Back in 1997 Fast Company magazine ran a cover story on “Brand You” in which author and consultant Tom Peters brought attention to the concept of personal branding.
Along these lines…a recent manifesto featured in Change This, titled “I Am the Walrus: Lessons in Personal Branding from the Beatles” is worth checking out. Alan Parr & Karen Ansbaugh, cofounders of the OpenSky Consortium, take 10 songs from the Beatles catalog and relate them to relevant personal branding principles.
For Example:
Song: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Branding Lesson: Have a visceral presence.
Do something that continually males people think; keeps you in the conversation; invokes an emotional response.
The Beatles managed to create a buzz about them, their work, their ideas and beliefs wherever they went. Well, of course, you may say, they’re The Beatles — they’re an easy story for the laziest of paparazzo. True. On the other hand, they created interest — real interest, not just fandom — through
original ideas. Hidden marketing (aka “Easter Eggs”) was one of the most powerful tools they had and they used it judiciously to stay in the conversation. Of course, this only led the public to devise their own stories about things hidden in songs:
John: “I saw Mel Torme introducing a Lennon-McCartney show, saying how “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ was about LSD. It never was, and nobody believes me…I had no idea it spelt LSD…”
