what does brand mean to u?

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Therefore it makes sense to understand that branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.

The objectives that a good brand will achieve include:

• Delivers the message clearly
• Confirms your credibility
• Connects your target prospects emotionally
• Motivates the buyer
• Concretes User Loyalty

To succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wants of your customers and prospects. You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact.

Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. It's important to spend time investing in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all your brand is the source of a promise to your consumer. It's a foundational piece in your marketing communication and one you do not want to be without.

What does branding mean to your company's marketing strategy? Post Questions, Comments, and Answers to this Question in the in this blog.....

AKACHUKWU BARACHEAL CHRIS

FOR

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS.

SELF DISCIPLINE> (PART 2) ACCEPTANCE

The first of the five pillars of self-discipline is acceptance. Acceptance means that you perceive reality accurately and consciously acknowledge what you perceive.

This may sound simple and obvious, but in practice it’s extremely difficult. If you experience chronic difficulties in a particular area of your life, there’s a strong chance that the root of the problem is a failure to accept reality as it is.

Why is acceptance a pillar of self-discipline? The most basic mistake people make with respect to self-discipline is a failure to accurately perceive and accept their present situation. Remember the analogy between self-discipline and weight training from yesterday’s post? If you’re going to succeed at weight training, the first step is to figure out what weights you can already lift. How strong are you right now? Until you figure out where you stand right now, you cannot adopt a sensible training program.

If you haven’t consciously acknowledged where you stand right now in terms of your level of self-discipline, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to improve at all in this area. Imagine a would-be bodybuilder who has no idea how much weight s/he can lift and arbitrarily adopts a training routine. It’s virtually certain that the chosen weights will be either too heavy or too light. If the weights are too heavy, the trainee won’t be able to lift them at all and thus will experience no muscle growth. And if the weights are too light, the trainee will lift them easily but won’t build any muscle in doing so.

Similarly, if you want to increase your self-discipline, you must know where you stand right now. How strong is your discipline at this moment? Which challenges are easy for you, and which are virtually impossible for you?

Here’s a list of challenges to get you thinking about where you stand right now (in no particular order):

• Do you shower/bathe every day?
• Do you get up at the same time every morning? Including weekends?
• Are you overweight?
• Do you have any addictions (caffeine, nicotine, sugar, etc.) you’d like to break but haven’t?
• Is your email inbox empty right now?
• Is your office neat and well organized?
• Is your home neat and well organized?
• How much time do you waste in a typical day? On a weekend?
• If you make a promise to someone, what’s the percentage chance you’ll keep it?
• If you make a promise to yourself, what’s the percentage chance you’ll keep it?
• Could you fast for one day?
• How well organized is your computer’s hard drive?
• How often do you exercise?
• What’s the greatest physical challenge you’ve ever faced, and how long ago was it?
• How many hours of focused work do you complete in a typical workday?
• How many items on your to do list are older than 90 days?
• Do you have clear, written goals? Do you have written plans to achieve them?
• If you lost your job, how much time would you spend each day looking for a new one, and how long would you maintain that level of effort?
• How much TV do you currently watch? Could you give up TV for 30 days?
• How do you look right now? What does your appearance say about your level of discipline (clothes, grooming, etc)?
• Do you primarily select foods to eat based on health considerations or on taste/satiety?
• When was the last time you consciously adopted a positive new habit? Discontinued a bad habit?
• Are you in debt? Do you consider this debt an investment or a mistake?
• Did you decide in advance to be reading this blog right now, or did it just happen?
• Can you tell me what you’ll be doing tomorrow? Next weekend?
• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your overall level of self-discipline?
• What more could you accomplish if you could answer that last question with a 9 or 10?

Just as there are different muscle groups which you train with different exercises, there are different areas of self-discipline: disciplined sleep, disciplined diet, disciplined work habits, disciplined communication, etc. It takes different exercises to build discipline in each area.

