Today, there is a good celebrity example to look at.

Few of us have the opportunities to address “People of Earth” and have them actually pay attention.

Conan O’Brien has a very strong personal brand, through his own talents and his association with very other strong brands like the Tonight Show. His “People of Earth” release only enhanced that brand. It is easy for anyone to pick up his enormous passion for his job from this release.

We can all learn a lesson from that.

If you survey your workplace, would others know what your passion is? What have you done lately to demonstrate your passion?

Photo credit: vtdainfo

Related articles online

• Conan O’Brien’s manager says statement not about points or strategy (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Conan tells NBC he won’t wait up for them (thestar.com)
• Conan Won’t Do A Later Tonight Show (cinemablend.com)
• Conan O’Brien Leaving the Tonight Show (defamer.gawker.com)
• Conan O’Brien Says No To 12:05 (popdose.com)
• Conan Makes An Official Statement (perezhilton.com)
• Local viewers sympathize with Conan’s no-change stance (pbpulse.com)

Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon. I’ve discussed in previous posts the creation story, the creed, the icon, the rituals, and the pagans / nonbelievers. This week, I’ll be focusing on the sacred words.

What are sacred words? I believe the best example is Apples’ “i”s. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc. Apple has created a language all their own for their products.

Smaller businesses have sacred words too! Remember that bake shop / candle shop / soap shop that has really smart names for their flavors? That’s sacred words in action.

Have you ever heard the following phrase just roll off of somebody’s tongue? “A grande non-fat sugar-free vanilla latte, extra hot, no foam, please.” That’s sacred words in action.

Allow me to share with you a story. My co-workers and I regularly visit this sandwich shop for lunch. They have many options for the sandwiches. What size? What kind of bread? Cheese? So, we challenge ourselves to go through the entire ordering process without them having to ask us one single question. This is us learning their language, their sacred words. That’s sacred words in action.

Why are sacred words important? Because every culture has a language of their own. To have your own culture, your own cult, your own following, you must create the language your culture / cult / following will use.

As I have done in previous weeks, I’d like to take these primal branding principles to the next level. I’d like to see how scared words are leveraged not only by businesses, but by people. What works for corporate branding should work for personal branding too.

What does sacred words mean for personal branding?

There are two fronts to this question. Are you a follower or are you the leader? At any given time, you are both.

First, you’re a follower in your industry. You must know the sacred words in your industry to fit into that cult. This is to know the jargons. This has obvious implications if you’re looking for a job. Your resume needs to reflect the right jargon. You need to be on the same page, speaking the same lingo, with your interviewer.

Second, you’re a leader in your industry and in your own personal brand. In your industry / company, you define the words your people would use.

Allow me to share another story. A boss of mine used to use the term “EEC”. Always act and speak with EEC. What’s EEC? Energy, Enthusiasm, and Conviction. EEC was his term. This was his scared word.

As a leader of my own personal brand, I have built a reputation of being a good worker with a good attitude. When was the last time you heard someone say “spiffy”? I used to say that all the time when people ask “how’s it going?” In fact, once I didn’t say “spiffy”, I said something along the line of “great”… my co-worker called me out! “Oh, not spiffy?” This was how I knew that “spiffy” was my scared word.

As I grew in my career, I’ve retired “spiffy”. Currently, my default answer is “can’t complain”. Simple enough right? But it’s actually quite powerful when it’s integrated with other aspects of my personal brand. Consider the following conversation that actually happened:

Marketing Director: How’s it going?
Me: Can’t complain.
Marketing Director: Well, you wouldn’t even if you can.

My simple “can’t complain” reinforces my personal brand of being a good worker with a good attitude.

How do you answer “How’s it going?” What are your scared words?

Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon. I’ve discussed in previous posts the creation story, the creed, and the icon. This week, we move onto rituals.

“Rituals are the meaningful repeated points of contact between you and your guest, customer, client, or target market.”

These rituals come in many forms. For example, you putting a piece of lime into a Corona is a ritual. It was not based on history or culture or taste. It started as a bartender’s invention. Capitalized by marketers. Once the masses adopted this practice, a ritual was born.

Another example of ritual could be you expecting fare sales in your inbox every Tuesday. Therefore, you faithfully check your inbox or airline websites every Tuesday. That is a ritual.

In the blogsphere, a commonly adopted ritual is to post on a regular basis. If you post every Monday, your readers can build a ritual around reading your blog every Monday.

