LeBron James, NBA superstar, chose to go to the Miami Heat after a summer of deliberation. After Thursday’s announcement you either love him or hate him. The story will be buried and exhumed many times over, so I will not go into it. However, I will go into what I feel is a remarkable side story.
James, will be joining Dwayne Wade, an existing Miami Heat player, and Chris Bosh who recently signed with Miami from the Toronto Raptors. Unless you are fan of basketball, you may ask, “who is Chris Bosh?” And this is the remarkable side of the story.
Wade and James are known superstars, have been on the big screen, and have had the media hype to follow. This is Bosh’s first time in the limelight. Anyone who follows basketball knows that Chris Bosh is a solid player. But not until now has he really been considered a superstar. Which has been argued by some sports critics. Why is he at superstar status? Its because he has been co-signed. He has teamed up with two of the biggest brands in basketball. You can’t ask for better exposure.
This is the classic example of brand building by association. The examples of a brands being co-signed speak clearly:
Pontiac G6 - Oprah Giveaway
After this car was given away on the The Oprah Winfrey Show, within two weeks, Pontiac G6 awareness reached 87% among adults, while also achieving a 17% click-through rate (on the web), a Google record for the time. With a new product, your can’t ask for better exposure, after that the product has to sell itself. It was co-signed by Oprah.
Regardless to whether brand association is orchestrated or organic, its hugely beneficial and is represented in the perceived value part of the brand value equation. Perceived value can be increased because of the association of another brand.
While Bosh is a solid player by himself, he has raised his brand equity tremendously by teaming up with cohorts of the maganitude of James and Wade. Whether they have created a dynasty by teaming together is yet to be seen. What is known is that Bosh has taken an opportunity to remove himself of the caves of Toronto and put himself in position to shine in South Beach.
The MBA Chat (#mbachat) is a 1-hour discussion on Twitter where anyone can participate in our open source conversation. The Twitter Chat on Thursday, July 8th 8:00pm-9:00pm EST will include Vincent Hunt (@VincentHunt) and Hajj E. Flemings (@HajjFlemings) who will answer questions.
Topic: The Art of a Start-Up
Recently there was an article posted on Michigan Tech MBA Online blog about ‘Thinking Like a Startup‘ that promoted the discussion for this MBA Chat. What drives the thinking of Seth Godin, Jason Fried, Guy Kawasaki, Evan Williams, Paul Graham and others in the Startup world?
Bio
Vincent Hunt is the creator of Beyond Pretty Things; a blog about design, innovation and rocket ships and the founder of the Vincent Hunt Company, a Design Thinking Company, tactical in conceptualizing and developing breakthrough ideas for new products, services and brands. An intuitive design thinker, Vincent is sought after for his keen ability to generate disruptive ideas and insight on emerging creative economy trends.
How to Follow and Participate
To participate you can use http://search.twitter.com or http://tweetgrid.com/. Watch for tweets with the hashtag #mbachat and follow the conversation on the @TechMBAOnline Twitter account.
This chat is sponsored by Michigan Tech MBA Online program: www.mbaonline.mtu.edu.
Brian Solis is one of my virtual mentors. I follow his work online in the new web and I think he is one of the smartest in the space. I had the pleasure of interviewing him and to talk briefly about his latest book, “Engage”
Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media marketing and branding agency in Silicon Valley. Solis is globally recognized for his views and insights on the convergence of PR, Traditional Media and Social Media. Considered one of the original thought leaders who paved the way for Social Media and PR 2.0, Solis is co-founder of the Social Media Club and is an original member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup.
Nuggets from our Interview
Engage was written to help companies build, cultivate, and measure success in the new web.
Engage is a book designed to scale with you as you grow whether you are a small business, non-profit or being a part of an enterprise organization.”
Champions effect change.
Being an expert doesn’t engender change being a champion does
Quote
“Who I am today and who I want to be tomorrow are separated by the things I do today.” – Brian Solis
It has been over 20-years since Marvin Gaye’s sang the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star game in Los Angles, and it is chronicled as one of the greatest renditions ever. What lessons can be learned from watching the national anthem?
The 5-Personal Branding lessons
Integrate your Personal DNA – Personal Branding is about exposing people to what makes you special. Your image, your style, and your presence are centric to what draws your fans, your community, or your tribe to you as Seth Godin would say. Be who you are! You can set-up Fan pages, tweet all day, and have a million dollar website but if you don’t bring your personal DNA to the table you are wasting time and money.
Take Everything to the Next Level: No matter what it is that you do it can always be taken to the next level even it if is the national anthem which is a poem originally written by a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key in 1814.
Mastery – Success is about mastery. Malcolm Gladwell calls it ‘10,000 hours’ and Jim Collins says, ‘Good is the Enemy of Great’ but personal branding is about consist delivery of excellence in a focused area.
Social Media isn’t about technology – Social Media as we call it today is not about the technology. The technology will change as it has from radio, to TV, to the Internet. Social media is another medium to communicate your compelling story.
Be Original – If you compare the greatest national anthems of all-time each artist brought something unique and original to the table. Be original and always bring your worldview to your art.