My advice is to identify an area where your discipline is weakest, assess where you stand right now, acknowledge and accept your starting point, and design a training program for yourself to improve in this area. Start out with some easy exercises you know you can do, and gradually progress to greater challenges.

Progressive training works with self-discipline just as it does with building muscle. For example, if you can barely get out of bed at 10am, are you likely to succeed at waking up at 5am every morning? Probably not. But could you master getting up at 9:45am? Very likely. And once you’ve done that, could you progress to 9:30 or 9:15? Sure. When I started getting up at 5am consistently, I had already done it several times for a few days in a row, and my normal wake-up time was 6-6:30am, so that next step was challenging but achievable for me partly because I was already within range of it.

Without acceptance you get either ignorance or denial. With ignorance you simply don’t know how disciplined you are — you’ve probably never even thought about it. You don’t know that you don’t know. You’ll only have a fuzzy notion of what you can and can’t do. You’ll experience some easy successes and some dismal failures, but you’re more likely to blame the task or blame yourself instead of simply acknowledging that the “weight” was too heavy for you and that you need to become stronger.

When you’re in a state of denial about your level of discipline, you’re locked into a false view of reality. You’re either overly pessimistic or optimistic about your capabilities. And like the trainee who doesn’t know his/her own strength, you won’t get much better because it’s unlikely you’ll be able to hit the proper training zone by accident. On the pessimistic side, you’ll only pick up easy weights and avoid the heavy ones which you could actually lift and which would make you stronger. And on the optimistic side, you’ll keep trying to lift weights that are too heavy for you and failing, and afterwards you may either beat yourself up or resolve to try harder, neither of which will make you stronger.

I have personally reaped tremendous benefits from pursuing the path of self-discipline. When I was 20 years old, I lived in a small studio apartment, and my sleep hours were something like 4am to 1pm. My diet included lots of fast food and junk food. I didn’t exercise except for sometimes taking long walks. Getting the mail seemed like a significant accomplishment each day, and the highlight of my day was hanging out with friends. At the end of a month, I couldn’t really think of many salient events that occurred during the month. I had no job, no car, no income, no goals, no plans, and no real future. All I felt I had was a lot of problems that weren’t getting any better. I had no sense that I could control my path through life. I would simply wait for things to happen and then react to them.

But eventually I faced the reality that trying to wait out my life wasn’t working. If I was going to get anywhere, I was going to have to do something about it. And initially this meant tackling a lot of difficult challenges, but I overcame them and grew a lot stronger in a short period of time.

Fast forward fourteen years, and it’s like night and day. I get up at 5am each morning. I exercise six days a week. I eat a purely vegan diet with lots of fresh vegetables. My home office is well organized. My physical inbox and my email inbox are both empty. I’m married with two kids and live in a nice house. A binder sits on my desk with my written goals and detailed plans to achieve them, and several of my 2005 goals have already been accomplished. I’ve never been more clear about what I wanted, and I’m doing what I love. I know I’m making a difference.

None of this just happened. It was intentional. And it certainly didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of years of hard work. It’s still hard work, but I’ve become a lot stronger such that things that would have been insurmountable for me at age 20 are easy today, which means I can tackle bigger challenges and therefore achieve even better results. If I had tried to do everything I’m doing now when I was 20, I would have failed utterly. 20-year old Steve wouldn’t have been able to handle it, not even for one day. And what’s really exciting for me is to think of what i will be when am 40-year old  and will be able to accomplish… relative to my life path of course, not anyone else’s.

I AM telling you this to impress you, not with me but with yourself. I want you to be impressed by what you can accomplish over the next 5-10 years if you progressively build your self-discipline. It will not be easy, but it will be worth it. The first step is to openly accept where you are right now, whether you feel good about it or not. Surrender yourself to what you have to work with — maybe it isn’t fair, but it is what it is. And you won’t get any stronger until you accept where you are right now.

we will continue tommoroww.... for mnow.. iremain

AKACHUKWU BARACHEAL CHRIS

FOR 

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS

apointmediakonsepts@webmail.co.za

www.apmk.webs.com

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: self discipline is a most ....

