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The power of personal brands in strategy and attracting talent

Ross Dawson, February 6, 2010 2:03 PM US PT

A few months ago I wrote about The shift from corporate brands to personal brands, referencing Jeremiah Owyang's move from Forrester to the newly-founded Altimeter Group with former colleagues.

This is a long-term secular trend - in fact last week when I spoke at the Online Marketing by Design event I pointed to it as one of the three most important trends for this year. I was discussing it in the context of marketing, where companies must recognize that trust resides in individuals not institutions, and use this to shape their external engagement. However it is just as important in the context of attracting and retaining talented people. I wrote:

Now, as personal brands grow in relative strength, corporations need to consider how they can best reflect and tap the influence of the individuals working for them. As Jeremiah notes, social media means that personal brands are immensely portable, as are personal networks.

This is about power to the worker, absolutely, but those companies that understand this and tap this shift can do extremely well. They can attract those with strong personal brands and create immense value from their influence, simply by focusing on building the brands of their key staff as much as they do their corporate brand.

In this context, I find it striking that Forrester Group has decided to ban personally-branded research blogs by its staff, as reported by analyst-watchers SageCircle. It says:

What is the downside for Forrester? Likely not much unless there is a big stink in the blogosphere that causes a public relations problem. It is also not likely that analysts with personally-branded research blogs will quit over this policy, especially in this economic environment where job opportunities are still at a premium. Unless those two unlikely events happen, Forrester will have a tool to help manage its brand equity and reduce analyst departures that could result in the launch of new competitors.

This is dumb and short-sighted thinking. Analyst firms, as all professional service firms, depend on attracting the most talented people. However the emphasis on the brands of the individual professionals is even greater than in most other professional services.

It is a possible strategy to try to avoid personal brands and subsume them to the corporate brand, but it is an increasingly difficult strategy to succeed at. Most importantly, the most talented will avoid these companies like the plague.

Dennis Howlett doesn't mince his words in discussing Forrester's move:

Whichever way you look at this sudden shift in Forrester policy, it represents an epic E2.0 fail.

Enterprise 2.0 mavens consistently argue that bottom up adoption of Enterprise 2.0 will make business better. That’s fine except in one crucial regard: pre-existing success history dictating future policy. There is plenty of evidence for that. Forrester’s belated but still knee jerk reaction confirms. Worse still. Rather than behaving as the doyen of what it preaches regarding social media, Forrester is showing itself as hypocritical in the worst possible way.

Certainly Forrester's move seems to be a deliberate step to prevent their staff from developing portable brands that will facilitate them leaving the company for other opportunities. Without going into all the reasons why this is dubious logic, it's yet another great example of a company trying to hang on tighter and tighter in a world in which everything is more fluid. That can only work for so long.

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2 Comments

KerrieAnne Christian said:

Looks like another example of the command & control paradigm prevailng over a view of enabling possibilities for increasing capability, which I also blogged about recently (http://kerrieannesfridgemagnets.posterous.com/command-control-vs-crowdsourcing-tips-for-it).

I blog privately - and what I learn from other bloggers & their blogs etc, I then take back into my organization and share. Since late 2008, I have had to learn about the WTO, international trade, dealing with non tariff barriers to help my org gain the necessary international certifications needed to secure export orders. So participation in the Australian & International social media scene has been really helpful in efficiently keeping track of trends in international trade, WTO etc. This has been even more crucial during the constraints of the GFC era when participation in training etc evaporated.

As Laurie Lock Lee said in his Australia Day blog post (http://governanceandnetworks.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-better-to-be-debatiing-balance.html)- it's all about balance.

February 6, 2010 4:55 PM

Marko Teräs said:

For me, an entrepreneur and pretty much a social media native, this kind of strategy is, like you state, short sighted. I've incorporated trying to be as much as layman as possible, and as much as 'me' as possible.

I don't actually understand the whole issue in not showing when your company got talent and great people – well, I understand it, but it's hard for me to digest. First of all, aren't companies made of people, anyway and second, isn't that good and almost free marketing?

In this case hockey teams are a good example how they let individuals shine and fill the media with their faces. They tell about the team, how talented it is and what's the spirit, i.e. is it in good shape or not.

And of course there's always someone trying to buy them out. So what? If you have enough challenge, a good atmosphere for your team [like family] and a good pay, why would they even leave? If these parts aren't in sufficient, they would have left eventually anyway.

And for company who wants to push forwards all the time, change isn't that bad anyway. There are a lot of good people out there, just waiting to earn their stripes.

So what are you going to loose in letting people speak?

If it's about thinking them talking crap about your company, why would they do something like that if everything is alright?

Call me naive, but this new kind of mentality is actually something one may see in the digital native entrepreneurs more easily. I just hope these new entrepreneurs won't learn "bad" lessons from the guys who still think it's the 50's, and instead just listen to their social intelligence – in romantic literature this would be called "their heart", but using it here would most likely make me loose all my credibility! ;)

Thanks Ross for an inspirational post!

February 7, 2010 11:47 PM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.