As a personal brand what impact will you make? Will people continue to talk about the legacy, the impact, and the mark you made 20-years after you are gone?
I was inspired to write this after reading a Facebook post from Marjora Carter.
Can a personal brand be defined by numbers? Let’s talk about it. To set the tone for this blog post let’s talk numbers anything that you want to grow you need to measure. As a personal brand what are the numbers that you should be focused on?
I decided to compile a list of some of the top personal brands and people that I highly respect in terms of their passion and business acumen. Here are some of their numbers:
Facebook Friends/Fans
Joseph Jaffe – Founder of Crayon which was recently acquired by Powered and author of ‘Flip the Funnel. (3,252)
Rohit Bhargava – SVPSenior VP, Strategy & Marketing / Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence/Author of ‘Personality Not Included’ (2,300)
Gary Vaynerchuk – Author of ‘Crush It’ and Founder of ‘WineLibrary.TV’ – 46,723 – Rock Star Numbers
Lady Gaga– Musician (10,959,266) – Rock Star Numbers
Blog Comments
Seth Godin (www.SethGodin.com) - Author of ‘Linchpin’ and over dozen best selling books and runs the most read Marketing blog on the planet. There are no comments because Seth doesn’t allow you to leave any. (0)
Sarah Evans (www.PRSarahEvans.com) - She is the President of Chicago based public relations and new media consultancy Sevans Strategy and runs #journchat. (23 - Average number of comments per blog post in 2010)
Darren Rowse (www.ProBlogger.net) - Founder of ProBlogger.net and co-author of ‘Pro Blogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income’ ) – Rock Star Numbers
Twitter followers
Kevin Carroll (www.kevincarrollkatalyst.com) - Author of ‘Little Red Ball’ talks about the concept of play and is a internationally sought after speaker. (1,841)
Noah Brier (www.NoahBrier.com) - Works for the The Barbarian Group and created Brand Tags and was on one of Fast Company’s 2009 100 Most Creative People (3,964)
Tony Hsiesh (www.Zappos.com) - CEO of Zappos and Author of ‘Delivering Happiness’ (1,704,249) – Rock Star Numbers
Blog Post
Evan Williams – Founder of Twitter. Over the last year has three blog post to EVHead.com (3)
Guy Kawasaki– Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, Author of ‘Reality Check’ and 8-other books.
Majora Carter– From 2001 to 2008 she was Executive Director of the non-profit she founded: Sustainable South Bronx – where she pioneered green-collar job training and placement systems in one of the most environmentally and economically challenged parts of the US. This MacArthur “genius” is now president of her own economic consulting firm, a co-host on Sundance Channel’s The Green, and host of a new special public radio series called, The Promised Land. Spoke at TED. (10)
Emily Pilloton– Founder of Project H Design/Author of a Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People. Spoke at Pop Tech. Doesn’t have a blog. (0)
Chris Brogan – Founder of New Marketing Labs/Author of ‘Trust Agents’ (Blogs Like everyday) – Rock Star Numbers
Videos Uploaded in YouTube
Mitch Joel – Author of ‘Six Pixels of Separation’/Founder of Twist Image. Number of videos uploaded in YouTube (into the Twist Image & Mitch Joel Accounts). Runs an extremely popular audio podcast that you can subscribe to on iTunes. (6)
Chris Pirillo- Chris has been participating in Internet conversations since 1992, having launched Lockergnome as a content publishing network and building Gnomedex to be one of the blogosphere’s highly regarded conferences. (2,880) – Rock Star Numbers
E-Commerce Sites
Tom Peters - There are no financial transactions made on his site. Clicks Required to Make a Financial Transaction: (0)
Mark Victor Hansen - Author of ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’) – Rock Star Numbers
If you listen to the tips of all the ‘EXPERTS’ they will tell you that you need to: blog everyday (or regularly), you should do video, you should write a book, you should have an insane number of Twitter followers, you need 10’s of thousands of Facebook friends/fans and you should have an e-commerce site that you can make a financial transaction within three clicks.
Maybe I am looking at this issue beyond the numbers because I only have 5,300 Twitter followers and 3,280 Facebook friends. Maybe my opinion is jaded because I don’t have the big numbers, but my point is find the numbers that matter to your personal brand versus chasing others. My blog post is not about the numerical silver bullet for personal branding but that looking purely at numbers will not always accurately tell the story or the strength of the personal brand.
Let me know what numbers impact your personal brand?
(Note: The data for this blog post was as of 07/05/10)
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The MBA Chat (#mbachat) is a 1-hour discussion on Twitter where anyone can participate in our open source conversation. The Twitter Chat on Thursday, July 8th 8:00pm-9:00pm EST will include Vincent Hunt (@VincentHunt) and Hajj E. Flemings (@HajjFlemings) who will answer questions.
Vincent Hunt is the creator of Beyond Pretty Things; a blog about design, innovation and rocket ships and the founder of the Vincent Hunt Company, a Design Thinking Company, tactical in conceptualizing and developing breakthrough ideas for new products, services and brands. An intuitive design thinker, Vincent is sought after for his keen ability to generate disruptive ideas and insight on emerging creative economy trends.
