The True Brand Building
Mindset is the True Master of All Branding
As a sales and marketing professional for 12 years, there’s one product when my Boss — Tony explained to me, I just couldn’t believe why I would have believed him from the very first place. It was one of the most hilarious case and we still would have laughed about it after so many years!
It happened through our conference call one day after Christmas. Tony told me that one of his great customer got a new hair treatment product; and he told me that would be a Christmas present for me because the product is really great and I should be able to make some commission with it!
Tony said “It’s really a great hair treatment!” Being in hair and beauty industries for long, my instinct got me to ask Tony about the product information included ingredient and instruction details; while Tony was explaining, I can’t really helped myself but laugh! I said to him “I can’t understand why I would have a hair treatment product conversation with you and the weird part is, I really believe you!” We both laughed out loud and hard!
Want to know why we laugh? The picture below will tell you why…
This story is not saying we can’t sell hair product without hair; it’s actually the opposite; how would I believe someone with no hair but telling me a hair treatment is great! It’s the person who pitch that we believe. Every product could have a way to market it; the only thing makes a different is our mindset and branding! When our mindset remain positive, we will be able to diversify it’s marketing strategies, and that helps to market almost every product. I fell into the “I trust Tony” trap not because he’s my Boss, it’s because I trust his professional knowledge, and I believe in his “only sell the best product” mentality, and that’s his brand identity. It’s nothing to do whether the product is great or not; the strong mindset and brand that Tony has is the only reason!
The product or service is as good as our company is, ultimately as good as we are!
A successful product or service may have amazing features to help clients for solving problems; however, it’s hard to sell it farther if the marketing strategy plan was not efficiently planned and implemented. More or less, sometimes a product or service can sell without a strong marketing plan; besides it’s a type of product that’s a completely new innovation; most likely it’s because of the brand, that’s why brand building is very important!
Here’re few steps to learn more about brand building:
Brand Identity
The basic work for brand building is to give the brand an identity!
Brand itself is something that we created. It have certain meaningful message behind it. It’s like a character in a movie! For instant, Captain America is just one of the character of Marvel; but the person’s personality behind it; who put all his effort to get an opportunity for helping and supporting, to serve and protect his country. He never give up! Since he was iced for years, he’s kind of couldn’t completely catchup with the changes in new technologies after he woke up, but his patriotic heart and soul never change! The personality designed for Captain America is the actual identity of the brand “Captain America”!
If we want to build a meaningful brand, the story behind it takes a significant part of its identity! And once the identity is built, the next step would be the brand’s mission. The brand mission could be focused on provide valuable product or service to specific part of the world geographically, or it could even carry more responsibilities, such as sustainability.
A successful brand also have certain amount of accountability to hold; such as an issue that is important to the world. For instant, in July 2019, Prada launched the first 6 bags from regenerated nylon by using ocean waste; which is also the first step for the ReNylon Project in moving away from virgin nylon in its collections by 2020. The brand also announced they joined the International Fur Free Retailer Program that began from Spring & Summer 2020, they will stop using animal fur in its designs or new products. The significant effect is not only Prada being standout among luxury brands; but they shown that they take their part to dedicate effort for a better world; and ultimately, they acted with what they said.
In human nature, we tend to choose the brand’s identity with a clear positive mission over product or service they provided. Sometimes the brand mission will be challenged with the present situation; such as the recent anti-racism demonstration and “hate-speech” issue on Facebook. Brands will be expecting to make their stand; and that’s also being recognized as social responsibility. Nowadays, with the effect of social media platforms; any kind of boycott or extreme support action could be formed in just a few clicks!
A true identity and mission of a brand actually is the people’s mindset who create it!
People create brands! When we create the brand, a significant part of our thoughts and characters would be imprinted to the brand. How our mindset was built has a huge impact to it! The very first thing would show the true identity are the name of the brand; some may have deeper meanings with what the brand was built for. For instant, Jeff Bezos re-conceptual Amazon because Amazon is the largest river in the world and he’s aiming to build the largest online bookstore in the world. Once we understand that, we know the brand from Jeff Bezos was meant to be the biggest in the world; and that’s his brand identity and mission! He has a very strong will in his mindset about success!
