PRAISE for YOU ARE A BRAND, Second Edition!
By Catherine Kaputa

“Self-branding is not optional in today’s insecure world of commerce. You Are a Brand! is an excellent and welcome addition to the all-too-small library on the subject.”

— Tom Peters, Author of The Brand You 50 and bestseller In Search of Excellence

“There’s an old proverb that says ‘You eat life or life eats you.’ Catherine Kaputa and her brilliant ideas on self-branding show you how to be the diner and not the entrée.”

— Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of the national bestseller Guerilla Marketing

“Each individual is an important contributor to the success of his or her corporation. This insightful book shows you how to fully realize your potential and give yourself and your company maximum benefit.”

— William H. Roedy, former Chairman & Chief Executive, MTV Networks International, and Author, What Makes Business Rock

“When jobs across the spectrum of goods and services production are buffeted by global competition, personal branding becomes an absolute essential for professional career development. In You Are a Brand!, Catherine Kaputa gives us a no-nonsense kit for survival in the global labor market.”

— Gregory L. Miller, Chief Economist, SunTrust Banks, Inc.

I’ve always thought You Are a Brand! is a terrific, useful book…but then Catherine added two new chapters on the art of the elevator pitch and using social media. Now that terrific book has become even more sensational!

— Anita Bruzzese, USA Today Columnist and Author of 45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy

“Catherine Kaputa has written an excellent complement to our book High Visibility. We talk about how the celebrity industry creates celebrities, and Kaputa talks about how people can bootstrap themselves into visibility.”

— Philip Kotler, Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

“Catherine Kaputa shows how to brand yourself in a logical, well thought out manner, incorporating all of the best social media tactics and more in You Are a Brand! She effectively demystifies the word “branding” by explaining that building a personal brand is nothing more than finding that intersection of market opportunity and your innate, god given gift. In a time when no corporate job is secure and more people are branding themselves than ever before, self branding is right in line with the rugged individualism ideal that made America the hope of the earth.”

— Jon Wuebben, CEO of ContentLaunch & Author of “Content is Currency: Developing Powerful Content for Web & Mobile”

“Al Ries and I once wrote a book about personal positioning called Horse Sense. I can honestly say that You Are a Brand! could be more helpful than our book. so, obviously, it’s worth reading.”

— Jack Trout, President, Trout & Partners, Author, Trout on Strategy

“Of the literally dozens of books on personal branding I’ve read, this is the one I keep coming back to time and again. Now, with the second edition’s new chapters on social media and the elevator speech, and an online assessment test that will help you position Brand You, it’s more valuable than ever. There’s not another book on the subject that I could recommend more highly!”

— Robert Barnwell, Author, Lead, Follow or Get the Hell Out of the Way

“Corporations strive to market their brands. You should strive to market yourself. Here is an owner’s guide to doing just that.”

— Steve Rivkin, Marketing Consultant; Coauthor, IdeaWise and The Making of a Name

“You Are a Brand! shows you how to get the power and make the money on your own. Plus, it’s a great read from a talented writer who has something brand new to say.”

— Maura Moynihan, Author, Yoga Hotel

SECOND EDITION

YOU
ARE A BRAND!

SECOND EDITION

YOU
ARE A BRAND!

In Person and Online, How Smart People
Brand Themselves for Business Success

CATHERINE KAPUTA

This edition first published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing, in 2012.

Hachette Book Group

Carmelite House

53 State Street

50 Victoria Embankment

Boston, MA 02109, USA

London EC4Y ODZ

Tel: (617) 523-3801

Tel: 020 3122 6000

www.nicholasbrealey.com

© SelfBrand, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Printed in the United States of America
15   14   13   12         1   2   3   4   5

ISBN: 978-1-47364-527-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaputa, Catherine

You are a brand! : In person and online, how smart people brand themselves for business success /
Catherine Kaputa. — 2nd ed.

        p. cm.

