295: Elevating Your Personal Brand DNA - with Suzanne Tulien Social Capital

Meet Suzanne 
 
Suzanne notices a variety of creative ways people are branding themselves, both consciously and unconsciously, but is a successful business brand that results from powerful marketing. When the hype subsides, what keeps a good brand going strong? What is the real secret to consistent brand growth and advocacy? With over two and a half decades of strategic communication, employee brand engagement, and internal brand development, Suzanne's inside-out brand-building strategy creates the clarity and actions necessary for her clients to drive consistency, distinction, and advocacy long term. 
 
In your terms, what is your definition of a personal brand?
 
So a personal brand is really just a perception. It lives in the minds of the owner and eventually to its market. So it lives in my mind and your mind and all of our audience's minds. It's based on experience, and emotion and then the products and services of that experience. So it's really all about perception and when people realize that in the first seven seconds of contact with somebody else, others are forming 11 impressions of you through their sensory perceptions. So what do you want those perceptions to be?
 
Could you tell us more about the 11 impressions that you’re speaking about? 
 
We're all human beings. So our ability to perceive and begin to judge and perceive things based on our own filters kicks in gear the moment we meet people. Social Capital is all about networking so we can dig into what that means when you're out there networking. That's really powerful to know and to get super clear on your personal brand value position in what you want others to begin perceiving from you right off the bat.
 
Let's talk a little bit about the difference between marketing and branding. Can you bring some clarity to that? 
 
This is my favorite topic because this is why I'm in business. When I do a lot of my workshops and pieces of training, that this is the big "Aha" moment. One of my pet peeves as a brand expert is knowing that oftentimes marketing and branding are used in the same sentence for the same reasons and depicting the same meaning. If I could just explain that you market a brand. So marketing is this verb, it's this thing, you go out and you disseminate and communicate information or the message of the brand. If you haven't yet fully defined the brand, and you're out there spending, money marketing, what are you actually marketing? So the brand is actually that perception. Have I stopped and defined those pieces and parts that helped create the value position perception that I want others to have of what it is that I do and who I am? So the effort for branding is really about the effort in assigning meaning. Assigning meaning to what that brand stands for and that's what the book is all about. That's what my whole last, basically 30 years, of being in this industry has been to help the client identify, define, and then align themselves into that value position so that they can become what they want to be known for. Alignment is a big piece and that's about the experience, the delivery, the follow-through, the vernacular you use, your messaging. All of that is walking the talk basically.
 
How do you brand multiple sub-brand companies under a bigger corporate brand?
 
That's a great question and I've had the opportunity to do that several times. It seems really complicated, but when you understand that there's this mothership brand that should espouse a set of core values that all the other sub-brands should operate under. So it's this section of the brand DNA process where we uncover those core values. That set of core values should be fluid and infused throughout all of the other brands to be a part of that mothership. But the caveat here is each of those sub-brands can then have values...