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: self discipline is a most ....: This week I’ll be blogging a series on self-discipline. New posts on this topic will appear every day Mon-Fri. I’ve also added a new self-di...

self discipline is a most ....

This week I’ll be blogging a series on self-discipline. New posts on this topic will appear every day Mon-Fri. I’ve also added a new self-discipline category.

The Five Pillars of Self-Discipline

The five pillars of self-discipline are: Acceptance, Willpower, Hard Work, Industry, and Persistence. If you take the first letter of each word, you get the acronym “A WHIP” — a convenient way to remember them, since many people associate self-discipline with whipping themselves into shape.

What Is Self-Discipline?

Self-discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state.

Imagine what you could accomplish if you could simply get yourself to follow through on your best intentions no matter what. Picture yourself saying to your body, “You’re overweight. Lose 20 pounds.” Without self-discipline that intention won’t become manifest. But with sufficient self-discipline, it’s a done deal. The pinnacle of self-discipline is when you reach the point that when you make a conscious decision, it’s virtually guaranteed you’ll follow through on it.

Self-discipline is one of many personal development tools available to you. Of course it is not a panacea. Nevertheless, the problems which self-discipline can solve are important, and while there are other ways to solve these problems, self-discipline absolutely shreds them. Self-discipline can empower you to overcome any addiction or lose any amount of weight. It can wipe out procrastination, disorder, and ignorance. Within the domain of problems it can solve, self-discipline is simply unmatched. Moreover, it becomes a powerful teammate when combined with other tools like passion, goal-setting, and planning.

Building Self-Discipline

My philosophy of how to build self-discipline is best explained by an analogy. Self-discipline is like a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger you become. The less you train it, the weaker you become.

Just as everyone has different muscular strength, we all possess different levels of self-discipline. Everyone has some — if you can hold your breath a few seconds, you have some self-discipline. But not everyone has developed their discipline to the same degree.

Just as it takes muscle to build muscle, it takes self-discipline to build self-discipline.

The way to build self-discipline is analogous to using progressive weight training to build muscle. This means lifting weights that are close to your limit. Note that when you weight train, you lift weights that are within your ability to lift. You push your muscles until they fail, and then you rest.

Similarly, the basic method to build self-discipline is to tackle challenges that you can successfully accomplish but which are near your limit. This doesn’t mean trying something and failing at it every day, nor does it mean staying within your comfort zone. You will gain no strength trying to lift a weight that you cannot budge, nor will you gain strength lifting weights that are too light for you. You must start with weights/challenges that are within your current ability to lift but which are near your limit.

Progressive training means that once you succeed, you increase the challenge. If you keep working out with the same weights, you won’t get any stronger. Similarly, if you fail to challenge yourself in life, you won’t gain any more self-discipline.

Just as most people have very weak muscles compared to how strong they could become with training, most people are very weak in their level of self-discipline.

It’s a mistake to try to push yourself too hard when trying to build self-discipline. If you try to transform your entire life overnight by setting dozens of new goals for yourself and expecting yourself to follow through consistently starting the very next day, you’re almost certain to fail. This is like a person going to the gym for the first time ever and packing 300 pounds on the bench press. You will only look silly.

If you can only lift 10 lbs, you can only lift 10 lbs. There’s no shame in starting where you are. I recall when I began working with a personal trainer several years ago, on my first attempt at doing a barbell shoulder press, I could only lift a 7-lb bar with no weight on it. My shoulders were very weak because I’d never trained them. But within a few months I was up to 60 lbs.

Similarly, if you’re very undisciplined right now, you can still use what little discipline you have to build more. The more disciplined you become, the easier life gets. Challenges that were once impossible for you will eventually seem like child’s play. As you get stronger, the same weights will seem lighter and lighter.