Alas, I have not adopted posting on a regular basis. I have found with my visitor stats that posting every other day have been most effectively. However, I have not necessarily take advantage of this insight. And really, there is no excuses considering I could write the posts ahead of time, and post-date the publishing.

(So readers, please comment if you think my irregular posting is affecting your blog reading ritual…)

On another front, let’s consider how else a business could apply ritual and build this code into everything you do.

Let’s look at the definition one more time: “meaningful repeated points of contact”.

That is something that happens already! Naturally! The trick is to identify them and to leverage them. Like anything, it is much easily to leverage what organically and naturally happen with your business than to build something new. Leveraging existing rituals is much easier than building new rituals. It would also make your brand more authentic.

For example, if you have a book store. Your products are part of an existing ritual. Your books are part of book club meetings. So, why not capitalize on that ritual and host the meetings? Perhaps suggest the next book to read for the club? Chances are the club would buy your suggestions at your store, rather than your competition.

On a personal branding front, what ritual are you already part of? What do people expect of you?

At work, I keep a candy jar in my cube. Many people think of me when 3pm comes around. That is a ritual, and, yes, there are many ways to leverage this. In addition to just building good will, it also offers me great opportunity to connect with different people in the office that I may not be working with right now. Sometimes, I could just bounce ideas off of them in those moments that they are in my cube.

But like any branding efforts, any mistake could derail the whole campaign. If you are always late to meetings, that would become your ritual and part of your brand!

So, what ritual are you already part of? Is there a way for you to leverage that to positively reinforce your brand?

Okay, as a marketer today, you can’t help but to see the potential coming from Twitter. I first learned about Twitter from a friend many years ago. But I generally avoid these social networking services because 1) I could end up wasting too much time on them 2) Not all services are created equal and not all services have longevity, so why bother?

However, Twitter has proved that it is here to stay for now…

So, as a marketer, I found myself wanting to learn more about Twitter, many months after when I probably should have. I set up a Twitter account. I haven’t Tweet yet, because I am not sure what I want to say… How do I want to brand myself on Twitter? Professional? Personal? Fun? Serious? Am I Jeannie as the Marketer? Jeannie as the Travel Lover? Some combination of all of the above?

But even in this early stage, I have learned a couple valuable lessons about Twitter and social media in general. Perhaps these are lessons you have learned yourself as well after some trial and error.

1. People will find you. I haven’t made a single Tweet. I haven’t announced my Twitter account anywhere. I have no links to my Twitter account. Yet, I have followers! Some of these followers are people I know. Some of these followers I don’t recognize. These followers perplex me more. They could just be complete strangers. Or they could have found me, through just Googling or whatever, and have some vested interest in learning more about me. Possibly a potential future business partner, or potential future boss? I don’t know. While I don’t think that is likely, the fact that I could not rule it out makes me think twice before just posting on Twitter anything that could be potentially damaging to my personal brand.

2. If you’re not ahead of the curve, you’re behind. I did not jump on the Twitter train when I first learned about it. By the time I finally decided to get a Twitter account set up, I was already too late. My most desired handle has been taken, just mere months ago! Instead of @jeanniechan (which is the most popular format), I had to settle for @jeannie_chan. So, what I have learned is that if the investment is low, go ahead and jump on the latest bandwagon! You could always get off it if you are not getting the pay off that you were expecting. But if you wait, you just may miss out!

Photo Credit: Jump on the social media bandwagon, originally uploaded by Matt Hamm.

So, this weekend, I had the TV on. True to the nature of cable TV, I was able to catch the re-runs of my favorite reality TV shows (I’m using the word favorite very liberally here.) In any case, I caught the show Millionaire Matchmaker. This episode featured Dave Levine, aka. Sex Toy Dave.

This is Dave’s second time on this show. He had practically developed a business model that incorporated reality TV. I thought it was a great example of personal branding.

His branding started with his famous parties out in LA. His participation on the reality show propelled his celebrity status, which feeds back into his party boy image, which powers his sex toy business.

More ingenious part of this plan was the show he actually chose to be on. Millionaire Matchmaker airs on Bravo. It’s probably one of two networks on basic cable that would actually allow him to feature his business and his products. This network has an age demographic of 18-54 and it over-indexes on viewers’ internet usage, according to the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau. This network has perfected brand integration, and its viewer has high brand recall. Lastly, it is the most recognizable brand among the gays. This is the perfect network to appear on for an internet sex business!

Genius marketing.