Rev. ed. of: U R a Brand. c2006.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-47364-527-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Professions—Marketing. 2. Career development. 3. Success in business. I. Kaputa, Catherine U R a Brand! II. Title.

HD8038.A1K36 2012

650.1—dc23

2012016717

To all of you
who want to take control of your brand
so that you can open up more possibilities

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand.

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 111

FOREWORD

There are only two things in life worth striving for. One is happiness; the other is success.

There are a lot of happy people who aren’t very successful. And there are a lot of successful people who aren’t very happy. But if you have both, what more could you want?

Money? Not really. Money can’t buy happiness. And most truly successful people have more money than they will ever spend.

Happiness and success, the yin and the yang of life. Like the Chinese symbols for all the principles one finds in the universe, the yin and the yang are diametrically opposed concepts. Which is why it is very difficult to achieve both at the same time.

To be happy, you need to create a positive attitude in your own mind. A powerful sense of self, so to speak. Or, as a cynic might say, “A legend in one’s own mind.” Let’s call this the “yin.”

To be successful, you need to create positive attitudes in the minds of other people. You can’t make yourself successful. Only other people can make you successful.

In the same way, you can’t make a sale. Only other people can decide whether to buy from you, whether you are an individual or a company.

In other words, you need to build a “self-brand,” a reason for people to buy from you, whether you are selling yourself for a job or selling products and services to others. Let’s call this the “yang.”

Most people focus on the yin. It’s logical. If you can create a powerful positive attitude about yourself, this attitude will rub off on other people. They will perceive you to be the successful person you are trying to become. That’s why you can find thousands of books on this subject—The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, for example.

The yin is conventional wisdom wrapped in a positive thinking package: hard work, total dedication, and constant improvement in every aspect of your life are bound to bring you not only happiness but also the success you believe you deserve.

Conventional wisdom is always wrong. Positive thinking might make you happy (the yin), and it is a terrific approach to life in general, but it won’t bring you success. To become successful, you need to focus on the yang.

You need to focus on creating a positive attitude in the minds of other people. In other words, you need to create a self-brand.

Building a product brand and building a self-brand require similar strategies. The problem is that building a self-brand goes against a person’s natural instincts. Take one example: most people think of themselves as “well rounded,” with an interest in all aspects of life, such as art, music, theater, sports, politics, etc. A great way to live a happy life, a lousy way to build a brand.

But that’s getting into the heart of Catherine Kaputa’s message.

I first met Catherine when she worked with us at our New York City advertising agency, Trout & Ries. That was more than twenty years ago, but I have always remembered her and her participation in the many meetings that took place in the ad agency.

She was always the smartest person in the room.

Now, it’s nice to be smart, but that doesn’t necessarily make you successful, as Catherine points out in this book. Sometimes being smart is a handicap. Smart people are often too smart to take advice from others.

I hope that’s not true about you. (And it probably isn’t if you’ve picked up this book.)

What is also remarkable about Catherine is that she has taken her own advice. She has built her self-brand by following the same principles you can read about in this book.

You should do the same. But you have to forget about the yin and focus on the yang. You have to focus on those strategies that will build your self-brand in the minds of others, even though many of those strategies go against conventional wisdom.

Happiness and success, the yin and the yang of life. Assuming you have the yin under control, let Catherine Kaputa lead you through the steps you need to take to achieve the yang: a success that might go well beyond anything you could possibly imagine.

—Al Ries
Coauthor, The Origin of Brands

PREFACE TO THE 2012 EDITION

Self-love my liege is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.

William Shakespeare
Henry V (II, 4)

Some things have changed since the hardcover version of this book came out. Some things never change.

The branding ideas in this book are timeless: they work in expanding markets; they work in contracting markets.

