Personal Branding Lessons From A 93-Year-Old Fashion Icon

When I’m giving keynotes, I often ask audiences to name strong personal brands.

I typically get mass-appeal responses like Oprah, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs.

I never once hear the name Iris Apfel.

Yet Iris, an unexpected fashion icon and the subject of a recent documentary by the late Albert Maysles, exemplifies all the important elements of successful personal branding – including the fact that successful brands aren’t necessarily known around the world; what matters is how the target audience responds.

Here’s how Iris excels at personal branding and what you can do to build a brand as compelling as hers.

She Focuses On Superlatives

Early in her career, Iris was an interior designer working for high-end clients in New York. Her commitment to deliver the extraordinary led her to become a partner in a textile business. She wasn’t able to get fabric that was authentic enough for old-world designs, so she formed a partnership with a weaver who would produce fabrics featuring her designs. The fabric business was ultimately sold to Starck for an undisclosed sum, while her commitment to delivering the best helped her stand out and achieve renown.

She Doesn’t Try To Blend In

Just one look at Iris, and you can tell that she dances to her own drummer. She doesn’t focus on conformity. From her copious costume jewelry to her feathered jackets, she exudes her own personal style and does so with pride and confidence. She doesn’t do it for the sake of being different, either. She does so because she is comfortable in her own shoes and willing to be herself. Conformity is not in Iris’ vocabulary; her career has been devoted to fashion and design that celebrates the unexpected.

She Has A Trademark

Many of the world’s strongest brands have a piece of clothing or accessory or physical trait or expression that they use consistently. These hallmarks make the brand instantly recognizable. For Conan O’Brien, it’s the flip of red hair. For Martha Stewart it’s the phrase “It’s a good thing.” For Iris, it’s her saucer-sized eyeglasses. In aninterview with People Magazine, she said “Ever since I was a little kid, I was a flea market freak and every time I saw an odd-ball frame, I bought them. Sometimes, even if I didn’t need to wear lenses, I’d put the frames on because I liked how they looked. People would say to me, ‘Why are they so large?’ and I would say, ‘Because they are better to see you.’ And that would shut them up.”

She Doesn’t Take Herself Too Seriously

Iris has a great sense of humor and quickly spouts quips that are as witty as Oscar Wilde’s. She is willing to fail and to laugh when she strikes out. This resilience is essential to successful personal branding. Although it may seem like a straight trajectory, all strong brands encounter bumps along the way. 

She’s A Leader, Not A Follower

No individual designer interests Iris. She creates her own sense of style and borrows from all the designers to create her own one-of-a-kind look. She is not concerned about the styles of the day. She will pull things from decades past and combine them with her most recent fashion purchase. She sets the tone, and it’s timeless.

She Delivers A Unique Experience

She always offered her design clients an experience that wasn’t available from other interior designers. Through trips to Paris and other far-flung destinations, she and her husband created an astonishing collection of art objects and furnishings. When she would take her clients to her warehouse to see her collection, they were treated to a tour of items that were not available from any other designer and were not displayed in an expected way.

She Has Opinions

And she’s willing to share them. Strong brands have a point of view and often repel as many people as they attract. Iris doesn’t mince words. Her goal is not to try to please everyone. That’s how personal branding works. Strong brands are committed to their ideals and not too concerned about what others think. When you try to please everyone, you rarely excite anyone.

She Gives Back

Generosity and philanthropy are critical to effective branding. Iris donated clothes from her collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts. She also decided to teach kids about the fashion industry and annually meets with students from the University of Texas on their visit to New York.

She Lives Her Passions

Perhaps the most exciting element of personal branding is the connection between passions and success. Personal branding is about aligning who you are with what you do and how you do it. When you can link everything you do to your passions, you build a constantly replenishing fuel supply. Iris gets her fuel from creativity, shopping in unexpected places and sharing her style with those around her. If you focus on what fuels you, your brand will never run out of energy. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2015/06/28/personal-branding-lessons-from-a-93-year-old-fashion-icon

5 Easy Ways To Stand Out And Get People To Notice You At Work

Do you have trouble standing out from the crowd at work?

