Resolution for 2015: Value People, Not Personal Brands

Do you look as good in real life as you do in your LinkedIn profile photo?

Odds are, if you’re like me, you probably don’t.

It’s because we’re all concerned about personal branding, right?

This concept has grown in importance in recent years and reached a crescendo for me recently when I read, “How to Promote Yourself Without Looking Like a Jerk.” It’s a good article, too, filled with useful advice (SPOILER ALERT: “It’s essential to express humility”).

I was disconcerted, however, when I realized this wasn't posted on Buzzfeed; instead, it was an article in the Harvard Business Review.

There are now so many rules and demonstrated best practices that “personal branding” is taught in our classrooms, and not just for the benefit of business students. Even Kevin Hart recently schooled Sony in the concept.

But isn’t there a point when there are so many rules that they become at odds with the authenticity that’s needed to truly create a personal brand and achieve some form of influence?

In a favorite scene from the 1999 cult classic “Office Space,” a waitress and her manager at a restaurant called Chotchkie’s discuss why she is required to wear a minimum of 15 novelty buttons on her suspenders to express herself and show “flair.”

Is social media influence the 2015 version of Chotchkie’s flair, where knowledge workers and professionals are being judged and measured by Klout scores and proprietary algorithms?

I know… we should all be concerned about personal branding. It can be a necessary job skill and communications tool. I blog, I post here on LinkedIn and often on Twitter, I flat-out enjoy Instagram, I flirt with Google+. As a PR rep for a large company, I see many others doing the same.

But I also see professional journalists and writers and PR experts under greater and greater pressure to create personal brands and measurable influence.

I wonder, is all this personal branding headed for a jump the shark moment? Some monumental, irrevocable privacy hack that will make everything that comes after it seem silly?

In an age where everyone in the pack is trying to demonstrate flair, where is leadership? Perhaps it's found among those who truly inform, advocate, educate, entertain, build, repair, create, comfort or invent. And perhaps even David Ogilvy was wrong when he said if you can't be brilliant, you should at least be memorable.

I think the whole concept of personal branding has been overblown, and that the fewer personal branding rules there are, the better.

As a resolution for 2015, let me suggest a model from someone who recently spoke to the Verizon social media team.

Justin Foster, branding strategist and author of “Oatmeal v Bacon,” pointed to three universal truths that are now amplified by social media. He expressed them in the negative (one rule was, “don’t be stupid”), but I like the positive corollaries better:

1. Be interesting.
2. Be kind.
3. Be smart.

If we're all trying to focus on any of these three things, I don’t think anyone would ever have to worry about their personal brands.

Oh, and one other rule… be sure to have a talented colleague like Theo Carracino snap your LinkedIn profile photo surreptitiously, and from a distance.

After all, I don’t think my smile would be authentic if I was posing.

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Valuing Everything Bright and Hopeful

I can’t stop reading the news lately. All the senseless deaths, all the bitter words, all the threats.

I find myself obsessed, and mesmerized, by black-and-white words on electronic screens and in newsprint.

Is the world really spiraling out of control?

Earlier this morning, I was looking through recent photos on my cell phone, intending to post something on Twitter (despite everything, you have to keep up appearances, right?) when I noticed all the bright colors surrounding me.

I felt as if I had been suddenly snapped out of hypnosis.

Even in the photos I took at work — an interconnected hive of office space neighboring a vast tract of New Jersey swampland — I saw signs of hope.

There’s a Christmas tree with dozens of donated toys. There are otherwise bland cubicles strung with holiday lights. There’s the stuffed lion wearing a Penn State sweater I bought for our Secret Santa swap, and the miniature gold Notre Dame helmet I received in return.

As I continued to flip through the photos, I was astounded by all the beauty.

There are the smiling faces at the dinner with colleagues from work, and photos of festive Morristown Green outside… the first gathering of friends from my daughter’s barn… the warm hospitality of our end-of-year IABC-NJ board meeting… houses decorated with lights… gift-wrapped packages… photos of family members coming home… my wife with her arm around our daughter, wearing a red dress, before they left yesterday on their annual outing to see “The Nutcracker.”

I value all the people who shine so brightly, and I am grateful for all the colors that surround me. They fill me with hope and inspiration and light, even in the world’s darkest hours.