Personal Branding
A personal branding means who we are and what we are going to do!
It’s the newest trend and a lot of discussion about this topic on different channels and platforms!
A personal branding could become a world branding one day! The reason why this concept become viral is because more and more people are providing personal services or products in the past ten years! Or we can say, more startup and new entrepreneurs were built! This have one part of impact came from the popularity of social media, we are way more easier to access to a whole new world of connections and opportunities. The truth is, in luxury fashion industries, the personal branding ideas has been implemented for years. One of the best example is Channel. The founder of Channel, Coco Channel’s story was what made the brand outstanding; from hats to clothes, Channel made a lot of breakthrough to embrace the freedom of choice in women’s fashions. The story, their designs and their mission never get old; the brand carried the story of Coco Channel, they keep riding their mission for years and become a significant icon of fashion industries.
If we are planning to build our personal brand; the first important question is “Who are you?” and the following question is “What are the value you’re going to bring to the world?”
“Who are you”
A question that we should all be able to answer; but may not be detailed enough if we don’t have enough self-communication and self-understanding. It could get as simplest answer as our name and where we are from, or together with some basic informations, such as age and what we do for living. It could also be more specifically about who we are such as our own story! It’s a total reflection of our mindset that shown on this answer.
The key is to be real and authentic!
I know a lot of personal brand building coaches or consultant talked about that; but the true meaning of it is, don’t be afraid to be real; even included mistakes we made throughout our life; those could be valuable for others to know and to learn! When we shared our story, it would be best to include those ups and downs, good and bad together! We may feel hesitate to do so, and that would require more mindset practice, remember this:
We are who we are from what we’ve been experienced! It’s part of us and it’s awesome that we came out stronger!
Our mindset need positive energy to do this; it’s a practice combined with self-gratitude and self-confident! Seeing the positivity in the negativity is the way we become stronger and have more courage and positive energy to share the true stories!
“What are the value you’re going to bring to the world”
With the true reviews of who we are, it will help us to answer this question. The value we want to bring to the world usually come from what we’ve learned ad still learning. It’s part of us and by sharing those value, we would build great relationships with others!
If we think that our personal brand is going to be a business; we should charge before we really provide value. The monetization mindset itself has nothing wrong at all. Just step back a little bit and imagine this: if someone told us that they provide swimming training service for our children but don’t want to tell you anything about their background, or any qualifications that they’d obtained to make sure our children are going to be safe; will we send our children to them? As being in swimming coaching since I was 13; I can say that without related certificates, such as life-saving and first-aid skill proved; if we are saying yes to this swimming class; then we are putting our children on a real high risk!
Whether if we should provide value first goes to a bigger topic of “Give and Take”! A real successful personal branding business absolutely give in without consider what they can get, because they know that more they give more they will get in the future. “Give” is not meaning we do everything for free; it’s a meaning of giving ourselves into build true and meaningful relationships within our network; and it’s the best way to build trust with new connections.
First we build relationships by giving and sharing, then business will open a multiple doors of opportunities for us!
This mindset practice can be referred to the foundation of building self-love, and then to selflessness! Again, in human nature, and consumer behavioral practice; we tend to choose the brand we can trust, we feel safe and or resonate with it! We don’t really feel comfortable to go for a “blind date” especially when it comes to coaching services.
Our mindset master brand buildings, from company brands to personal brands!
Mindset is a lifelong practice; we may change our perspectives from time to time; mindset practice helps us to stay in the real core value of humanity and love!
Negative mindset can be rebuilt and reset; the first step is to recognize and identify it; then take certain steps to rebuild it! The best way always begin with self-love practice! There’s no perfect mindset, we could have some negative moment; always communicate with ourself especially when adversities happened; we will always find the way to fuel up our positive energy again!
Thank you very much for reading! I hope this article will be helpful for you.
Please feel free to give feedback in the comment or if you want to contact me, here’s my LinkedIn!
