Know-How Exchange : Branding

You need to get on-the-job experience and prove that you can, in fact, do the tasks you say you can. One of the best ways to gain that experience is via internships. If you want to prove your strengths in more than one area of marketing, you may have to do more than one internship.

These student-like work situations typically don't pay much (some, not at all), but you won't be able to get your foot into the door unless you're willing to begin at the start of the walkway.

During these on-the-job stints, increase and dedicate time each week to networking. In most businesses, it's not what you know from a book, but who you know in the industry.

I always suggest that people who know their career goals pursue internships as early as their freshmen years in college. In today's market, however, eager workers and fresh ideas are welcome from all age workers.

I came across the same situation as you describe above. The best way to get into branding as most companies looks for a classical marketing career path. for a branding position. Along the way, we need a job so we take a sales position or customer service and it is difficult to get into the branding/marketing side of tradiitonal organizations.

I would suggest finding an entry level position with a large/medium size company that has a well known brand to a couple of years of experience under your belt. Once you gain some training and experience, it should be easier for you to gain more senior positions. Additionally, if you are still in school ,get an internship with a large company, which can also help you create an opportunity for you if they like you.

Good Branding!

If your existing company sees you as someone valuable to them, approach your manager for guidance and/or seek mentorship within the company. Leverage the fact that you're already inside a corporation to learn more and do more than your existing job description.

Dear 1234.dude,

"What knowledge/qualifications/skills/certification do you need to start out in Branding?"

You have an MBA in marketing and work experience in customer service. Hmm. My advice is to forget about qualifications and skills for the moment because people aren’t buying those things, you are.

What’s of far greater use to your prospective employers and clients is how much you’ll turn your attention to expanding your knowledge about relationships and meeting people’s needs (and more critically, your UNDERSTNDING of that knowledge, which in turn will lead to wisdom) and your skills, instincts, and gut feelings, and in figuring out what’s best for the client and his or her customer.

You might want to leverage your work experience in customer service but reinvent yourself a little by brushing up on how people formulate their notion of what a brand is to them and what it means based on their experiences with customer service.

Ask yourself how can you use what you’ve learned to reposition yourself to make your abilities of greater use in branding? To many people, the notion of dealing with “customer service” is somewhat akin to taking a bath in boiling oil. Why? Sigh! ... because alas, many companies have still not grasped the idea that customer service is about fulfillment, not frustration. Consider realigning your customer service background so that it reinforces the concept of customer fulfillment. I urge you to consider this because without fulfillment, branding is just a fancy way of saying “wrapper”, or “box”.

You mentioned you’re creative. Good for you. Sadly, I have a smidgen of bad news for you old boy. As a designer, copywriter, art director, and marketer with the best part of 25 years of hard knocks behind me, I feel it’s my duty to tell you that in branding, creativity is often over rated. A good many people think that by putting a logo on a letterhead, or by redesigning a carton or wrapper that they’re “branding” something.

Wrong, dear heart, quite wrong. Here’s why:

1. Putting a logo on something is corporate identity.
2. Branding does not take place in the real, physical world, so it’s not possible to put a label on it.
3. If you want to be creative, consider becoming a designer.

Regardless of your MBA, it's critical that you grasp one, vitally important concept, a concept I fear you will not like.

Stop thinking about branding and begin thinking about meeting people’s needs, (which, by default, means sales).

Oh, calamity! This cannot be, can it? Yes it can.

How will you sell the things that meet those needs to the people with those needs? Until you answer this question you have no brand.

Heresy? No, read on.

For many people just entering the world of marketing, the scenarios of branding and sales are a bit of chicken and egg act, it’s unclear which comes first but surely, if they do one thing, the other will magically appear out of thin air, yes?

Alas, it cannot be because the establishment of a lasting customer relationship doesn’t work like that. By concentrating on meeting people’s needs and by offering solutions, those people whose needs have just bee met become more inclined to buy again.
But until someone buys something to solve a problem and a relationship is formed, nothing’s happened brand-wise.

Branding takes place in people’s heads when a real need or
pain point is met, matched, and solved by an outside element: meaning, when that element connects to that deeply felt need
or desire.

When that deeply felt need is met by the outside element, the offspring of that meeting is the brand. And from that point onward, every point of communication between the provider of the solution and the customer is the branding. This means every point of contact must support the solution, must reinforce the meaning of the relationship.

It is upon this hill that you will make your stand and it is on this mound on which you will plant your colours (I can spell colours
like that because I’m British).

The other advice you've read from my fellow marketing colleagues is all spot on. Entry level positions. Work your buns off. Make yourself an authority. Be authentic. All, right on the money. You will NOT begin at the top. It takes hard work, toil, commitment, luck, and sweat to earn your daily bread.

But note this and note it well:

When you present, be creative and hit people’s emotional hot buttons. All effective marketing appeals to emotion and desire and all effective branding is such because it forms the bond between the need and the solution in the prospect’s mind, in their world of emotion and desire.

Got that? No? Read it again.

Nail this one point in your presentations and you’ll shine. Keep nailing it and you'll rise through the ranks and you'll never be out of work.

Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer,
WIMINGTON, DE

Great post from Mr.Garybloomer :)

1234.dude, please give your MBA to Gary :))) he earned it in just this one post.

If I may be so bold, I would like to add a little something of my own on the topic of 'branding'.

I hope Gary you will appreciate and agree :)

Let's go back to basics - From where dd the word BRAND come.

A brand was formed (usually a letter or symbol) from bent steel, heated in the fire and literally BURNED onto the skin of cattle, swine and sheep etc. (livestock). It was done to clearly identify ownership of the livestock.

If you can try to imagine what it must feel like to be 'BRANDED', to be literally burned with a hot branding iron, then I am sure it will conjure up some strong emotions.

Not only the physical pain but the mental torture that goes with it. You would remember this incident for the rest of your life because a). you will bear the physical scar and the accompanying mental scar.

That is exactly what branding is all about.

The goal is to create a symbol that once people are touched by it, it will remain in their memory for a lifetime. it will conjure for them not only a mental response (in the head as Gary saya) but also a viceral response (in the stomach ). As a sales professional, I can tell you that people rarely buy with their heads in the real world, they buy with their GUT.

So branding is really as simple as that :)

The difference is that instead of an instead Brand Mark on the buyer, it takes time. Lot's of time for users to become familair and comfortble with a brand.

The burning in process, is done by repetition over time rather than with a one shot jolt (in most cases).

Now dear 1234.dude, stop whining that no one will hire you and ask yourself 'Why will no one hire me ??'

Get out of your head and start using your GUT a little more and start selling yourself.

Good luck.

Matthew

first you need a better brand name than 1234.dude

Dan Schawbel was a young guy who just made it happen. Nothing is stopping you from creating "your brand" with lot's of content and web distribution.

Check out Dan's site:
https://personalbrandingblog.com/

good luck,

Steve

I have a small suggestion. There are TONS of non-profits and volunteer-based organizations that are dying for skills like yours. Do some projects for them to test what you "know" from school. Also, just do your best. They get help they desperately need, and you start to accumulate experience you can market.

Good luck!