Today I have the privilege of interviewing one of the top experts in branding. She is a globally recognized leader in branding, ranked #13 in Top Global Gurus in Branding, and the author of two award-winning books: “You Are a Brand!,” winner of the Ben Franklin Award for Best Career Book and a Top 10 Business Book in China, and “Breakthrough Branding,” on branding and for entrepreneurs, which won the Silver Medal 2012 Book of the Year Awards.
She has been featured on CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, Fortune, WSJ and other media.
Her career has taken her from Madison Avenue to Wall Street to the halls of academe to founding SelfBrand, where she has perfected her ability to market products, places and people. She led the award-winning “I Love New York” campaign at Wells, Rich, Greene. For over ten years, she was SVP, Director of Advertising and Community Affairs at Citi Smith Barney and taught branding at NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Today she heads her own firm, SelfBrand, specializing in personal branding. Let’s give a warm welcome to Catherine Kaputa.
Alan: Thanks for talking to us today.
Catherine: My pleasure, I really enjoy discussing branding because I am convinced it can help career people and entrepreneurs be more successful.
Alan: How did you go from corporate life to being an entrepreneur? What triggered that desire?
Catherine: I had always thought about starting a business – someday. My career in advertising was going very well and I was the head of branding for financial firm on Wall Street, but Sept. 11, 2001 changed my world. I was in New York the day the planes hit the World Trade Center. After the attack, the economy cratered and financial firms were especially hard hit, so I lost my job. Even though my job was going well, the reality was that I was a bit burnt out. I decided it was a good time to think about doing something entrepreneurial, which I had been putting off for so long. I wanted to be a solopreneur and not have 70-hour work weeks like I would have running my own advertising agency. I saw a need for personal branding that wasn’t being addressed. In starting a business, you always want to find a gap, a hole in the market that no one is serving well. My background gave me the experience to be effective in this area.
Right after college, I started out as a curatorial assistant in Asian Art at the Seattle Art Museum. At that time, Asian art wasn’t popular in the US, so it was a challenge to develop exhibitions that attracted a large audience. Then I moved out East to pursue a Ph.D. in Japanese art history at Harvard and spent two years living in Japan working on my dissertation when I had my first personal branding crisis. I decided to go to New York to find a job in advertising or journalism two other interests of mine. Because of my background, I was branded as an academic in interviews, as someone who was not appropriate even for an entry level job in advertising. I realized that I had to take control of my brand. I redid my resume and elevator speech by downplaying my academic work and emphasing the work that was marketing oriented that I had done at the Seattle Art Museum. In interviews I said that I specialized in marketing difficult products and compared marketing Asian art exhibits in the United States to marketing a difficult product because you had to be more creative and come up with an interesting theme or angle. I said that working on a Ph.D. gave me the ability to synthesize a lot of information and distil it down into what is really important.
My new pitch got me a job at a medium-sized ad agency. After I was there four years, I wanted to work in a big agency, but I didn’t have the TV and big brand experience most big agencies were looking for. One agency, where a friend worked, had the “I Love New York” campaign, and I was very interested in working there. My friend told me not only did I not have the TV experience they were looking for, It was not an easy account since you had to sell in the campaigns to various government people. The last person who had the job left after 6 months he warned me. He got me an interview, and in the interview, I said that my specialty was working on difficult products AND difficult people. I gave examples of how I had succeeded in working with difficult clients and creative people and I got the job. I used a similar pitch when I moved to a corporate advertising job. Over the years, working with difficult people, whether it be creative types, politicians, or investment bankers, gave me the confidence that I could work with anyone and succeed at whatever I tried.
Alan: I saw that you had made the statement, “If you don’t brand yourself, someone else will”? What did you mean?
Catherine: Studies show that we take people in quickly and “brand “each other in as little as 2 seconds. The interesting thing is that these in-the-blink-of-an-eye impressions are fairly accurate. We understand our world by categorizing it or branding it. People will brand you, and I can guarantee you that they are not going to brand you in the way you want to be branded. That’s why you want to take charge of branding yourself like I did in the job changes I described above. I was rejected until I started defining my value.
Alan: You’ve done a lot of branding work with women. Do you think the approach for women in personal branding is different for different ethnic groups, (my wife is Asian). Does culture play a role in it?
Catherine: The process of branding is the same regardless of gender or ethnicity, but how you brand yourself is different for women and ethnic groups. In general, if women are too tough, they are labeled with the “B” word. If women are too nice, they can be branded as weak. Asian women are in a double bind because culturally, they need to be subtler in how they assert themselves and how they brand themselves than women in Western cultures. And within Asian countries, it is quite different. Women will be more assertive in places like Singapore and even China, than women in Japan, for example. But as a whole, women don’t brand themselves as well as me do. We have some catching up to do. One male U.K. social scientist who did a meta-analysis of 30 global studies of male and female leadership, found that across all cultures men tend to be better at self-promotion and personal branding than women are. We need to change that.
Alan: Is the branding approach different for older women starting a business versus younger women?
Catherine: The branding process is the same whether you are young or old, yet age isn’t an asset for women for the most part like it can be for men (the wise, gray-haired sage). That’s why I’m happy to see more women of all ages starting businesses and running for office. Whatever your age, your brand must be built on authenticity. Build on your strengths and what’s different and special about you.
I’ve met many women who are baby boomers who tell me “I’ve lost my job because of my age.” Or, if they are looking for a new job, “I feel I’m discriminated because of my age.” I tell them, “Stop being a victim. Go from your strengths. Do not focus on the negatives. When you are comfortable with who you are and the value you bring, you will be successful”
Alan: You emphasize uniqueness. Why do people start businesses that are “me too”.
Catherine: It is in their comfort zone. But building a me-too brand is a recipe for failure. You have to build a brand that is focused, different and relevant to the market.
Every person that is serious about branding themselves needs to do the following:
- In a few words describe what you do and the value you bring to a business situation. One of the first ones I created was, “I’m a marketer for difficult products.” It was focused (a short sentence), different (I never had heard that pitch before), and relevant (every company has difficult projects).
- Look at your competitors and determine how you are different. Have a different twist, a different take on things. Ask yourself, unlike others who do what I do, I….
- In terms of branding your business, look for the white space. What is their product not doing? What is something the product needs, something that is missing?
- Look for a niche. Being a product or business for everyone is no-where’s ville in branding. Find a niche that you can own.
- Make sure your idea is focused. Can you write your business idea in a sentence on the back of a cocktail napkin? If you can’t describe your business difference in a short memorable sentence, you’ve got to go back to the drawing board.
- Make sure what you do has value for people. For example, before Google, people had to do their own time-consuming and expensive research. Google search provides a lot of value to people.
Alan: What is next for you? Looking to write another book?
Catherine: I don’t have plans to write another book at this time, but (she laughs), I said that the last 4 books!
Alan: This really good information that can and should be put in practice. Where is the best place to go deeper into self-branding?
Catherine: My books can be found at Amazon, under my name Catherine Kaputa and my website is selfbrand.com.