Is Personal Branding < Company Branding?

July 29, 2008

Should your personal brand come before or after your company brand?

Disclaimer: I’m giving this a shot with fear of trailing off in a variety of directions. You’ve been warned!

I had, coincidentally, a few different conversations this past week in regards to personal branding versus company branding. Let me explain those conversations for you.

bakedlaurabean & bradgarlandOne happened on Twitter this week between @bakedlaurabean, @rshevlin, and a little bit of myself. It seems that Laura had accidentally sent off a marketing email to some of her members from her email address versus the credit union address they had setup. She decided not to email her members back about the faux-pau because she didn’t want to interrupt them twice. (This is the part where I stated I didn’t agree with that, but to be continued) She then sent another set of emails later, coming from the correct ‘Credit Union generic’ address, and found that between the two she actually had better read results with the generic over her personal one. Therefore, in her eyes, justifying that the results will be better to send a email from a generic address over one from a person of the CU.

Now, that’s a interesting choice to me.

How is that helping her CU? Yes, people this round open up the emails more often because they know the brand of the CU but over the long term does that still make sense? Wouldn’t it be more pleasant to know, as a member, that its coming from Laura that works at my credit union? There is a more personalized approach there that people can relate with and enjoy IMO. This ties into the same example of why everyone now hates the ’support@techcompany.com’ because they can’t relate to who ’support’ is and they don’t want to engage/send anything to that address unless they have no choice since there is no way of telling the original sender when they’ll be heard. Frustration ensues.

Example 2: I had the pleasure of talking with Matt Davis, otherwise known as the CUWarrior, over the phone this week. (Yes, us Gen Y’ers still use the phone to chat believe it or not) We briefly got into the discussion of the CUWarrior moniker and how that affects Matt’s personal brand. (I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know Matt’s name for a very long time since I only knew him by CUWarrior.) Matt definitely realizes that his brand could be affected if he ever got out of the CU industry. CUWarrior doesn’t have the same zing in education does it? Is Matt in trouble? I know lots of my friends that do this. (Bankwatch, CurrencyTim, Life and Times of a CU employee, Wesabe Marc and bakedlaurabean herself.) How are they affected? What kind of time will it take to rebrand themselves? Do they really even care?

So I wanted to pose some questions and hopefully start some conversation.

- Should Laura’s CU and all of our businesses keep sending newsletter out from generic@email.com? Or is there a better way? I hear some responding ‘no newsletter period’! Are they right?

- I’m curious from those I’ve listed in the post. Are you concerned of your personal brand being affected and having to rebuild it in the future if things change?

Lastly, this talk of personal branding makes me think you might be wanting some tips on how to improve your personal brand? Chris Brogan is one smart cookie and I rely on him alot and in this blog post he gives 100 tips on personal branding through social media. Enjoy!

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  • When Tim was showing me Twitter last October and I signed up, it was the most natural and logical thing in the world to call myself "CurrencyNala." I saw my use of Twitter being mostly related to my work, therefore it made sense. I also liked the unified front a CurrencyTim and CurrencyNala presented. I even encouraged Sandy to sign up as CurrencySandy!

    I love the Currency brand, and tying it to my name was not a difficult decision. However, I don't let that title influence what my twitter comments are. I comment on what I'm thinking and feeling, and in this way my personal brand influences what others think of Currency as a company. I am a very lucky person in that my personal beliefs and values very closely mirror those of the company I work for. It means I can do my job with my whole heart. If my beliefs and values differed greatly from the company, I might think twice about associating myself as closely.

    I completely agree with Robbie's sentiments. You don't have great relationships with companies, you have great relationships with the people that work there. That creates one of those feedback loops, making the company brand stronger.
  • @Robbie - I read this comment in the car ride home and it made me think the rest of the way home. In particular, you're last statement:

    "Build a company with lots of great personal brands and your company brand will be stronger because of it."

    I think that is a great way to look to consider it from multiple levels. As a leader, you should encourage those that work for you to build up their personal brand and in turn it pays dividends towards the company. Help your employees find their voice, I like it. As a individual focus on your own personal growth and development and a 'brand' will naturally develop from it.

