When you hear the terms “Jordan Effect” or the “Oprah brand,” it makes you ponder their true meaning. To put it simply, a brand is the essence of you and how you influence others.
“A brand serves a purpose and offers some benefit to others. It meets some type of need, convenience or aspiration. Some brands make us feel like we have status and fulfill all different types of needs for people,”offers McGhee Williams Osse, co-CEO of Burrell Communications Group, during a seminar at Spelman College’s Leadership and Women of Color Conference. During the session, Williams Osse covered the topic on how to build your personal brand so you can live your best self and always project that outwardly.
Williams Osse shared that, during a recent media interview, she offered her own assessment of Oprah Winfrey as one of the strongest brands that she knows. She added, “Her whole brand is about empowering and helping people. Everything that she does is about helping others [such as with] her Angel Network. She changed daytime talk shows [and] chatter into relevant conversations.”
According to Williams Osse, there are two elements of branding: what you build and project and what others perceive. She references a new book, Be Your Own Brand, in which the authors define a personal brand as a perception or emotion maintained by somebody other than you that describes your outstanding qualities and influences that person’s relationship with you.
Williams Osse explained, “Strong brands garner trusts, foster good relationships and inspire others. [On the other hand], weak brands lack clarity and consistency. They are all over the place … this way one day and another the way the next. Weak brands are not perceived as having real impact … and [weak] personal brands are often inwardly focused rather than considering what you can do and how you can help benefit others.”
Good branding is essential to your bottom line no matter if it’s for your business, professional career or personal life. She uses her alma mater, Spelman College, as an example of a good brand. “Spelman College is a brand. It has a personality, projects itself in a certain way, and it stands for something.”
Williams Osse enlightened attendees and offered a pearl of wisdom. “The power move in branding is to define yourself before someone else does.” When introducing herself to the seminar attendees, she started by saying, “I am a humble leader, teacher and giver. That is who I am as a person. That is who I am in my personal life. That is who I am in my professional life.”
Taking the initiative and having the courage to establish your own brand “demystifies and defies perceptions that others have built of you” in the process.
How do you get to that level of building a great brand? To create a strong brand (i.e., to make a difference), it requires a level of commitment and introspection. Also, it may require hiring a coach and constant reevaluation of relevancy.
Williams Osse, who is credited with starting Burrell’s Yurban® marketing initiatives, which targets youth and young adults, serves as a director of the Advertising Council. –yvette caslin