Don’t compare yourself to other people. It won’t help. You’ll only find what you expect to find. If you think you’re weak, everyone else will seem stronger. If you think you’re strong, everyone else will seem weaker. There’s no point in doing this. Simply look at where you are now, and aim to get better as you go forward.

Let’s consider an example.

Suppose you want to develop the ability to do 8 solid hours of work each day, since you know it will make a real difference in your career. I was listening to an audio program this morning that quoted a study saying the average office worker spends 37% of their time in idle socializing, not to mention other vices that chew up more than 50% of work time with unproductive non-work. So there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Perhaps you try to work a solid 8-hour day without succumbing to distractions, and you can only do it once. The next day you fail utterly. That’s OK. You did one rep of 8 hours. Two is too much for you. So cut back a bit. What duration would allow you to successfully do 5 reps (i.e. a whole week)? Could you work with concentration for one hour a day, five days in a row? If you can’t do that, cut back to 30 minutes or whatever you can do. If you succeed (or if you feel that would be too easy), then increase the challenge (i.e. the resistance).

Once you’ve mastered a week at one level, take it up a notch the next week. And continue with this progressive training until you’ve reached your goal.

While analogies like this are never perfect, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this one. By raising the bar just a little each week, you stay within your capabilities and grow stronger over time. But when doing weight training, the actual work you do doesn’t mean anything. There’s no intrinsic benefit in lifting a weight up and down — the benefit comes from the muscle growth. However, when building self-discipline, you also get the benefit of the work you’ve done along the way, so that’s even better. It’s great when your training produces something of value AND makes you stronger.

Throughout this week we’ll dive more deeply into the five pillars of self-discipline. If you have any questions on the subject of self-discipline (either specific or general) that you’d like to see addressed, feel free to post them as comments, and I’ll do my best to incorporate them along the way.

i will continue on this topic tomorrow..

i also implore you to contribute on this topic as we ride along...
is your boi..
AKACHUKWU BARACHEAL CHRIS 
FOR A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS 

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: PERSONAL BRANDING

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: PERSONAL BRANDING: Personal branding is, for some people, a description of the process whereby people and their careers are marked as  brands . [1]  It has ...

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: PERSONAL BRANDING

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: PERSONAL BRANDING: Personal branding is, for some people, a description of the process whereby people and their careers are marked as  brands . [1]  It has ...

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: PERSONAL BRANDING

A POINT MEDIA KONSEPTS: PERSONAL BRANDING: Personal branding is, for some people, a description of the process whereby people and their careers are marked as  brands . [1]  It has ...

PERSONAL BRANDING

Personal branding is, for some people, a description of the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands.^[1] It has been noted that while previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.^[1] Further defined as the creation of an asset that pertains to a particular person or individual; this includes but is not limited to the body, clothing, appearance and knowledge contained within, leading to an indelible impression that is uniquely distinguishable.

Personal branding often involves the application of one's name to various products. For example, celebrity real-estate mogul Donald Trump uses his last name extensively on his buildings and on the products he endorses (e.g., Trump Steaks).lil wayne, 50 cent, Dr dre,t.i etc..

Personal branding is basically the way you market yourself to the world. Your personal brand is what other people think of you. In some ways it’s outside your control, but you obviously have some influence over it.

Personal branding is unavoidable. As others interact with you, they’ll automatically form mental associations that connect you with certain labels, often within the first few seconds. You can’t avoid being labeled, and other people can’t avoid labeling you. It happens automatically because our brains are wired to recognize patterns and form associations. The labels people attach to you become part of your personal brand.

If you type an email, you’re branding yourself. If you have a conversation with a friend or family member, you’re branding yourself. How you dress, what you eat, and how you talk all contribute to your brand. Think of your brand as the summation of all the associations about you that are stored in people’s minds.

