Discussing Personal Brand and the impact of owning your Personal Brand can have on your client communication with The Brand Provocateur, Lucy With A Why.
It’s time to dive into the brand, the personal brand, which is vital in making the right personal connection. Understanding the impact visual can have on your customers, and whether indeed that attracts them or detracts them, it’s so important to think about! But it’s not just design – design is part of it, colours are part of it, but the brand means so much more. And there could be only one lady to speak to when we’re talking brand and the importance of owning that brand, Lucy with a why, the brand provocateur.
I’m delighted to welcome a lady whose own branding, sort of speaks for itself. When you introduce Lucy with a Why, the personal brand provocateur, and you mention that name to anyone, you know what you’re going to be in for; this lady is all about the personal brand!
So with the whole personal connection coming from the brand, not just image, I thought, why not get Lucy on the show and see how we can try and help educate as to why it’s crucial.
The Lucy With A Why Experience
Lucy: So the Lucy with A Why experience, as I like to say, is it’s all about understanding who you are as a person and bringing that into your own personal flavour of a personal brand. And it’s mainly in the marketing realm.
So I love to find all the quirky little aspects of people’s personality and try and help them punch that into as much of their online and offline stuff as possible because we all know that we’ve got to stand out, we’ve got to do it in a way that’s authentic and that we can have fun with it, and you’re willing to expose yourself, expose the best bits of yourself and have fun. You then find people get drawn into your story and by the power of osmosis, if people are drawn in to you, then they’re likely to be drawn into what you do as well. And creating that personal brand with your own flavour, it’s just the most fun way to just rock it in your own business.
Lucy hit’s on so many things for me here straight away.
Being unique and different and being true to yourself. Authenticity is an essential thing in business – but it also has to be true to yourself.
You need to LOVE what you’re doing so what you’re putting out there in your personal brand, is something you enjoy! Let your clients see “all the quirky little aspects” that make you, YOU.
The brand is so much more than what your logo is – it’s the ethos around you…
Lucy: This is the most common misconception about personal branding is that immediately people think it’s about the logo colours. It’s about all these kinds of things, which show in the aesthetics category, but it’s not just that, it’s about showing people behind the scenes. We’ve noticed in marketing has evolved so much, and people are becoming so immune to traditional marketing methods that what people want now is the more trivial stuff – they want to see behind the scenes. They don’t want to see perfectly polished things; they want to see some bloopers!
How to utilise Mixed Media to Broadcast your message: embrace podcasts and live videos!
As we consider ways to broaden our connection and get more character into our marketing mix, we need to look at using a variety of media forms.
The power of podcasts – like The Personal Connection – gives a different insight for your customers. But of course, you don’t have to create your own, appearing as a guest can be just as powerful.
Live videos and social media stories are so useful too. Little snippets and a view behind the curtain, together with your polished professional photography and videography, provides an opportunity for much more comprehensive engagement.
The Power of The Story
Lucy: When you say story, I think immediately people think of the rags to riches or the Tony Robbins story, the Mel Robbins story or whatever, and they think you’ve got to have this incredible tale that’s brought you from point A to point B. And I think that’s just not the case. In a lot of cases, if you’ve got an incredible story, people can’t resonate with it. So the more trivial, the better. So I like to encourage people to use what’s going on in everyday life to punch their personality through their brand. So it shows whether they’ve got a funny mom or whether they’ve got a funny sister or brother or whether their kid says something stupid because we can all relate to it. And that’s part of building your story.
As a visual storyteller, for me it’s the story-brand together as one thing, and it’s, it’s your why for why you’re doing everything. It’s not just a case of showing your life or the craziness that’s around you because some of that you don’t want to share, but it’s choosing what bit of it you do share and how you share it.
When I’m working with clients on personal branding or coaching clients for their video production, I always remind then WHO they are talking to and WHY. The message needs to be correct for the audience to have the right impact. We all want to give our clients value for money with the service we offer, and it’s about creating something really special.
Confidence Through Personal Branding
Lucy: With my clients, something special is what they’ve already got. I just really help tease out for them and give them the confidence to show it. I much prefer to help people understand how to rock their own personal-brand and do their own marketing. It’s getting my clients to a point where they can do it themselves because that’s where it is.
Just uber authenticity in buckets.
Personal branding shoot with Adam, a business and marketing coach – all paths leading to productivity.
Working with The Brand Provocateur – what is it the Lucy With A Why experience all about?
Lucy: I work in two ways. I do what I call a creative spark session, which is the ultimate deep dive into the personality into how we can put that into your brand, and what that should look like; your message, how you talk, your campaigns, your offers, all of the quirky little stuff. I then either give it to the clients to do themselves or I do it for them.
I get really excited when I give them that strategy and they rock it in their own way.
The other of Lucy With A Why is I do some training with “Work It Shops”, and they are just fun!
I completely resonate with this as for me it is always about having fun!
Keeping things natural and relaxed allows me to enjoy the creative process with my clients and move with the energy that naturally develops during the shoot – and if I’m having fun, my clients are having fun with me, and what we produce is real and full of life.
Why is the personal connection so important for companies in their marketing message?
Lucy: It’s something that I am obsessed with.
It’s the idea that you’ve got a business, which is an entity, and then you’ve got a business that is a personal brand. So the entity business is the business such as Microsoft, Dyson or whatever. They’re selling a product. The business is the product, and then you’ve got the personal brands such as Tony Robbins, who he is essentially the product, but he’s delivering the service.
So I find that the actual businesses that stick to just entities that sell their products, they don’t have that personal connection with their audience. You don’t fall in love with the people behind it. You don’t fall in love with the story. And that’s where the personal branding comes into it. So that’s why Microsoft when they brought Bill Gates into the forefront because they wanted to add the person behind the brand. That’s why Gary Vaynerchuk decided to come out and be the face of his media agency because they realise people fall in love with the person. So that connection is something you just cannot escape. Even if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, it doesn’t matter what kind of personality type you are; you will find your tribe just by being you.
KEY TAKEAWAY: Be you, be authentic, make that genuine connection!
Social media wins: it’s the most straightforward ideas that get the most traction!
Lucy: So I find that the best posts are the ones that are showing your flaws. They’re showing you with bed-head; they’re showing you with a little bit of yoghurt on your nose or whatever: completely authentic images.
I know you’re a photographer, I know you’re doing amazing, amazing shots, and you can’t escape the power of compelling imagery. But whenever it comes to building real connection, showing those flaws is it’s powerful and really liberating.
So show your brand and connection in a multitude of ways:
- Compelling professional photographs
- Dynamic films with the right script underneath
- Authentic natural moments in life to showcase you being you.
And above all, remember, people, buy people!
Working with Lucy With A Why
So you may be wondering when you should be looking at working with Lucy, and when it could be right for your business, so I asked the question:
Lucy: I get a lot of people coming to me whenever they’ve already gotten established business, but that just tired or their brand is bland. They need to have a kick and Zhuzh it up, and they’re just not feeling that they’re living it and it’s doesn’t resemble them. So a lot of times its people who’ve got an existing established business, and they need some great ideas.
Also, I work with startups who want to do it right the first time: we get people that just want to jump in, then you get the ones who want to go all in and do it right.
Connecting With Lucy
Lucy is all over Social Media (as you would expect) and you can find her at the following:
Website: https://lucywithawhy.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/lucywithawhy1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lucywithawhy/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/lucy-with-a-why
The Personal Connection Podcast
There was so much shared in the podcast, which you can find at your favourite podcast provider, or listen to the episode below.