What's Next: Taking Care Of Brand "You"

There's a lot of anxiety out in agency land these days.

I'm hearing lots of chatter and concern about the marketplace, clients cutting budgets, layoffs, etc.

I think we are also in a period of time where we'll see one or two major players simply drop out of the race (remember Bates Worldwide?).

During these challenging times, often people are paralyzed by the fear of what might happen, instead of moving forward to better themselves and position their careers so that the bad stuff doesn't happen to them.

There's no more important time for you to be working on Brand You. Brand You is not a new concept: business and career consultants have been talking about it forever. Network, keep up with changes in your industry, etc., etc.

But never has this been more true in our business than today.

So whether you be in media, account management, creative, production, or any other group within our wonderful industry, it's time to get up to speed and keep up to speed.

Who are agencies going to value when it comes time to cut? Who is going to be at the top of the list when agencies are looking for new talent.

Those who get What's Next.

Knowing What's Next means knowing about innovation. It means understanding and being able to talk about and then leverage the technology and platforms now available to us as marketers. It means that when you graduated from school that your education was not over. Except now you need to be self-educated.

Here's a couple of ways to do that:

1. Find a mentor. Someone who you think REALLY gets it. Someone who is willing to spend some time with you discussing what's important and what to be paying attention to. You would be surprised how many people would relish this role. They just don't get asked.

2. Read. Blogs. Business books. And then more blogs. Here's my routine: I have about twenty blog subscriptions on my Google Reader list. I do the best I can to get through at least the headlines of each everyday. Takes about twenty minutes. I wind up reading about five posts. Thats about 100 articles a month written by blogger's who write about the latest and greatest.

I always have two books on my night table: one for business and one for pleasure. I alternate from one to the other or garb a few pages from each every night. Right now I am reading "The History of Knowledge" by Charles Van Doren, and I'm re-reading "Microtrends" by Mark Penn. Make it a habit.

3. Constantly be curious. I read this great book about Ben Franklin, and the author points out that throughout Franklin's life he has an tremendous curiosity about everything. How things worked. Why someone made a certain decision. He was passionate in his desire to uncover the reason for how and why.

The same passion you need to have when it comes to keeping up with What's Next.

Comments

[Stephanie]

I agree always be looking for new information. I try and read about 4 books a week and love reading blogs for information as well.