Before we continue I’d like to ask you to do me a simple favor. It should honestly take you less than a minute. Go to my contact form, and send me a quick 3-word message. Just type 3 adjectives that you feel describe me. Maybe you’ve been reading this site for a while, or maybe this is your very first visit. It doesn’t matter. Just go with whatever pops into your head. Just type those 3 words into the message box, and send it. Don’t worry about whether your words are in order or priority or whether they sound positive or negative. Just send me any 3 words that you feel describe me as a person. You don’t need to type anything else for the message other than those three words, although you can type more if you want to. I’ll know that the 3-word messages are for this exercise.

Please take a moment to do this before you continue reading if you’re going to do it at all. Otherwise what you read next could influence your results, and I’d rather get your first impression for this before I start filling your head with other adjectives. I’ll wait… 

After a day or two, I’ll compile the feedback and see if I can make sense of it. If so I may share the results in a future post, so we can all see what you collectively think of my personal brand and if there are some interesting general lessons we can extract.

For the purpose of this exercise, I have no control over what you might say, and I really don’t know what the most common adjectives will be. But obviously I’ve had some influence over your opinion, especially if you’re a long-term reader.

Your external brand is how you project yourself to the world. There is an element of choice here. You can decide what to say or write in order to convey a certain image. Your projected image will influence what others think of you and how they might choose to interact with you. You may stumble upon this image accidentally, or you can deliberately target a specific type of image.

I think the best external image to project is the one you believe best reflects who you really are. Being yourself simply means being honest.

In my view it makes little sense to pretend to be something you’re not. I don’t pretend to be a therapist with a Ph.D in psychology because that isn’t who I am. I could pick up a Ph.D from an unaccredited “degree mill” school and call myself Dr. Pavlina, but what’s the point? That mindset assumes that in order to get what I want, I must pretend to be something I’m not. But how can I get what I want if I have to disconnect from myself to get it? To me the whole notion of projecting a false image makes no sense. It can only stem from a lack of acceptance of who I am.

When people project an obviously false image at me, it only causes me to brand them in a negative way… with labels like fake, phony, insincere, disconnected, inauthentic, shallow, and so on. Those labels automatically trigger other associations like: probably wants to sell me something, going to throw up now, and where’s the fire escape?

On the other hand, I think there’s some value to projecting an image that fits who you really are. For example if you’re a very neat and organized person, but you have a scruffy beard, you’re broadcasting an incongruent message, whether you agree with it or not. This is why facial hair and salespeople don’t go well together. Many people think that if you have facial hair, you’re trying to hide something, and that isn’t good for work that requires you to build trust. Many years ago I heard about a salesperson who increased his sales just by shaving off his beard.

Paying attention to your external image needn’t become an ego trip. Really it’s just the opposite. Becoming aware of how others see you helps you identify blind spots within yourself. Then you can work on those blind spots to help you become more internally congruent. For example, our bearded salesperson may realize he (hopefully not she) was sabotaging his results because he didn’t really want to work in sales anyway.

Sometimes there are practical problems with getting your external brand and your self-image to match up. This is why I can’t dress myself. If I were truly being myself, I’d probably dress like an off-duty Star Trek character, but since I also don’t know how to shop for clothes, I still dress like it’s 1989 instead of Stardate 42523.7. But when I look deeper into this problem, I see it points me to a bigger issue — that I still need to learn to delegate. The right person, such as an image consultant, could probably fix this problem for me. So the internal-external inconsistency is really there to help point me in the direction of positive growth. Time to say goodbye to Thrilla Gorilla. 

Your internal brand

In addition to your external brand, which is how most people think about personal branding, you also have an internal brand. This is what you think of yourself.

What 3 adjectives would you use to describe yourself? Take a moment to think about that, and jot them down. Is this a brand you feel good about? Does it really resonate with you? Is this the same image you project to the world? If you could change those adjectives, what would you change them to?

