Value driven career

When talking about personal branding we don’t necessarily come to think of personal values first. However, that is exactly where the personal branding begins.

One has to discover the personal calling, or vision in life first. What is it, that you really want to do in your life? Or for a living?

Then ask yourself, what are the values that drive your behavior. What makes you happy, and what makes you angry? If your core values would be health, integrity and fairness, could you work for a company that does not care about those values? If you still would continue working under such code of ethics, what implications would that have for your well-being?

In the future the expectations for companies on performance are increasing. They have to achive more with less people, manage diversity and keep people working longer before retirement.

In order to attract the best talents and skilled professionals, companies must pay attention to their leadership styles and values. In order to make people committed and increase the quality of the company performance, and reduce sick leaves there is a big demand for alignment of individual values, lifestyles and corporate life. The management must find a value driven work-life balance.

There are a few Finnish companies, that have managed in doing so. In the near future I will introduce some of them and their leaders in this blog. They indeed are value driven. Hopefully you will enjoy reading their stories, and they can be seen as positive role models for others.

Nokia and the new dance steps

Nokia introduced yesterday in Stuttgart a major strategic leap: from being a device manufacturer, they aim to become the biggest mobile service delivery platform in the world.

Makes sense. To accompany the OVI publishing portal, they are introducing also new devices: a mini laptop and five new touch screen phones. Well, with that palette the various consumer segments should be pretty much covered.

From the Corporate Branding perspective the biggest signal of change was the entrance of CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo: he entered the stage imitating robotic dance, in non-ironed shirt without a tie and jacket. This is a radical CHANGE!

A great example to demonstrate, how the CEO or top management is the role model in leading change.

Nokia also introduced yesterday the new OVI Lifecasting service in Facebook. Past is past, and the future is what you make it!

Self-knowledge and trust at the heart of authentic brand building

The objective of this blog series is to create a better understanding of what Authentic Branding means and where it can be applied.

It is based on one’s self-knowledge: what are your strengths and dreams, and what skills you need to develop in order to make your dream come true.

Finns are quite competent in many ways. We have a good education, we are honest and hardworking. However, we are a bit hesitant in communicating our skills and good characteristics to others. The same applies for companies: we are good at many things, but do not communicate it openly to the world. Why? Isn’t it great news to tell others, that we could actually help them to solve some problems they are tackling with?

Instead of worrying what others may think of us, we should be proactive and communicate effectively who we are, where we excel, and where we are heading. Nothing wrong with that, correct?

For companies this is even more important. In order to attract the best talents – and keep them – they need to promote a good employer brand and create an atmosphere of trust. Only this way can they create an environment for innovation and provide people a happy and healthy work environment. Only this way, can the company be profitable and be positioned for a sustainable growth.

The change begins always from an individual, but the companies must allow the diversity in people and their talents. If companies cannot benefit from the talented people, they miss the true competitive advantage in the global economy.

A nation with competent people and companies based on trust is the new basis for competitive advantage. It is also the basis for a good national brand. And it all starts with knowing thyself, correct?

Personal Branding in Politics

Traditionally political advertising has been focused on election campaigns. Politics has also been known for spin doctors or political image consultants. Barack Obama has brought a positive change into this. He has introduced an authentic and well managed personal brand.

He is a great example of a vision based brand. His dream is to make a change. To support his mission, he is using marketing and branding tools effectively. He has a personal logo, an O as a symbol of a rising sun, and stripes as a road in colors of the US flag. His campaign theme ‘Change We Can Believe In’ has been altered after election into ‘Organizing for America’, but his logo remains for consistancy. For further details and study, take a look at his website

In Finland political branding is still very much focused on campaigns. Only few top level politicians have a personal domain and an active blog, for example Alexander Stubb, Sauli Niinistö, Jutta Urpilainen. Some ministers keep their blogs under political party homepage, which I personally find a bit suprising.

President Tarja Halonen had a campaign homepage www.tarjahalonen.fi, but after the re-election her official homepage is the President of the Republic of Finland. The site is quite official, however the banner “Children’s President” gives a nice personal touch and shows her values. The site also features her speeches and interviews.

To summarize, it seems that in Finland the political personal branding is not as developed as in the States. The branding is more focused on political parties, and the president and ministers act more in their professional roles. An exception to this is Foreign Minister Alex Stubb, whose blog is both informative, interactive and geared towards personal branding. Some like it, some don’t. From the outside perspective, the site looks rather authentic to me, and combines both professional and personal elements of his personality.

Political branding is not a bad thing. Instead, it can even lead into more transparency and consistancy in politics.