But there are new ideas we need to think about today, resulting in this new edition of You Are a Brand! with nearly one-third new content. There is new research with insights for personal brand builders. There are new personal branding stories to tell that have lessons for us. There are new things I’ve learned about how to lead, inspire, and influence others, whether it’s one or two across the table from you or hundreds in an auditorium. There are new ways to build our personal brand digitally through social media that we need to harness. Indeed, the virtual world keeps growing in power. And there continues to be economic uncertainty, so we have to master branding ourselves in person and digitally if we want to succeed in challenging times. All of these changes can add urgency to working on your personal brand and finally taking control of your future. You can’t accomplish much without knowing who you are—the authentic you—and communicating your value to others.

In the personal-branding mind-set, you are your most important asset—an asset, like education, that no one can take away from you. Personal branding shows you how to increase the value of that asset, both in terms of self-actualization—becoming who you can be—and in terms of human capital—maximizing the financial value of your career. Personal branding is always based on authenticity, but it’s showing yourself in the best, most relevant, and most appealing way to a specific audience. Personal branding is also about self-empowerment. You need to take control of your personal story and career destiny. Yet personal branding is not taught in school and has become the most neglected aspect of education.

Thinking like a brand means creating a brand for yourself and to do that you first need to find the right personal brand strategy. To make finding the right self-brand positioning easier, I have developed an online assessment as a complement to Chapter 4 on finding a great self-brand strategy. (You’ll find the URL on page 72.) Once you have your personal brand strategy, you’ll need to “package” Brand You with a strong visual and verbal identity, and marketing it, and not squandering the opportunities that constantly come your way. It’s easy to shortchange yourself if you’re not thinking like a brand.

A prime example? Your elevator speech, a sixty-second personal commercial that you might use in an interview or networking situation. Many people can’t talk about who they are professionally and how they bring real, tangible value to a business situation in a short, conversational dialogue. So, I’ve added a new chapter, chapter 9, that offers a how-to guide for creating your elevator speech, a personal business pitch, in a way that’s authentic, relevant, and right for the situation. The chapter has lots of ideas on how to pitch your accomplishments, your services, and your ideas so that you “click” with others anytime, anywhere, whether you’re selling yourself in person or virtually via Skype or another video forum.

Since the first edition of this book, a sea change has occurred in how we communicate and connect with others. The rise of social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube has transformed the way we build business and personal relationships, and how we find and learn about others.

Like it or not, you have a virtual brand. People will use the Internet and social media to learn your story, either the one you’ve put out there or a very different one that’s been put out by others. Even the total lack of an online brand presence says something significant about your personal brand. And, trust me, it isn’t good. A weak Internet image today is like having a weak reputation in the old, pre-Internet days. It will minimize, not burnish, your brand.

Social media and new media give you a powerful megaphone for building your brand and your community. These new digital tools, what I call cyberbranding, are made for personal branders because they give power to the people. They are inexpensive and open to all. So I’ve added a new chapter, chapter 11, to show you how to harness the power of social media and the new digital tools without letting them take over your life.

The good news is, anyone can join the personal branding club, and with the advent of social media and digital tools, it’s more exciting than ever before. This book is designed to give you the skills and process to create and market Brand You. Even the creative ability that you’ll need is not out of your reach. New research has debunked that myth that creativity is born, not made. It’s a skill you can cultivate just like any other.

This book is designed to take you through the three-step branding process:

1. Brand Strategy: Finding Your Self-Brand Idea (chapters 1–4)

2. Creative Development: “Packaging” Brand You (chapters 5–9)

3. Marketing Brand You: Building Visibility and Connection with Your Target Audience (chapters 10–14)

Today, we all have to be entrepreneurs and branders, whether we work for a company or have our own business. You have to master self-branding not only to learn how to be self-directed and have personal impact, but to learn how to find your purpose. You must find out what you were made to do! In today’s organizations, we are expected to master entrepreneuring, to add value by being innovative growth agents.

ENTREPRENEURING: Thinking and acting strategically and creatively, with an eye toward growth, whether you run a business or are part of a large organization.

Join me on the journey to build Brand You, a distinct personal brand that’s authentic and relevant, and that empowers you in today’s dynamic business world as well as brings more value to your company. This book will show you how.

INTRODUCTION

Why, then the world’s mine oyster!

