Will Lance’s Personal Brand Continue to Live Strong?

August 26, 2012 by 2 Comments
Lance Armstrong

Athlete......Survivor.....Philanthropist......Cheat? Sadly, unless there is a definitive answer, that final attribute will now always be associated with Lance Armstrong's personal brand. But always with a question. We all know him through those first three attributes, the question is can we ever not think of him without the last one? Both sides were always too far apart for this to be concluded with anything other than the wrong result. Witnesses and experts on both sides claiming to be right. Strong personalities involved. A lot at stake. Now the truth may never be known. Part of the confusion for many of us might be the fact that what might be a lifetime ban for some sports (e.g. cycling), can be a couple of years in athletics or results in a 50 game ban or less in baseball. Even some multiple offenders come back to play in their sport again. For the USADA this has been a 10+ year endeavour. The rumour and insinuation has hung over Armstrong really ever since his … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sports, Strong Brands Attract and Repel, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , , ,

Bagels, Sausages, Olympics & Protecting Your Brand

August 7, 2012 by 1 Comment
Olympic specs

With the Olympics the great thing about living in one country and coming from another is you get to root for both- in other words you have double chance of celebration! To date Canada has performed below expectations but team GB is certainly rocking it, with 6 days to go they are already at the same number of Gold medals as Bejing with, I am sure, more to come. But when it comes to your personal brand, you cannot afford to have two sides. Your personal brand is you and needs to be consistent on all fronts. The International Olympic Committee is almost manic about its control of the Olympic brand and logo. Mostly to help protect the sponsors and the huge investments they make in wanting to be recognised and associated with the event. So what is the Olympics showing us that you can apply to your personal brand? 1. Close monitoring and where and when your brand is used. There have been numerous instances of the IOC stepping in and asking businesses to remove associations … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding Quick Tips, Sports, Television Tagged With: , ,

Wear Your Personal Brand Colors with Pride

July 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
larmstrong

  Yellow. It is the color of champions; the color that 198 of the world's best cyclists race for every July in the Tour de France.  It is the color of the 'maillot jaune' - the 'yellow jersey' - the ultimate prize in professional cycling. Cyclists dream of wearing this color and dread the prospect of losing it. It symbolizes power, tenacity, honor, and pride. It unites a team, a country, and even the world. The yellow jersey is an excellent example of the psychological and emotional impact of color. Companies use color in many different ways to evoke a reaction and to solidify a brand in people's minds. Whether it is Tiffany's robin's-egg blue box, UPS' brown trucks, Coke's red cans, or the Tour de France's yellow jersey, we immediately identify with these brands by their color. What's Your Personal Brand's Color? Just as companies brand themselves with color, your personal brand needs its own color. Your brand colors become part of the visual vocabulary that makes an … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Sports, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Seeing Your Personal Brand in 3-D

June 1, 2012 by 2 Comments
3d

Have you ever viewed your personal brand in 3-D? I recently came across philosopher Tom Morris in the book "Cycling Philosophy for Everyone" who has a theory of success called the '3-D Approach to Life.' Discover your positive talents. Develop the most meaningful and beneficial of those talents. Deploy your talents into the world for the good of others and yourself. One of the chapters in this book is called "Lance Armstrong and True Success". The authors introduce Tom Morris' 3-D Approach as applied to Lance. Lance discovered his positive talents at a young age. Being drawn to endurance sports and starting off as a triathlete, he soon discovered he had a special talent on the bike. This then became his focus. He developed this talent through intense and regimented training plans to capitalize on his strength. After a battle with cancer he focused his talent on one thing - winning the Tour de France. This focus developed him into the greatest cyclist in the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Exuding Your Brand, Sports, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , , , ,

5 Reasons to Embrace Criticism of Your Personal Brand

May 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

What drives your personal brand? Do you have the tenacity to pedal onward even in the face of critics, naysayers, and scoffers? Can the strengths that drive you also land you flat on your face? Once again these questions bring to mind another great Lance commercial. http://youtu.be/ph6Gd2Cg4gc Recently, my fellow Reach colleagues have shared along these lines. Richard Anderson's post on this blog reminds us that an overused strength can become a weakness. In a recent issue of YOUnique, William Arruda says it is not all about strengths because if you have weaknesses that will impede your success, you need to resolve them. Critics See Your Brand Through Their Own Lens What you see as driving your brand may very well be criticized by others. Your critics will see your brand through their own lens of reality and make a judgement call. If you are driven by confidence, will it be seen as arrogance? Will your natural or gifted ability label you as a doper or cheat? Can your … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding Quick Tips, Sports, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , , ,