The best solution is to reinvent those tiresome “chores” that your co-workers dread.

By finding ways to make these tasks more palatable (or even fun!) you can get noticed at work while building your brand.

Here are five of the easiest ways to make it happen. Choose the one(s) that helps you bolster your personal brand.

Make Your Presentations Pop. 

Most presentations at most companies are a combination at bullets and words. Bo-ring!  I was delivering a keynote at a major financial services firm in New York last week, and the A/V director said to me, “I see dozens of presentations a day, and there is only one person inside the firm who has interesting ones – everyone in the firm knows him because his presentations are really wow.” Try to reduce the number of words on your slides by 90%. Use images to convey your message instead. Add animations to make it playful, and change the standard transitions to something that adds excitement and energy. Just don’t overdo it; you don’t want your message to get lost in the glitz.

Lead fun meetings. 

When you think about what you do each week, attending meetings probably comes to mind, evoking a sigh of dread. When you lead meetings, use this as an opportunity to stand out by making every element of the meeting engaging and interesting . Start with the invitation. Be original! Begin your meeting with an interesting activity, short but thought-provoking video or a powerful question that each participant has to answer. Create materials that are fun and compelling. Hold your meetings in unusual places – like outside. The ultimate goal is for your meetings to become so differentiated, interesting and productive that people throughout the organization actually hope to be invited

Change your voicemail greeting. 

I created my voicemail greeting at an airport, and you can hear the flight announcements in the background. When people leave a voicemail for me, they often comment on my outgoing message, telling me it’s on-brand because I am always traveling. So I have not changed that message in years. Another approach is to change it every day! This takes commitment and requires getting into the habit, but has an impact. It makes an impression when someone hears “Today is Tuesday, December 30th. I will be in workshops all morning, but I will get back to you this afternoon….” People are sick of the standard “I’m not available right now but if you leave your name and number and a brief message….” Instead of saying, “not available,” tell them what you’re doing. This helps callers learn more about you and the value you provide. Think about how you can make your voicemail greeting stand out from the pack, and if you’re up to it, change it daily.

Redecorate.

Most offices in most companies are beige and boring. One client in the UK painted her office pink. Another client brought in her Nespresso coffee machine – making her office a meeting spot for the espresso crowd. A client in Seattle brought in her own furniture – a glass and chrome desk and leather and chrome Barcelona chairs because she was working in marketing for the luxury segment and wanted her office to reflect that. When I was rising through the ranks at Lotus (a division of IBM) I changed my office to suit my brand attributes of being health-conscious and collaborative. I replaced one of the two desks in my office with a round table, and I brought in a glass bowl from home, which I filled each week with Granny Smith apples. It wasn’t such a giant deviation from the standard office, but it was enough to get noticed; in fact, it became known as “the Pottery Barn showroom.” Company rules may limit what you’re able to do, or your manager may not want you to make major changes, but you can still work within those constraints. Even in companies with strict rules about office space, there are things you can do to make yours stand out and reinforce your brand attributes – like bringing in fresh flowers weekly or changing your screen-saver and the pictures you post to your wall.

Replace text with images and video. 

Are you sick of reading emails and instant messages? We see a lot of text each day. If you want your communications to stand out, use images and video. Create an infographic to share the latest company statistics. Integrate images into your email signature. Send video proposals to clients or your boss, and use video to thank and congratulate team members and colleagues. Hold video meetings instead of phone conferences, and send video updates to your remotely based team members. Here’s a piece I wrote with video resources.

Remember, branding is about differentiation. Think about these opportunities and choose the ones that feel authentic to you, leading to everyday habits that bolster your brand.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2014/12/30/5-easy-ways-to-stand-out-and-get-people-to-notice-you-at-work/