If I were to do this exercise, I’d probably pick intelligent, curious, and direct. Other words I could use to describe myself include honest, growth-oriented, happy, independent, unconventional, deep, compassionate, purposeful, ambitious, conscious, focused, disciplined, strategic, responsible, thorough, persistent, practical, funny, holistic, clever, creative, accepting, and inspired. Ask me tomorrow, and I might pick different adjectives, but these are the ones that popped into my head right now. Your choices may be totally different than mine, but this is how I think of myself at this particular time.

Now ask yourself if your internal personal brand matches the external brand you project to others. You don’t necessarily know what others think of you, but you should at least know if there are any parts of yourself you don’t fully accept which you try to hide from others. If you find some areas you’ve been hiding, consider that your lack of self-acceptance may be blinding you from seeing these aspects as the assets they really are.

For example, if you see yourself as introverted, you could see that in a negative light (shy, antisocial) or in a positive light (intelligent, deep). If you sometimes describe yourself in negative terms, see if those terms also have a positive side. Consider focusing on the positive aspects instead.

I’m colorblind, so I could certainly see that in a negative light. I could internally brand myself as limited, defective, or impaired. But instead I choose to focus on the positive aspects. I see the world differently than most people, so that gives me the opportunity to be original, insightful, and non-superficial. My colorblindness also helps me connect with people, since I always need help picking ripe fruit, and when I try to do it on my own, it often gives others a good laugh.

Brand interaction

It’s expected that your internal brand and your external brand won’t completely coincide, and that’s OK, but those incongruencies can create interesting interactions that help you grow in unexpected ways.

For example, people sometimes send me emails indicating they find me a bit quirky or strange. That’s how they see me, but it isn’t really how I see myself. However, I can understand why people see me this way because I’m really curious about a lot of things, I like to learn through direct experience, and I especially enjoy creative undertakings. So while I don’t try to be intentionally quirky, I must admit that is a side effect of my general approach to life. By understanding that this is how others see me, however, I can acknowledge it up front, such as by poking fun at myself for undertaking yet another strange experiment, even though it doesn’t seem that way to me. When I do something strange and don’t acknowledge the strangeness, people can feel disconnected from me, but when I show that I’m aware of their perceptions, it keeps us connected.

Once you’ve gotten yourself assigned a few adjectives in someone else’s mind, it can be very difficult to change that. So just make the best of the adjectives you’ve been assigned. When you learn how others see you, you can “play back at them” by acknowledging their expectations. Instead of trying to fight your own branding, roll with it and turn it into a strength. This actually helps you reconnect your external brand with your internal one.

If I see myself as curious, while others see me as quirky, I can accept the quirkiness label and run with it. I can see how quirkiness still aligns with my internal brand. Quirkiness connects well with being creative and unconventional. It can also fit with intelligence because some people associate quirkiness with genius. Geniuses are strange people with odd personality quirks, right? By acknowledging and accepting what other people think of me, I can help to bring that projected image into better alignment with my own self-image. This helps other people connect with me as I am instead of connecting with a false projection of who they think I am.

This morning I did some spontaneous personal brand testing my family. Ratiie  brands me as “insightful,smart, wise, patient,creative, courageous, and passionate.” mavelous , describes me as “tough, smart,inteligent and strong.” I told ratie I brand her as “beautifull, creative, and godly.” - brands all exist in our  minds.

Personal branding has a lot to teach us about personal growth. It’s a rich place to explore. I encourage you to try the earlier exercise with your friends, family, and coworkers. Ask everyone to describe you with 3 adjectives. You’ll learn a great deal from it.

Incidentally, the Stardate I mentioned earlier (Are you geek enough to have already Googled it? Or worse… recognized it from memory?) is from an episode that really brings home the importance of personal branding. If you aren’t a Trekkie and have no idea what I’m talking about, well… me thinks you’ve got bigger problems than personal branding. 

If I ever get bored of the tagline “Personal Development for Smart People,” I think I’ll go with “Tough, Big, and Strong.”

is yoour boi 

AKACHUKWU BARACHEAL CHRIS

FOR

A POINT MEDIA CONSEPTS