William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor (II, 2)

Success as an executive or as an entrepreneur (or even as a professional or employee in any type of company these days) requires careful, calculated branding, both to enter the playing field and to stay in the game.

Success also requires a dose of that great universal mystery we call “luck,” that inexplicable combination of things, time, and actions and their infinite juxtapositions. But luck is not something you can count on, although there are practical things you can do to manifest more of it in your life, which this book explains.

You Are a Brand! is a field guide to success in business or whatever realm you are exploring.

You’ll get the inside scoop—the secrets and hidden rules of success of people on the move from all walks of life—from a self-brand strategist who helped them on their journey. You’ll learn how the branding principles and strategies developed for the commercial world may be used to achieve your business and personal potential.

In short, you are a brand.

Top entertainers, politicians, and athletes have long used branding principles and strategy to create stardom. Now, savvy professionals, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs are also using self-, or personal, branding, so that they can be more successful.

If you study the lives of successful entrepreneurs, well-known business executives, politicians, performers, and the like, you’ll discover that hard work or luck alone wasn’t instrumental in their achievement. Rather, their success was the result of a conscious process, a strategic branding process, often undertaken with the assistance of advisers, coaches, and other mentors who propelled their achievements and celebrity.

How to achieve success is a key theme in this book: professional success in terms of getting paid what you’re worth, landing the promotion you deserve, or launching a start-up that lasts. But self-branding doesn’t benefit just you, and it’s a mistake to think of it only in terms of self-promotion. Self-branding is a strategic process that benefits the company you work for or are building. It shows you how to bring more value to your company, your clients, and your projects by being focused and strategic, by having top-notch communication, sales, and marketing skills, and by having a valuable network of business and personal contacts.

I am also going to talk about success in a larger sense, in terms of self-actualization—being who you were meant to be. Branding is a great tool for both, because it makes you an active partner in your business and in your life destiny.

You Are a Brand! will teach you self-branding strategies and career moves you won’t learn in business school or anywhere else.

You’ll discover the career and perception problems faced by senior-level executives like Benjamin, who had to unite competing department heads around a compelling vision when he took over as president of a technology company. You’ll meet sophisticated up-and-comers like Anthony, who had a fairy-tale life and a Wall Street salary until his world came crashing down on 9/11. You’ll meet new entrepreneurs like Lynn, a sales professional who built a reputation for herself and her sales insights that led to a business start-up. You’ll meet people like Kate, whose boss didn’t think she deserved the title and salary of her peers even though she was handling the same workload.

You Are a Brand! is for people of all stripes who must be brand builders if they are to succeed in today’s dynamic and challenging marketplace. This book is for ambitious people who want to do more with their lives. It is for people who want to consciously create success and perhaps also achieve high visibility and renown.

It is for people who want to reposition and rebrand themselves for a second act. It is for entrepreneurs, professionals, and business owners who want to fuse their personal and company brands into identities that will help them achieve maximum impact. It is for kids and teenagers, and even their parents, who want the best school brand stamped on their résumés because it will give them a head start.

It is especially for women, women like myself, who were told as children, “Don’t upstage your brother” or “It’s not nice to call attention to yourself.” The truth is, if you don’t brand yourself, someone else will, and it probably won’t be the brand you had in mind.

You Are a Brand! will make the principles of branding available to you. In many ways, brands are like people: They have qualities, attributes, and personalities. And people are like brands. They are products that can be nurtured and cultivated to become winning brands.

You’ll learn how to package your brand with a powerful visual and verbal identity without seeming promotional or obnoxious. You’ll be introduced to ten strategies from the commercial world and shown how they can be applied to you. Each chapter contains examples, tips, and brainstormer exercises so that you can implement the branding process in your life. You will learn how to maximize the potential of your most important asset—you.

In short, this book will give you control over how you are perceived.

If anyone understands this, I do. I spent two decades as a branding and advertising expert.