Take a Break and Let Your Brand Recover

March 1, 2012 by 2 Comments
back-injury

I am an active person and when I am feeling stressed or anxious my cure is to jump on my bicycle and head for the mountains. My own personal brand attributes include "action" and "energy." So when I suffer from an injury, muscle strain, or cold it is hard to resist the temptation to just 'suck it up' and ride anyway. However, every athletic person will tell you that you need to let your body recover. Pushing yourself through an injury will only make things worse. By resting you actually bounce back stronger than before. I had to remind myself about this recently after a back injury was preventing me from my regular rides. Is Your Brand Suffering from a Set Back? When we decide to embark on the personal branding process we are so energized to do as much as we can to be our brands. We get feedback from others about our brand attributes, we start creating the online and offline tools to communicate our brand, and we consistently and constantly manage our brands in our daily … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Everything is a Brand, Expressing Your Brand, Sports, Weblogs Tagged With: , , , ,

Is Your Personal Brand LINtastic?

February 22, 2012 by 3 Comments
Jeremy Lin

My trip last weekend to keynote at Ball State University took me in to the heart of basketball country. Everywhere you looked there was connection to the game. Coupled with this has been the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin over the past two weeks. A social media personal branding sensation. It was a case of basketball, basketball, basketball! It truly has been LINsanity (he has just applied to trademark that phrase!). There are a number of lessons from Jeremy's LINtastic recent success that you can take and apply to your own personal brand; 1. Continue to play to your strengths. Even though he was not picked up originally by an NBA team, dropped and relegated to minor leagues he still continued to play to his own set of strengths. Personal Brand Lesson It is important to understand your weaknesses and how they might impact on your brand. But if you spend all your time on them you draw attention to them and you will never get a weakness to a point of strength. Take the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Everything is a Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Personal Branding Trends, Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Don’t Quit on Your Brand!

February 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

In the world of bicycle racing there are three letters on race results that racers dread - DNF - "Did not finish." A DNF could be the result of a mechanical problem, an injury, or worse yet that evil voice inside your head telling you to just quit! Your legs are cramping, your head is pounding, and your lungs are burning. Pain has settled in and taken over. Before you know it, you pull of the course and give up. http://youtu.be/8LEQl0Qh8fE The video above reminds us that "Pain is temporary, but quitting lasts forever." Lance's battle with cancer more so than his 7 Tour de France victories epitomizes this philosophy. Here was a cyclist in the prime of his career taken out by a fatal disease, and yet he had an unyielding focus to not quit. He simply refused to get that DNF in his race against cancer and he won. 4 Actions to Avoid Quitting on Your Brand Personal branding is not a race and there is no finish line. However, in the face of pain it is possible to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding Quick Tips, Sports, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , , ,

5 Tools to Repair Your Brand

January 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

Imagine you have worked hard to build "brand you". You have established a firm belief in your brand by uncovering your brand attributes, strengths, and unique promise of value. You have developed the tools you need to become your brand including a personal brand statement, a branded bio, and both an online and offline brand communication plan. And you are clearly, consistently and constantly managing your brand environment and brand identity to be your brand every day. One day a "Google alert" pops into your email inbox.  You are eager see if your brand visibility and credibility is growing.  To your surprise you see something about you that is off-brand.  People in your brand community begin to comment on this, tweet about it, and share it.  Before you know it your brand is in question.  You might consider just blowing this off hoping it will disappear in cyberspace.  However, by not taking action your brand is derailed. A 'Derailed' brand In the world of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Everything is a Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Engage Brain Before Tweeting – 5 Personal Brand Lessons From Ashton Kutcher

November 16, 2011 by 3 Comments
Aston Kutchner

So another celebrity, this time Ashton Kutcher, has proven to us all what we already know - that we are no different from each other when it comes to making mistakes. Last week on seeing the headline about Penn State firing their football coach he immediately put his stream of consciousness on Twitter and told his 8 million followers what he thought. This was his original tweet; @aplusk: How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste Within minutes the backlash started, nasty responses started to fly and within hours he had removed the tweet, apologized and then decided to suspend tweeting whilst he no doubt consulted with his PR advisors. As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won't happen again. Just a few hours later he announced his Twitter account was going to be handled by his PR agency. Twitter Management http://post.ly/3rk2N So what are … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Expressing Your Brand, Social Media, Sports Tagged With: , ,
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