Tag Archives: personal branding

Jim Cramer has got a branding problem

Jim Cramer, the Mad Money man, Mr. Silver Lining, has a branding problem. He’s the boy who cried “wolf”. Not the boy at the beginning of the story, but the boy at the end, the one that everybody should be listening to, but they ain’t.

I’ve been spending the past few days flat on a heating pad nursing a bad back and watching the news. And boy is it a newsy world right now, but I’m not going to go into that.  Well, just enough to say that the big stories, the wet stories, the dry stories, the red and blue stories, aren’t THE story.  As I said I was flat on my back watching the news, enjoying the cozy warmth of an old cat who was enjoying the cozy, ambient warmth from the heating pad, when I heard the “ding”, the lovely interrupting chime that tells me that Mr. Bailey is on the chat.

Bailey and I go back to kindergarten. He’s the smartest guy I know and that’s saying something.  He’s the one that dropped the pin, but he denies it and I respect him for that.  But that’s an old and obscure story. Not THE story. The story that gets the capital letters is best told by Mr. James J. Cramer and it comes out in the interview. Go ahead watch it, I’ll wait.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUnIyH1jVhw]

Notice something? Where’s that colorful, frothy, prickly-cuddly financial whiz we’ve come to love?  This isn’t the Mad Money Cramer, this is something different.  This man is serious, and it is chilling.  This is the boy crying “wolf”.  Forgive me, he’s crying  “WOLF!”   “WOLF! WOLF! Hello? Scary, terrifying wolf!” And the people around him aren’t getting it.  Mr. Bailey is, but he’s not like most of the rest of us.  It’s hard to fathom, because it is a complex messy story about finance and markets and too long doing the wrong thing thinking it will come out right.  But I’m not a markets guy, I’m a guy with a bad back and a cat on my lap.  These things are over my head.  I took different classes.  I am branding guy so talk about branding, Cohen.

Why is Cramer sitting still in the video?  Why is he clenching his hands so tightly together?  Because he’s trying to rein in his brand. His personal branding, the mad man mojo, is a hair trigger away from exploding and he knows he’s got to keep it down.  Nail the lid down on it so it don’t explode… but why?  It’s about credibility.  He doesn’t want you to miss the news for watching the show, because this time the news is too heavy, too big for the histrionics.  He’s afraid of this, and he’s trying to communicate it the only way he knows how, by saying it as calmly as he can. When the entire capital producing machine of the western world is in jeopardy, you want to get the story across.  You want people to know it ain’t a show.

This guy with bags of credibility, the former hedge fund manager, the guy with the money show on the money network is worried that you won’t believe him.  That’s the brand problem.   The usual shtick is out the window and we don’t know how to respond. This isn’t fun.  This isn’t swagger.  We haven’t been taught this language, it’s not part of the Cramer iconography. This is a guy dropping his brand armor because he thinks that will help us see that this is an unfathomably large, trillions of dollars large, situation and it could easily implode like a black hole. Truly, I don’t know what it all means, but I can see when I watch that video that he has an inkling of the meaning – something dark ahead – something too dark and too serious to risk not getting the message across, and that’s why he’s clamping down, and that’s what’s chilling.  A normal person wouldn’t be calm, a normal person would be screaming and shouting if they had that same fear in the eyes, but that’s the norm for Cramer.

The brand is upside down, the crazy man is acting sane.

The calm is the omen of the storm.

And if Cramer is right it is nothing compared to the problems ahead.

*Ding*

As I write, it is Bailey on the chat: Feds are taking over AIG. We live another day.”

Posted in Branding Thoughts, commentary, mad scribblings, personal branding | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

Interview on Atlanta Business Radio

Just a quick note to mention that I was interviewed recently on Atlanta Business Radio. Hosts Amy Otto and Lee Kantor made me feel right at home as we discussed how the Internet has impacted the way we brand and some tips that small businesses can learn from the big ones. Click here: David Cohen on Atlanta Business Radio to visit the site.

Posted in Branding Thoughts, Live event, networking, personal branding | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

A seven-point tune-up for your personal brand

My friend Mike just sent me a link to a nice article on personal branding: Maintaining your Personal Brand Online by Jonathan Snook.  First of all, I happen to think it is one of the more attractively and readably designed blogs that I’ve seen lately, but I’m recommending the article for different reasons. Seven reasons to be exact.  Actually seven very practical tips for stepping up your engagement in your personal brand, that Mr. Snook has thoughtfully provided.   I won’t spoil his thunder, but I will say that I think these are good, easy to do steps that will help raise your recognizability online. And as you know that is the first of the three Rs of branding.

