agencies giving them an interactive platform in communicating their brands to their consumers and prospective clients in a casual way that gets the brand message across. Most corporate companies and agencies employ marketing executives who are only book smart creating marketing communication strategies that talk at consumers instead of communicating with consumers. Our business simplifies communication for brands by creating effecting viral brand communication strategies which allows the targeted consumer to decode the message and also pass it on to their friend ultimately creating WOM (Word Of Mouth) effect.  

  

As the youth marketing agency specializing on mobile and digital advertising, youth lifestyle research development and Mobile Content download enterprise, we understand the importance and benefits of interactive marketing in the digital/technology era we living in. We not saying traditional mediums and marketing efforts don’t work today, all we highlighting today consumers are smarter than they were 15 years ago and they most susceptible to believe a friend’s or acquaintance brand recommendation  opposed to a brand marketing executive.

www.celebritytalktone.com

Reaching The Youth Market Through Mobile Phones, has nothing to do with Great Apps

There are plus minus 38 million active sim cards in South Africa according to World Wide Worx and out of this number the majority of mobile phone holders are teen and youth accounting for 55% of the mobile device market share.

This 55% comprises of the most active and technology savvy or proficient audience of 10 to 25 years who are regarded as generation Z. Before we can ask the question: Is there a lack of cutting edge Apps in the country, the question should be out of the 8 million active smartphones in the country who uses them and for what?

In my personal opinion the majority of the 8 million smartphone owners are in the 26 to 50 years age bracket and whose idea of a phone is basic use

1. Make and receive voice calls

2. Send and receive text

 3. Send emails (only if I’m not in the office or not in front of my laptop)

4. Occasionally listen to music because I don’t have an ipod

5. Basic social media functionalities (tweeting, wall-posting and opinion sharing on facebook)

The first lesson I was taught by my mentor was that: ignorance is creating a product where there’s no demand for it or creating demand while there is not enough product.  As a youth marketing specialist I have the liberty to interact with the technical proficient youth with an extensive curious mind to navigate their way around any new social platforms and simple feature phones they use. My take on the matter is that if the youth formed part of the 8 million smartphones users market I believe there would be demand for great Apps, ranging from games, educational apps to music apps.

Linking lack of Apps with skills shortage in savvy developers makes it sound as if there’s a huge crises in the software development industry and now the matter should be addressed by labor unions led by the youth league marching to the UN’s or G 8 offices on a sunny day to seek intervention on the snowballing problem affecting the country.

Hell no there’s no skills shortage of savvy software and programs developers in the country, I have had the chance to work with some of the country’s creative developers who continue to build great computer programs and gaming and music based Apps, but their only challenge is the lack of platforms to use the Apps apart from RIM owned BlackBerry and Apple Inc owned iPhone which are dominant and top of mind smartphone brands at the moment.

Reality is that there's what's called being “a step or two steps behind” that’s what South African developers are facing, when we were celebrating websites overseas developers were building mobi sites, while we were building mobi sites and web based instant chats applications overseas developers had already mastered smartphones instant apps like WhatsApp (Andriod) and BBM (RIM).

I’m of the opinion that the best solutions are not discovered from the “HOW” question but from the “WHY” question.

Instead of us focusing on how can brands reach the youth through smartphones and Apps,while knowing that out of the 38 million plus active sim cards in the country 55% are youth with majority using feature mobile phones not smartphones. I believe that the best solution of not alienating this market of future consumers who will run the technology space in a few years (that’s if there won’t be the Armageddon prediction 11/11/11). During the marketing mix or strat plan brands should be asking: why do we need to use Apps to reach the youth market whom a majority of them don’t own smartphones.

I’m not sure of the actual stats, however based on my assumption (which is my “democratic” right to assume considering that our government seem to give tenders and political positions based on assumption on delivery). Ooops coming back to the App issue and moving on swiftly: Only 14 percent of the youth market of all mobile-phone users have smartphones, so there’s not much point targeting teens through app stores.

But the up side is that with the right team and digital and mobile advertising know how brands can still reach the youth because plenty of normal phones that the majority (55%) audience uses also access the mobile Internet, download and play music and even the most basic cell phones are able to download simple content such as ringtones, ring-back tones and wallpapers.

So from where I stand the answer to the App question and how to reach the youth slowly seems to be a no brainer.