    Well said Robbie.
  • @Tim - So could you say that CurrencyNala falls into that perspective of being branded by a company? Would love for her to comment as well. Thanks for the comment!
  • Oddly enough, I sometimes boil it down to what email address am I using. If I'm using gmail, it it me, Robbie Wright the CU Employee or wherever I happen to be in the future. If I'm using my fi-linx or my CU email, then it is Robbie Wright from fi-linx or XYZ CU. I kinda see it as building my personal brand and then I bring that brand to a company. If it is a good company, it'll be made up of many employees with their own brand and people will associate the company with all of those great individuals. So I guess my round about answer is actually Personal > Company but it's kind of a "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" type thing. Build a company with lots of great personal brands and your company brand will be stronger because of it.
  • The comparison of Laura's emails isn't really an appropriate test. A fair test would be to send the same email to two different groups, one group receives the email from a real person and the other from the company. In Laura's situation, the results she got from sending the same email twice may *imply* a correlation, but it doesn't prove it.

    And on nom-de-coms, I am "JeffryPilcher" everywhere I go. It helps me keep my nose clean, and works in every situation – work or personal.
  • I think I fell into CurrencyTim when I went to sign up for a social networking site of some sort and Tim McAlpine was taken. So, when I signed up for Twitter, I kept with CurrencyTim. I think it works for me because I am the sole owner of Currency Marketing and my personal brand is so linked to what my company is all about.

    You ask, "Are you concerned of your personal brand being affected and having to rebuild it in the future if things change?"

    I blog from both a personal place and also on behalf of my company. The two identities and my belief in the credit union movement are so intertwined that I can't imagine trying to unbundle them in the future. It would be totally different if I was an employee. Time will tell I suppose.
  • @Brad @CUWarrior ... I too fell into this for same reason as Matt. Now that I am independent of a Bank, I actually don't mind the outcome as it associates me with my blog, and my topic. I have other blogs, and it would be confusing if they were all me.

    However it is only me, and even though its in effect a pen name, it kind of says something about what I do. Blogs have to be personal, and owned. However mine is not about my personal life, so I am ok to continue the pen name just to make that differentiation.

    On the other hand a CU has many employees. They can't all be CUdejour, so an email from the CU is by definition impersonal. But we all hate those direct mails signed with a stamp from the EVP Personal Banking etc. Those are obviously fake.

    At the end of the day the email needs to be clearly written by a person, and having the CU name in the SMTP header is probably ok on that condition. The exception is if the audience is the portfolio of the writer, and for sure that must be a personal email address.
  • @Brad Interesting question. I "became" the Credit Union Warrior kind of to be anonymous...I wanted to have the ability to write what I truly felt online without worrying about everything being traced back to me and my employer. I had no intention to make the moniker stick. So, now that credit union folks outside of NC know me only as CUWarrior I do sometimes wonder if it's a good thing or a bad thing. At the end of the day, I suppose that this is far less a Bruce Wayne/Batman type thing than it is a pen name. I hope that as I further establish myself in the industry that CUWarrior and Matt Davis become synonymous. Not sure if they are yet.
  • While there's a ton of value in personal branding and personal interactions coming from a company I think a company attaching itself too much to its employees brands can cause problems. Namely that personal brands are portable, and attached to specific personalities. You lose that person, you lose brand equity. Even the so called best case scenario where the brand is centered around a founder or CEO is difficult in the long, long run since inevitably that person will retire, or die. Unless that person can make his personal brand the corporate brand a large chunk will be lost (A good example here is how much did we feel Bill Gates retirement? Now how much do you think we'll feel Jobs retirement? Right now, Jobs = Apple in many ways. Will they continue to be the same Apple after Jobs is gone is the big scary question for a lot of people/investors. ).

    Anyway, I'm hammering at the same point here. Basically I think you can make a corporate brand that is personal, that does allow for personal contact and the like (though there could be trouble even in this if you have a high turnover rate), but to ride the coat tails of an employee's personal brand is problematic to say the least.
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