Real-World Techniques To Take Control Of Your Brand

19 August 2022

[Video Transcript]  

How To Take Control Of Your Brand

Insights From The Leadership Enigma Podcast by Adam Pacifico

 

In this episode of The Leadership Enigma by Adam Pacifico, you will learn how you must proactively take control of your brand and beware of organic growth. Guest speaker Gabrielle Dolan suggests it's time for you to consider your story and your brand regardless of role, experience, and aspirations.

Now, in relation to magnetic stories, we know, don't we that they can be deliberate or strategic, I think you mentioned.

So help us understand that the difference between deliberate and strategic as regard magnetic stories?

Yeah. So this is it sort of comes down to your brand as well. So, before you even start thinking about what stories you want to share to communicate your brand, you need to know what your brand is like know, what do you like take control of your brand?

And I think because, like you said in your intro, if you're not taking control of your brand, someone else is, it's just evolving. It's like evolved organically.

So you can be quite strategic with it and deliberate in how you do it, or you can just let it evolve organically.

But what I've found is that if you're not aware what you want your brand to be, and it starts to evolve, it could take you down a direction you don't want to go.

To give you, to give an example.

I was, when I left the corporate world 17 years ago, and was, you know, teaching storytelling, I knew storytelling in business was still professional. It was still a very, very professional way to communicate, but it was different.

And so I sort of my brand, I wanted my brand to be my personal brand to be around professional, but different, because I think it suited the brand of storytelling, professional bit different?

And so, you know, I would the way I would dress like, you know, I'd speak on stage at conferences, and I'd be wearing jeans, but I'd be wearing a blazer. So it was still professional.


Related Content: Watch More Emeritus Insights Videos From Subject Matter Experts

But it wasn't you being, it wasn't your typical corporate dress type thing, but it was still professional. So this is the way it, my brand evolved and then about five years ago, I came across a pair of shoes.

I wasn't really into shoes I've ever like shoes, but I came across this brand.

There are great Melba designer, and they're flat, and they're cool, and they're loud. I was silver, And they were professional, really high quality, but different.

So I thought, yeah, wear these shoes, and literally, after wearing them a few times on stage and getting so much feedback and comments about it, it just became my thing, which I was happy about, because I thought, well, you know, they're professional and different.

Now it's not as if I said to myself, I need to find some shoes that are professional and different. I just found these shoes I like, and it fitted with my brand.

So it was aligned with my brand.

So then I was happy to amplify the shoes anywhere and in fact, in my last couple of books, there's been photos of me and my publisher is says, your shoes have to be on them like it's got to be a full-length shot have issues of the shoe. So, that was cool.

But then another example, this was about two years ago.

I, already said, I'm a tomboy, so

I'm not into nail polish or anything like that.

But about two years ago, I got that SNS stuff that you put on.

It's like this, it's sort of like fakie stuff and I didn't you know, I didn't mind it. It makes you sound like you're typing really fast when you got fake flavors, Just tap, tap, tap that balance.

I'm going to pretend I know what you're talking about. Even though I have a wife and a teenage daughter, I'm going to go with this Gabrielle. So let's go with it. Just nod, just nod.

But the point is, you don't.

You've got to go get them done and to get them off, You got to go back to the you know, the nail salon and get them taken off. So it's a bit of high maintenance, and I had done it a few times, but thought it's not really my thing, and I can't be bothered.

So I'm not going to do it anymore, but then we went into lockdown.

So this was March, last year, we went into lockdown and everything shut, so you couldn't go back and get your nails done.

So there's a little bit of a joke I put on Instagram, photo of my nails going. I wonder how long these last because they just fall off, or and then every week I'd update going, you know, two fallen off.

And I did this for about three or four weeks.

And then what I started to notice is that people we were there was stuck, there be stuff on fake nails, and people were tagging me in it.

And I'm thinking, part of my brand is about being authentic and being real.

But I was starting to get tagged on posts around fake nails, okay. And so, because I'm aware of my brand, I just thought I don't want to be known as fake nails. But first of all, they're not even my thing,

But being known associated with anything to do with fake is a totally against my brand.

So, I know not only stopped posting them, I actually deleted the Instagram post I put on, and at the time at the time, Adam, I've busted what I was thinking, oh, maybe I'm being a bit ridiculous, like, you know, no one takes that much notice.

And I wrote about these two examples in my book, and I gave my book to quite a few of my clients, my long-term clients and one of them came back and said, I loved your book.

And when I was reading about your nails, I must admit, when I saw your post about your nails on social media, I must admit that I thought that so against brand.

So I what I wasn't being precious. These were my clients that were seeing my little fun social media things, but they were thinking it's against brand.

So if you're not aware of it, if you're not aware of it, it can really can go down a track that you just go.

How the hell did that happen?

And it happened because you're not aware of it It.


About Emeritus Insights

Emeritus Insights is a daily learning platform with 5000+ lessons from the world’s best-selling books, top faculty, subject matter experts and exclusive lessons from Harvard Business Review. Get insights in bite-sized video lessons, share it with friends and colleagues and learn across a wide range of topics to shape your success.