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Ferrygrams From Weehawken

The best way to travel between New Jersey and New York is also the most scenic.

It's NY Waterways' Port Imperial/Weehawken ferry line, and I love taking photos of the New York City skyline, coming and going.

If you're looking for an interesting place, found in New Jersey, I suggest starting here and then simply enjoying the ride. It reminds us, in the immortal words of photojournalist Dan Eldon that the journey is the destination.

I've posted 10 other photos from recent ferry trips to this Google album.

PS - Here's a ferry arriving in New York, March 2019...

How Long Until the Elmos Show Up at Ground Zero?

I visited the 9/11 Memorial for the first time yesterday morning.

Not long after the terrorist attacks, I saw a chilling bird's eye view of the site through a gaping hole in the side of Verizon's building at 140 West St., which had been damaged by the collapse of Building 7.

Some force kept me from visiting the memorial sooner, but the recent openings of the museum and One World Trade Center all but shamed me into standing at the foot of the void.

I can prove I was there too. While I was at looking at the names inscribed in bronze around the perimeters of the two memorial pools, I found myself inadvertently in the background of more than a dozen people taking smiling selfies.

Of course, much has already been written and discussed about this phenomenon. But to see it in person was a bit like peeking again through that gash in the side of the building in 2001.

These weren't "I was here" poses. These were people extending expensive cell phones high in the air on selfie sticks and playfully mugging for the camera. Lovers were hugging each other with big smiles on their faces. A group of young women wearing fake tiaras were capping the previous night's birthday celebration with a group portrait. All that seemed missing was someone posing with Elmo or one of the other costumed characters who roam Times Square.

It's not that I'm against selfies. I take more than my share. There are countless photos posted on the @Sept11Memorial Twitter account that strike a respectful and balanced tone.

Posted here is a photo I took yesterday morning of Michael S. Baksh's name. On Sept. 11, 2001, my wife was teaching where his children went to school. He died on his first day at work as an insurance executive at Marsh & McLennan.

I have to believe that people, in their hearts, know that some things are still sacred. If you believe that too, please take a moment today to say a prayer for Michael Baksh and his family.

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Teach Your Readers: A Review of "Wild Tales"

Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life by Graham Nash
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, my life certainly hasn't been as interesting as Mr. Nash's... and I bet yours hasn't been either -- especially if, like the poor wretches he writes about in his home town ("Cold Rain"), you go to work every day, pay your taxes and don't do drugs.

In the incestuous other-world of classic rock, you can hate guns but then tell loving stories about your best friend shooting people. You can live on mini-compounds of homes on dozens of acres of land, and be a voice for conservation. You and your mates can ravage your voices and squander a good bit of career productivity on drugs and possessions (with women seemingly placed in that category until you reach middle age), and yet profess that music is always first and foremost. But then you can also helicopter in to benefit concerts and raise money for good causes too -- so what do I know?

I read this book because I enjoyed the early CSNY ("Our House" was a staple on my high school's jukebox for years after the song came out), and Graham Nash's public persona seems refreshingly likeable. And, very likely, he's a great guy in real life. Here, though... well, I wanted to give this book only 2 stars. I found it more preachy than descriptive or insightful, and it made me feel... well, small.

However, I listened to the audio version, which is read by the author, and every once in a while Graham Nash breaks into song. So I gave it an extra star.

View all my reviews

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"What Matters Most": A Lesson From Steve Jobs in 1993

I save everything. In the dark days before Evernote existed, when my media relations career was very young, I used to save physical clips of newspaper articles that intrigued me.

Most were snarky quotes. For example, from a Wall Street Journal article in December 1991, just after President (H.W.) Bush fired his chief of staff, John Sununu, I clipped a cruel joke White House staffers used to describe how unpopular he had become:

Q: If you had John Sununu, Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi in a room... and a gun with two bullets, what would you do?
 

A: Shoot Sununu twice.

I kept these clips in a file folder tabbed “Unusual.” I came across that folder earlier today while cleaning my office. My department is soon moving to a new location on the Verizon campus – and yes, one with a new “open office” layout.

That’s where I saw the “hedcut” portrait of Steve Jobs in a Page 1 story from the May 25, 1993, edition of the Journal.