A bit of humor to lighten up the serious issue. Here’s Conan O´Brian introducing some Finnish politicians and his look alike President Tarja Halonen. The comedy got very popular, and even brought Conan O´Brian to visit Finland. The video cannot be embedded, but if you are interested, please click through and have a look at it on YouTube. Quite hilarious!

Marimekko and Intel – different but interesting Corporate Brands

Today there has been interesting discussion of a Finnish design company Marimekko´s future in Kauppalehti’s blog.

Marimekko was the creation of Armi Ratia, an entreprenial venture that became an icon of Finnish design culture. After Ratia, Marimekko was for a while in the portfolio of Amer. In 1991 it was purchased by another strong lady, Kirsti Paakkanen. She turned the company around, and made it again into leading lifestyle company and part of Finnish business history. She sold the company in 2008 to Mika Ihamuotila, a former banker who also happens to have design expertise in the family.

Marimekko was long a domestic company, whose export revenues amounted appr. 25% of total revenues. Ihamuotila has excellent plans to grow the company into an international company. Japan has become an important export market this year. In the past, exports channels were small individual stores in the near markets.

The question is – how will Marimekko brand evolve? Will it move from entreprenerial firm with a charismatic leader into an international design company, with its strength in innovative people and unique design? Will it take the leap from good to great? Time will tell. I sincerely hope that Marimekko will triumph! Its symbolic value for this culture is so strong.

Another great example of corporate branding is Intel. Their video “Intel Star” demonstrates nicely, how the corporate culture can be portrayed in an advertisement. Excellent employer branding! Pay attention to the creative performance of the Intel tune in the end.

“Rather than focusing on a new product, the 2009 “Sponsors of Tomorrow” ad campaign celebrates what makes Intel different culture, personality, heroes — and ways Intel has helped change the world for over 40 years.”

Defining your target group or finding your tribe?

After defining your dreams and passions, your desires and competencies, it is time to think of your target audience. Who are the people you want to influence and connect with?

In traditional marketing terms we would be talking about target groups: what are the demographics and psychographics of these people, how are they geographically located. Then we would create brand attributes in attempt to be liked.

In the new world of social media and personal branding this is not the case. In the time of viral tribes and communities, it is about connecting with the likeminded people. Your tribe can be either local or global, but you share the same values and goals.

For professional personal branding this means finding the right people in the given professional field and function where you want to excel. In order to network with the right people, you need to give the right clues about WHO you are, and WHAT are you interested in professionally. The personal interests will add nice features to your brand, but the core is your compentence, values and personality.

Here is Seth Godin talking about human tribes, leadership and making a change. Hope you enjoy his insights!

Don’t judge the book by its cover

We should not judge people by the looks, correct? However in reality, the human mind has a tendency to label things and put them neatly in logical order in our mind.

Last night I was surfing around the internet to find material about style and personal branding. Nothing in Finnish, but luckily something very interesting in English.

In this video Darcey Howard from LifeStyled, Seattle speaks about the importance of packaging, what our style communicates about the contents. Of course the contents, our personality and competencies, is the most important thing, but like it or not, we draw conclusions based on what we see – both in real life and in cyberspace.

We cannot control what others think of us. But we sure can control what we show to the world, and that it is congruent with who we really are.

(Videos embedded with permission of Darcey Howard.)

Defining your personal brand

This summer I have had the great opportunity to learn from two “gurus”. The Winning Coach Cristina Andersson have taught great lessons about winning attitude and the Finnish SME marketing guru Jari Parantainen about gurumarketing in Finland.

In my field, personal branding and communication, I have also discovered some core insights – what is the heart and soul of personal branding – or my perception of it. There are many different approaches to the topic, but personally I approach it from the inside out.

Inside out? What does it mean, you may ask. It is simply finding and knowing what is your life’s most important goal, that are you so interested and passionate about that you want to make it into a sustainable career.

So personal branding essentially is about finding the core of your personality and dreams, and then communicating it in the right media and proper style to the audience you want to reach.

Personal branding is about articulating your dreams, who you want to become. When you have figured this out, and have the courage to make the change, the rest is just implementation.

Have a look at the video from the movie Coach Carter. A great movie, by the way. The moment, when the students have taken the responsibility of their lives, commited to the change and take action, and repeat the exact words that the coach has told them – that is the moment of victory for the coach.

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’ -Lao Tzu

The Finnish view to Personal Branding

For some time now I have been blogging about personal branding in Finnish. However, I realized that in this age of social networks and global markets it is not enough -  I better be writing in English unless I want to exlude people by the language. And trust me, I don’t want to do that. It would be rather rude.

Therefore I started this blog. It will evolve in time along with your comments and interaction. Hope you like it – enjoy the journey!