Branding with Brendan

After seeing a guest post by Brendan Mullin, Director at Peppercom Strategic Communications on Steve Cody, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Peppercom's RepMan blog, I felt compelled to revisit the Nixon-Kennedy debate. Brendan wrote about Ben Bernanke, who is the current Fed Chairman, and how he recently declared that he will be holding quarterly press conferences. He compared the upcoming conferences to FDR's fireside chats during the Great Depression.

In a Time piece titled How the Nixon-Kennedy Debate Changed the World that we read earlier in the semester, Kayla Webley detailed the significance of the Nixon-Kennedy debate. She described how Nixon's sickly appearance during a television debate ultimately led to Kennedy's victory. Kennedy himself said that "It was the TV more than anything else that turned the tide."

Fireside chats, televised debates, and even blog-posts – all of these things are part of a larger brand that you create for yourself. The way you appear to the public can be an asset, or it can bring you down. It's all about how you brand yourself. This includes just about everything – at a basic level, how you look, but also the activities you participate in and the people you associate yourself with.

Brendan came to speak to our Public Relations class yesterday about creating a brand for yourself, and using your personal brand to break through the clutter as a gateway to success in the workplace and beyond. His presentation compelled me to search my name on Google, which I do periodically, but I decided to check it again. I found myself scrolling through at least ten pages of results published in the past few months alone, including blog posts for Isn't Media Political?, posts written for my marketing internship, pages and pages of Cross Country race results, and even a mildly embarrassing candid shot of me taken by a newspaper reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

A brand can be a very powerful thing when utilized properly. Take the time to go through your Google results, check your Facebook privacy settings, and by all means do not participate in a television debate before you've checked yourself out in the mirror.