No offense to branding experts, but all this talk about brand power, brand strategy, brand value and brand personality when it comes to your career might just be a bit much for most folks.

I get the whole branding thing. I have asked clients who want to stand out from the crowd and market themselves strategically in or outside their company to come up with a list of attributes, beliefs, perspectives and experiences that makes them different from others. But they usually don't do it. Or can't. Or it's a colossal struggle they keep putting off until one day the subject is dropped.

So, I propose something simpler for most people who will never sit down and define things like their "market space" or their "distinguishing characteristics that offer enduring and predictable perceptions."

Think Andre Agassi. What comes to mind? The day after he retired from a 20-year professional tennis career, The New York Times describes his career as a "journey he began as a bratty 16-year old who was often more style than substance and ended a 36-year old senior who taught a generation of younger players how to compete with heart and soul."

"He has been that rare athlete who has made a huge impact on and off the court," says the article, quoting player Lindsay Davenport, he "made the sport cool, popular with the younger crowd."

Who knows if he ever sat down and thought through his branding. But he has had an affect on our minds and how we think of him. Which brings me to the much simpler two-step formula if you want to dip your toe into branding when it comes to your career.

First, answer this question: How do you want to be seen? This is, in essence, what you're defining when you determine your positioning. This is not a new term, but one coined by communications consultant Jack Trout in 1969 to describe, as he says, not what you do to the product, but what you do the mind.

People's minds are limited, he says in his book, The New Positioning. They can't cope with the mountains of information. Plus, minds hate confusion. So you need to oversimplify your message.

I remember during the 1996 presidential election when Ohio's governor George Voinovich was being considered as running mate of presidential hopeful Bob Dole and possibly as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, a newspaper headline referred to Voinovich as "Ohio's Mr. Fix-it." That's positioning.

The second question is: What will you do to ensure that positioning? This includes how you will conduct yourself, what beliefs you will espouse and what actions you'll take to demonstrate your beliefs and abilities and how you want to be seen. What will you do to manage it? This includes what you don't say as much as what you do say.

Think about this before you post something on the Internet, in a chat room or on a blog that can come back to haunt you and destroy that positioning you've worked so hard to create.

Agassi may not have been focused on this managing part. "He once spat at a chair umpire at the United States Open," says The New York Times. He "made offensive jokes during news conferences and the occasional uncharitable comment about a lineswoman or an opponent."

Others before and after him have regrets about actions that have positioned them and their careers in a negative light. Jane Fonda told 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl that she regrets visiting an anti-aircraft gun site in Hanoi in 1972, earning the tag, "Hanoi Jane."

It's hard to say whether Vice President Dick Cheney regrets the profane remark he made to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2004. But it certainly had branding power.

© by Andrea Kay

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