Visit: Maintaining your Personal Brand Online

Posted in Branding Thoughts, commentary, networking, personal branding, social media | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

Fickle Findability

Yesterday my friend Sherry asked me if I would be interested in leading some discussions on personal branding at SoCon08.  Of course I was delighted and flattered, but it occurred to me that it might be useful to offer up a few thoughts to set the stage for the conversation:  What I wish to assert is that personal branding is something other than self promotion.  I don’t mean to be coy.  Certainly an increase in visibility is a likely byproduct of personal branding.  In fact, for many it is a highly desired outcome.  As a business person, I count myself in that number. However, the part that I find really interesting is the fact that it is getting harder to be invisible.   We don’t need to act like P.T. Barnum to be findable – findability is happening to us, and a little more each day. Being findable is not the same concept as being popular.  Many of the attendees at SoCon08 will be people who have embraced the idea of being findable, when popularity was never an overt goal. Being findable is part of how they build community, it flows from their desire to have and share a voice with those who would find that voice of interest.  Vlog, blog, or podcast, link profiles, or tweet@twitter and you are actively enabling your own findability, but it is happening passively too.  You shop online and leave a vendor a comment,  you’re spotted on YouTube by someone’s phone-cam while attending a conference, someone tags you and puts your picture on Flickr, or maybe a customer mentions you in her blog – you didn’t intend it, but you just got a little more findable.  Promotion, as I see it, is about trying to accelerate and control the findability, but the control is an illusion. (You might hang on to the bull for the whole 8 seconds, but are you really in control?) Personal branding is about choosing to participate, choosing consciously to add your voice to a chorus that may already be out there.  A chorus that is probably easier to find than any platform of your own.  So will you be in harmony?  Can you influence the chorus?  This I hope is an interesting place to start a conversation about personal branding.

Posted in Branding Thoughts, Live event, personal branding, socon, trust | Also tagged | Comments closed

Are you nodding in agreement or just nodding off?

I’ve posted here before about being the Ambassador of your Brand, but I thought that Seth Godin made a nice point in his blog today (big surprise) that tied in neatly with the concept.  In his post, entitled Always on (everybody markets), he points out that how you act throughout your day, is in itself a form of marketing.  If you’re falling asleep or looking bored during a meeting you are advertising your lack of enthusiasm, and like it or not, that reflects on your personal branding.  There is an old saw that goes “how you practice is how you play” and whether you choose to believe that or not, it is often how you are measured by those around you.  If you consistently project an air of apathy, chances are you will be labeled as an apathetic person — not usually considered a career enhancing trait.

This also points out the importance of the brand ambassador’s job to communicate:  if you are yawning in the conference room because you’ve been pulling all-nighters to meet a critical deadline, then don’t be reluctant to politely share that fact.  Better to be thought of as someone who might be tooting his/her own horn a little bit, than to be perceived as someone too bored to stay awake, or worse, labeled as someone who just doesn’t care.

Posted in Branding Thoughts, commentary, personal branding | Also tagged | Comments closed

"Don't be humble, you're not good enough."

No, I’m not picking on you, I’m quoting an old mentor of mine, Archie Rand. Archie is an artist and teacher and walking encyclopedia of art history (and music history for that matter). I don’t know if the line is his originally, but it is a gem I’ve hung on to for over 17 years, since I was a long-haired MFA candidate with more paint on my clothes than on my canvases. And no, Archie wasn’t picking on me either – he was giving me a gift, and in a way paying me a compliment. His point was that none of us is so good that we should just rest on our laurels or risk being passed over for the sake of mere modesty. Think about the most talented, successful people on the planet – what do they have in common? A publicist.

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” That’s a risky strategy when Inferior-Mousetraps-R-Us has a weekly newsletter, a larger sales force, better distribution, and a keynote at the next cheddar cheese conference. No matter how talented you are, no matter how top-notch your team, or how world-beating your business process is, a little self-promotion, a gentle reminder, even a bit of selective bragging can do you a world of good. Think first: think about who you are, how you want to be perceived, how you bring value and can genuinely benefit the customers you serve, but don’t think you’re doing anything wrong by telling people about your skills, experience and successes.

And if you find yourself the target of praise (lavish or otherwise) don’t be the one “who dost protest too much.” Instead, take the advice of another sage, my late grandmother: “Say thank you, and sit down.”

Posted in Branding Thoughts, networking, Thought for the day | Also tagged , | Comments closed
  • Doodle Delivery – Subscribe!

    Subscribe to occasionally brighten your inbox with a bundle of doodles wrapped in a few thoughtful thoughts on being a beacon in this crazy-wonderful world.
  • Search

  • Left Brain + Right Brain = My Blog

    This blog is chock full of joyful drawings and a few musings on personal branding, startups, creativity and being a beacon.

    Featured Posts


     
  • The Be A Beacon Show

  • Send a Free eCard

    If the drawings on this website give you a smile why not share one? I added a free ecard system so you can send "doodlegrams" to anyone you'd like. Go ahead, send a smile! Just click on the words eCard (free) below any doodle on the blog .
     
  • Categories

  •  

  • Archives

  •  

    Caitlín Mowbray"I adore your doodles... I swear looking at those bunnies lowers my blood pressure, calms my mind and makes me smarter. Who needs meditation when there are bunnies?"
    ~Caitlín Mowbray - Meditation Teacher, Astrologer and Soul Provocateur

    Find David on Bloggers.com

  • October 2025
    M T W T F S S
     12345
    6789101112
    13141516171819
    20212223242526
    2728293031