A dominant theme or clichéd example of the classic branding story would be that of the young, ambitious executive on the way up; the clichéd location would be New York City; the clichéd company would be on Madison Avenue or Wall Street; and the clichéd person would be me. I’m Catherine Kaputa, and I lived that cliché.

I’m a baby boomer like 77 million other Americans. If I were any more typical, I’d start to become untypical; so I think most readers can relate because they either are part of the baby-boom brand or have been unduly influenced or annoyed as this dominant brand made its way through the last half of the twentieth century and into the first half of the twenty-first century.

Dad was a genuine war hero, like many others of his generation. He piloted thirty-five missions over Germany during World War II and had numerous medals that branded him as a war hero. He also had the ultimate hero branding fifty years later: interment with honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Dad was sent to Miami once for R&R. He loved it and vowed to return there to live if the Nazis didn’t get him first. Dad was packaged in the strong, silent personality that was a powerful draw for men of his generation, the group Tom Brokaw branded as “the greatest generation.”

Miami and the world seemed so innocent then. We rode our bikes to school and everywhere else without supervision, played marbles and hopscotch at recess, and saw the future in terms of unrelenting rapid progress. Frank Sinatra sang the theme song, and it came from Miami Beach, too: “He’s got high hopes. He’s got high apple pie in the sky hopes.”

Who could resist the brand of an era? I had “apple pie in the sky hopes,” too, particularly in my adolescence.

Everybody’s been there. Adolescence: it’s personal identity time, it’s absurd, it’s profound, it’s scary. The culture was still offering limited roles for women, and I admit I didn’t have the courage or creativity to face the future without a role model. The one that intrigued me was Brenda Starr, reporter, the heroine of a comic strip. She was glamorous, powerful, and respected and got to travel all over. Journalism. That was the brand for me.

So off I went to Northwestern University and the Medill School of Journalism. Then, caught up in the identity crisis of my generation. I switched gears. For the next eight years, Japanese art became my life and brand.

I was in deep: master’s degree from the University of Washington, Seattle Art Museum curator job, Asian art books published, Smithsonian Fellow, Tokyo University study grant. I applied for the Ph.D. program at Harvard because Harvard was right for my brand (high hopes again). Just as I was organizing my dissertation for my Ph.D., my general uneasiness morphed into an epiphany. This is not me. This is not my brand. I want out! Dr. Kaputa was not going to happen. I took two aspirins and cried all morning.

You don’t need a connection to New York City to feel its influence, but I did have a connection, and that made the city’s gravity a force I could not resist. Heart and head were both pulling me. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew where I would do it. The capital of the world.

It’s been said, “You can’t start off in New York; you need to play Peoria first.” No you don’t. I didn’t.

I sold my Volkswagen Beetle, crashed at Aunt Sophie’s in the Bronx, and was determined to find an exciting job in my first love—communications. The vagueness of the communications brand was the proper mind-set, since it gave me the flexibility to brand myself to an opportunity (journalism, advertising, public relations), and I needed flexibility. My previous brand was a handicap.

“Why does an Asian art scholar want to be in advertising?” was the refrain. But persistence does pay off. One ad agency interpreted my background as “creative,” and I had a foot in the door.

The mark of a hot ad shop was big-name national accounts and talked-about TV campaigns. Trout & Ries didn’t have sexy creative; rather, it was a hotbed of brand strategy and positioning. I was pretty mediocre in my first job as a copywriter, so I switched after two years to the account side. “Creative” had been the right brand to land the job, but my gut was pushing me to reposition my brand.

Al Ries and Jack Trout, by the way, rebranded themselves after I left. Each changed his brand position from “ad agency chief” to “marketing strategist,” found the right brand position, and took off. (Boy, how brand image can change. Today, when I tell people my background, the “Wow!” is always about my having worked in my first job under the now-famous branding gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout.)

My personal career strategy was to move on to a larger, well-known agency so I could gain experience on a high-profile brand.

I was already branded as a “small agency” person after my four years at Trout & Ries. The recruiters were of one stripe: “You don’t have ‘big agency’ experience.”

