{"id":1755,"date":"2021-04-27T10:31:10","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T15:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/?p=1755"},"modified":"2021-04-27T10:31:10","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T15:31:10","slug":"marketing-in-todays-world-to-personal-brands-perception-matters-more-than-substance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/marketing-in-todays-world-to-personal-brands-perception-matters-more-than-substance\/","title":{"rendered":"Marketing in today’s world to personal brands; perception matters more than substance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marketing in today’s world to personal brands; perception matters more than substance<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n John Dick, CEO of CivicScience<\/a>, sends out an email every Saturday summarizing the insights of some of CivicScience’s poll findings for that week. It starts with a personal message from him. I found this past Saturday’s message very insightful about marketing in today’s world to personal brands. It is something every business should consider factoring into their marketing. Following was what he wrote.\n<\/p>\n

\n <<Back in the day, we had a mantra we used to tell brand marketers:\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t sell to me. Sell to the person I\u00a0want\u00a0to be.\u201d\u00a0The idea being that consumers\u2019 aspirations mattered more than their current state.\n<\/p>\n

\n But as social media proliferated, especially as Millennials and Zs came of age, we modified the statement:\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t sell to me. Sell to the person I want people\u00a0to think\u00a0I am.\u201d\u00a0While it\u2019s only a subtle difference on paper, the implications are enormous.\n<\/p>\n

\n We\u2019re living in the undisputed era of personal brand building. You can thank the device in our pockets and the multitude of different places we peddle our identity \u2013 Facebook, Instagram, even LinkedIn. The clothes we wear in our pictures, the restaurants we \u201ccheck in\u201d from, even the media sources we cite are ultimately curated \u2013 consciously or not \u2013 to convey the image we want people to believe.\n<\/p>\n

\n We all do it to varying degrees and with varying levels of premeditation. Hell, I\u2019m Patient Zero. If you don\u2019t think I labor over every word in this email to make sure I stay \u201con brand,\u201d you might also be devastated to learn there\u2019s no Tooth Fairy.\n<\/p>\n

\n Before you yell at me about how you don\u2019t do any of this, please know that \u201cI\u2019m not on social media and I don\u2019t give a shit what people think of me\u201d\u00a0is most definitely a brand.\n<\/p>\n

\n Even our COVID protocols have become another personal brand element. One group can\u2019t wait to flex their sense of anti-establishment, individual freedom. The other would rather be photographed naked than caught dead in a picture without a mask. If you didn\u2019t know better, you might wonder whether the COVID vaccine only works if you post about it on social media.\n<\/p>\n

\n Despite all of this posturing and self-promotion, however, little about our self-assessment has changed. Almost three times as many Americans in our survey data say they\u2019ve gained weight \u2013 versus lost weight \u2013 during the pandemic. Yet, the percentage who describe themselves as \u201coverweight\u201d hasn\u2019t budged. In fact, that number has actually\u00a0declined\u00a0over the past five years.\n<\/p>\n

\n As long as you see other people in the showroom of personal brands who appear worse than you do \u2013 politically unrefined, culturally unsophisticated, fatter \u2013 then you\u2019re winning. Perception matters more than substance.>>\n<\/p>\n

\n Alas, I\u2019m in no position to judge. Or, certainly, to change it.\n<\/p>\n

\n But there\u2019s nothing about the human condition today that is more important for you to understand. No matter what you\u2019re selling.\n<\/p>\n

Follow me on\u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Linkedin<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 I try to post news and information relevant to the location-based leisure, LBE and FEC industries a few times every weekday.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

You can contact me at <\/em>randy@whitehutchinson.com<\/em><\/a> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

To subscribe to this blog,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/em><\/a> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

You can subscribe to our company’s <\/em>monthly Leisure eNewsletter<\/em><\/a> by <\/em>clicking here<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is something every business should consider in their marketing. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[406],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4dB0k-sj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1755"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1757,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755\/revisions\/1757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}