Building the Athlete's Personal Brand

When I was a boy, my grandmother used to say, "Your reputation is all you've got, and it tells a lot about your home training." She would go on with other words of wisdom about the importance of a good reputation and how I should never go out and act as if I did not have "good home training."



As a marketing professional, I now understand that my grandmother’s advice (and stern warnings) really were my first introduction to building and protecting my personal brand.  Your brand begins at an early age and evolves over time as you grow, mature, and gain new experiences.  So everyone has a brand.

Tom Peters, management consultant and author of the book The Brand Called You, writes, "Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You."

What is a brand?

A person’s brand is what makes him or her stand out, likable, trustable, and invaluable.  Your brand is how you are viewed in the hearts and minds of those around you - your peers, colleagues, teammates, family, friends, or whomever.  Your brand essence is the core of who you are, and equally important, who you are not.  Just as some of America’s most beloved companies, like Nike, VISA, and McDonald’s, spend considerable effort in building and protecting their brands, athletes and individuals must do the same in order to control how others view them.

When Jordan Pugh entered the NFL, he retained me as his marketing rep to develop and launch his brand as a professional football player.  His personal brand had already been established throughout his high school and collegiate football experiences, so the next step was to evolve his brand as a professional player.  Using my experience in working with Jordan Pugh, I share below four important steps for developing an athlete’s brand or a personal brand for anyone.

4 Steps in Developing an Athlete’s Brand

1. Begin with a Brand Assessment Questionnaire.  This is a list of questions that will guide you toward a strong brand identity - an expression of who you are.  Our questionnaire for Jordan included a range of topics:  favorite colors and favorite foods; hobbies and interests; short-term and long-term career goals; consumer brands that he personally uses on a daily basis; and last but not least, a deep dive into his childhood.  All this was geared toward getting to know Jordan and understanding the things that make him different and unique from all the other 1,695 players in the NFL.
2. Craft a positioning.  After completing the brand assessment, you should be able to articulate the single most important thing you want others to know about your brand.  That’s your positioning. Consider Procter & Gamble’s positioning of its Cheer brand: Cheer is the brand of laundry detergent that works in hot, cold, or warm water.  Positioning is a simple promise of your brand that others can understand and believe to be true.  Jordan Pugh’s brand assessment led us to his positioning as "the NFL player whose performance is driven by his passion and purpose in life, whether on the field or off the field."
3. Develop a pitch.  A brand’s positioning is internal for the most part, but its pitch or tagline is that catchy phrase that makes the brand memorable. Positioning drives the emotional connection to your target audience, but your tagline is what they will remember.  Nike is positioned as the brand that inspires authentic athletic performance.  "Just do it" is Nike’s very familiar advertising tagline.  Jordan Pugh’s tagline is Pushing Upward. Going Higher.®  It encapsulates the key pillars of his brand - passion, purpose, and performance.  A subtle dose of creativity to make Jordan’s tagline memorable is that the first letter of each word in the tagline spells Jordan’s last name (PUGH)
4. Become visible.  In today’s age of technology, being visible is probably easier than ever before with the advancement of the internet and social media.  Every brand should have its own website and those brands that want to reach the masses should leverage relevant social media platforms  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.). Throughout this visibility phase, the brand owner  You) get to control your messages but inspire engagement from your target audience.  In launching the Jordan Pugh brand, we created an integrated plan that began with his website (www.jordanpugh29.com) which in turn provides links that lead viewers to his Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram pages.  With the use of social media and the viral nature of communications these days, everything you do and everything you say becomes part of your brand.  So be careful to always show your "home training."

One’s brand message lets the world know who you are and how you are different.  It’s never too late to define or redefine your brand.  A little bit of mother wit and a basic understanding of the branding process can go a long way in building one’s brand.  Don’t let the athlete in your life get left behind by not understanding the importance of branding.

Vince Jackson is President and CEO of Marketing Moves, Inc., a marketing consultancy that specializes in brand management, product innovation, and corporate communications.