When others can’t help, do it yourself! In this case, I networked, talked to people, found old friends, made new friends. It worked, plus I got lucky. (Strange phenomenon: the harder you work, the more luck you have.) I landed a job at Wells Rich Greene managing the “I NY” account.

Mary Wells Lawrence had already achieved legendary status by the time I arrived at the agency. She was a woman of style and was as clever with her personal brand as she was with her extremely successful campaigns, which include Braniff’s colorful planes, Alka-Seltzer’s “Plop plop fizz fizz,” and Benson & Hedges 100s. Mary was a Francophile, and the place was run like the French court, so it was always an interesting place to work.

The “I NY” account was a wonderful piece of business to work on. The TV commercials featuring Broadway musicals and celebrities received numerous creative awards and became a flagship creative account for the agency. Part of my job was to work with the Broadway Theater League to secure the Broadway talent and enlist other celebrity talent to appear in the commercials.

Celebrities don’t exist without branding, and they’re good at it, but their public brands are not always real. I won’t be telling you who made outrageous demands, but I’ll tell you about one of the most impressive stars who came in to pitch New York.

Mr. High Hopes himself, Ol’ Blue Eyes, lived up to his brand. I was struck by his mesmerizing, alert, bright blue eyes. They really were special, as were his purposefulness and demeanor. He was shorter than I had imagined, but bigger than I had expected, too. He paid his own way on this pro bono gig when others wanted freebies for themselves and their entourages.

Frank Sinatra was a famous brand and had done some well-known rebranding in his time, from teen idol crooner to movie star to singer for the ages. Along the way, he also went through some negative branding as a Mafia associate and brawler. But we were very dear friends for about twenty minutes on the “I NY” commercial shoot, and my impression of his brand can be described in one word: class.

My next career strategy was to become a corporate advertising director. Ad agencies are notorious for wanting young people and discarding old people, and I was in my thirties. Their unspoken rationale is that they need fresh ideas and young bodies willing to work long hours, and the perception is that those things are the province of the young. So my goal became to grow old at a big company, with a big title and a big office and big money.

The recruiters were no help. They see only your past, not your future. They pegged me as an agency person, not a corporate advertising director. So I was on my own, networking. The lesson in networking is to pursue all leads no matter how obscure—even a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, and don’t stop there. Salespeople will tell you it’s a numbers game, and they’re right.

Through a remote contact, I got a Wall Street interview, and voilà! I landed my dream job, director of advertising at Shearson Lehman Brothers. I would end up staying for fifteen years. My title stayed more or less the same, but the firm’s name changed again and again, and it was Smith Barney when I left.

You can imagine the branding challenges that came with all the identity changes and the complex nature of Wall Street businesses. Corporate branding and advertising are not just about naming products and making commercials. You need smart positioning, communications strategy, and marketing tactics. And I was pretty good at it. Maybe someday I’ll write a book on the subject.

Many influences affect our brands. Many can be analyzed and explained. Many cannot. Cause and effect are certain only in pure science. Branding is a science in the way social science is a science, with the “science” part of the term based on the fantasy that human behavior can be quantified. In reality, branding’s cause-and-effect relationship is never certain. Be grateful for all your experiences. It’s your input that makes them help or hurt. What’s important to know is that anything can happen and even bad things can have good results. I learned through fortune and misfortune to take control of my branding and to try to understand branding influences in the larger world.

Did I make mistakes? Of course, lots of them. The only people who haven’t made mistakes are people who never did anything, and that’s a mistake, too.

Was I successful? Well, I did what I wanted to do, and I didn’t get hurt, wasn’t miserable, and didn’t become poverty-stricken in the process. Having desires or goals and then working to accomplish them is as close as we get to the idea of success, and it’s available to everybody, even with our flaws and limitations.

Thanks, Universe; thanks, Planet; thanks, America; thanks, New York; thanks, Miami; thanks, Mom; thanks, Dad.