One more reason why a “Personal Brand” is all the more important now…

By Rajesh Setty on Tue 20 Jan 2009, 4:00 AM - 4 Comments

Let us look at the incidents in the last sixty days:

Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme was revealed with billions of dollars at stake

Lloyds TSB admitted that they were faking records of wire transfers to Iranian and Sudanese customers for years. Lloyds paid a fine of $350M.

The chairman of Satyam Ramalinga Raju admitted that he was forging accounting records for years in a $1B scandal.

I can talk about more – Enron, Worldcom and other incidents that suddenly tarnish a company’s brand – probably forever. Rarely do these companies ever come back to their original glory. Their brands are tarnished.

The above are major scandals but there are smaller ones happening almost everyday. Two days ago, on a smaller scale, Belkin was accused of Mechanical Turk Shilling and the CEO apologized for what happened.

An organization is made up of individuals and to build an organizational brand everyone has to work in harmony. One person making a mistake and the organization pays and it’s brand will be in question. If you are borrowing your employer’s brand, please remember that you don’t have the control on your employer’s brand. The only brand you have some control of is your brand – your personal brand.

This is the time for all of us to take another look at our personal brands and do everything to invest in it.

A few resources:

My latest column at TomPeters.com: What a Personal Brand is NOT

Free ebook: Personal Branding for Technology Professionals (PDF, eBook, 40 pages, FREE)

All the best.

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Verity on March 5th, 2009

Hi Rajesh

I found your book on personal branding very interesting and really enjoy the ‘Distinguish Yourself’ series.

You’ve inspired me to talk on the subject of personal branding to my work colleagues as it really is something that I think we all need to consider.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Verity

Rajesh Setty on March 5th, 2009

Verity, Thank you for visiting and for your comments. All the best for your talk. Would love to hear more about it.

Have a great Thursday.

Best,
Raj

Verity on March 6th, 2009

Hi Rajesh

Just dropping you a line to let you know how my talk went.

The good thing was that the topic ignited discussion from the beginning, so I was glad my colleagues seemed to find it relvant.

One of the key things that came out of the debate was the distinction between using social media for business use and personal use – there was a feeling that social media for business use was key in developing a personal brand.

Thanks for your book on personal branding – it was such a useful research tool.

Have a great weekend,

Verity

Rajesh Setty on March 7th, 2009

Verity,

Glad to hear that the talk sparked off a discussion on a very important topic. The thing is one cannot NOT worry about one’s personal brand. It is who the person is and what their promise to the world and the marketplace.

Everyone makes a promise to the world and the to the marketplace – whether they want to believe it or not