It was an ugly story. It detailed his struggles – eight years removed from his first stint at Apple -- as the 38-year-old head of a computer company, Next Inc. By May 1993, Next had stopped manufacturing computers to concentrate on developing software, the company’s president and CFO had quit, and a consortium of other computer makers had just formed a software alliance that excluded Next.

The story was a litany of Next’s failures. One of the subheads proclaimed, “Flawed Vision.” It was, for all intents and purposes, the Journal's corporate obituary of one Steven P. Jobs.
What floored me – and why I saved the article – were the final sentences of the long story:

Yet Mr. Jobs talks of NextStep as “the operating system of the 90s,” partly because “everyone wants an alternative to Microsoft.” And he continues to contend that [Bill] Gates can’t match his own record of innovation.
 

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.”

Everything… everything… Jobs had tried at Next had turned out wrong. It was the worst case scenario. Yet, in summation of it all, he comes up with this wonderful quote that succinctly describes who his competition is, what his strengths are and what his purpose is.

And he continued to believe in this purpose, despite all odds, because it’s a higher purpose:

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.”

That’s the true epitaph of Steven P. Jobs. How perfect, and how refreshing and unusual it is to read again in 2014.

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Fun With Google

Here's a Google-generated photo essay of my trip yesterday morning into New York. Loving the camera on my new Droid Turbo.

Just Another Arbitrary Book Review

The Postmortal by Drew Magary
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is imaginative and thought-provoking. Sometimes I got the feeling that the author was just winging it - but I consider that evidence of natural talent. The plot did veer off in odd directions toward the end... and some scenes make "The Grapes of Wrath" seem like a musical comedy... but I like that fact that I couldn't anticipate where this was headed. I should probably give this 4 stars instead of 3, but the author is a notorious hater of my alma mater (in fact, that's why I chose to read this book), so I'm going to be a bit arbitrary about this. Just like the way SEC officials are in calling offensive pass interference.

View all my reviews

Aria for a Lost Weekend: How Not to Spend Time Alone

This weekend, I was home alone in New Jersey for the first time in 20 years.

I’ve been away on business without my wife and children, but this weekend was the first time they’ve all been away on their own without me.

I mentioned this to a co-worker the other day. When she relayed our conversation to her husband and I relayed it to my wife, the reaction of both spouses was precisely the same: “How does that fact even come up in normal conversation?”

Pretty funny, and a fair question too... I had been thinking out loud about what to do on Saturday. “I mean,” I said to my co-worker, struggling to think of something besides drinking beer and watching college football, “I’ve never been to an opera before.”

What a random thing to say; I can’t fathom why it came to mind. So I took it as a sign: I was destined to spend this anomaly in my space-time continuum at the opera.

Online I learned that Bizet’s “Carmen” was playing at The Metropolitan Opera, less than 15 miles away. Until that moment, all I knew about “Carmen” was what I had learned by watching Katarina Witt skate at the 1988 Olympics – and what I had learned back then had nothing to do with the opera.

What can I say? I’m just your average José – which is a reference I can make after reading about “Carmen” on Wikipedia. I also found a YouTube clip of Elina Garanca singing “Habanera” and thought, “Maybe this satisfies destiny, and I should stay home.”

                                                                                    

No, I decided, I needed to buy a ticket to experience this first-hand. At a recent technology exhibit, I had taken a virtual-reality ride in virtual IndyCar in the Verizon employee cafeteria. It was fun, but made me regret never having driven a real racecar.

Here was the dilemma I faced: The available last-minute tickets were either reasonably priced in the last rows, or ridiculously overpriced in the front.

I know men who would buy a front-row seat without thinking. They’re the kind of guys who have already driven a racecar. I admire them. Other men would buy a ticket in the back, settling for a tinier version of Elina Garanca rather than splurging at the expense of their family. I’m that guy, I conceded, after an inner monologue worthy of Hamlet.

I was about to buy a single back-row ticket, when I received a text message from my wife. The message was ordinary, and I replied that I missed her.

This virtual conversation gave me pause. Wasn’t there another option?

Yes. I purchased two good-but-not-extravagant “Carmen” tickets instead… for a future performance when my wife would be home.

I grabbed a beer and went to the living room to watch the Notre Dame game with one thought in mind:

Aren’t the best experiences only worth it, and only real, when someone you love is beside you?

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